The End Of The World

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  T minus 10 minutes … and counting …

  The circle of light at the end of the whirling tunnel was getting bigger and bigger and the humming was getting louder and louder and I was feeling better and better and the Blackfish's missile con trol center was getting dimmer and dimmer as the awful weight of command got lighter and lighter, whirling, whirling, and I felt so good I wanted to cry, whirling, whirling….

  T minus 9 minutes … and counting …

  Whirling, whirling … I was whirling, Jeremy was whirling, the hole in the ground was whirling, and the circle of light at the end of the tunnel whirled closer and closer and—I was through! A place filled with yellow light. Pale metallic yellow light. Then pale metallic blue. Yellow. Blue. Yellow. Blue. Yellow-blue-yellow-blue-yellow -blue-yellow…

  Pure light pulsing and pure sound droning. And just the feeling of letters I couldn't read between the pulses—not-yellow and not- blue—too quick and too faint to be visible, but important, very important….

  And then a voice that seemed to be singing from inside my head, almost as if it were my own:

  “Oh, oh, oh … don't I really wanna know…. Oh, oh, oh don't I reallywanna know….”

  The world pulsing, flashing around those words I couldn't read, couldn't quite read, had to read, could almost read….

  “Oh, oh, oh … great God I really wanna know….”

  Strange amorphous shapes clouding the blue-yellow-blue flick ering universe, hiding the words I had to read…. Damnit, why wouldn't they get out of the way so I could find out what I had to know!

  “Tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me … Gotta know gotta know gotta know gotta know…”

  T minus 7 minutes … and counting …

  Couldn't read the words! Why wouldn't the captain let me read the words?

  And that voice inside me: “Gotta know … gotta know … gotta know why it hurts me so….” Why wouldn't it shut up and let me read the words? Why wouldn't the words hold still? Or just slow down a little? If they'd slow down a little, I could read them and then I'd know what I had to do….

  T minus 6 minutes … and counting …

  I felt the sweaty key in the palm of my hand. I saw Duke stroking his own key. Had to know! Now—through the pulsing blue-yellow-blue light and the unreadable words that were building up an awful pressure in the back of my brain—I could see the Four Horsemen. They were on their knees, crying, looking up at something and begging: “Tell me tell me tell me tell me …”

  Then soft billows of rich red-and-orange fire filled the world and a huge voice was trying to speak. But it couldn't form the words. It stuttered and moaned—

  The yellow-blue-yellow flashing around the words I couldn't read—the same words, I suddenly sensed, that the voice of the fire was trying so hard to form—and the Four Horsemen on their knees begging: “Tell me tell me tell me …”

  The friendly warm fire trying so hard to speak—

  “Tell me tell me tell me tell me …”

  T minus 4 minutes … and counting …

  What were the words? What was the order? I could sense my men silently imploring me to tell them. After all, I was their captain, it was my duty to tell them. It was my duty to find out!

  “Tell me tell me tell me …” the robed figures on their knees implored through the flickering pulse in my brain and I could almost make out the words… almost….

  “Tell me tell me tell me …” I whispered to the warm orange fire that was trying so hard but couldn't quite form the words. The men were whispering it too: “Tell me tell me …”

  T minus 3 minutes … and counting …

  The question burning blue and yellow in my brain. WHAT WAS THE FIRE TRYING TO TELL ME? WHAT WERE THE WORDS I COULDN'T READ?

  Had to unlock the words! Had to find the key!

  A key … The key! THE KEY! And there was the lock that imprisoned the words, right in front of me! Put the key in the lock … I looked at Jeremy. Wasn't there some reason, long ago and far away, why Jeremy might try to stop me from putting the key in the lock?

  But Jeremy didn't move as I fitted the key into the lock….

  T minus 2 minutes … and counting …

  Why wouldn't the captain tell me what the order was? The fire knew, but it couldn't tell. My head ached from the pulsing, but I couldn't read the words.

  “Tell me tell me tell me …” I begged.

  Then I realized that the captain was asking too.

  T minus 90 seconds … and counting …

  “Tell me tell me tell me …” the Horsemen begged. And the words I couldn't read were a fire in my brain.

  Duke's key was in the lock in front of us. From very far away, he said: “We have to do it together.”

  Of course … our keys … our keys would unlock the words!

  I put my key into the lock. One, two, three, we turned our keys together. A lid on the console popped open. Under the lid were three red buttons. Three signs on the console lit up in red letters: ARMED.

  T minus 60 seconds … and counting …

  The men were waiting for me to give some order. I didn't know what the order was. A magnificent orange fire was trying to tell me but it couldn't get the words out…. Robed figures were praying to the fire….

  Then, through the yellow-blue flicker that hid the words I had to read, I saw a vast crowd encircling a tower. The crowd was on its feet begging silently—

  The tower in the center of the crowd became the orange fire that was trying to tell me what the words were—

  Became a great mushroom of billowing smoke and blinding or ange-red glare….

  T minus 30 seconds … and counting …

  The huge pillar of fire was trying to tell Jeremy and me what the words were, what we had to do. The crowd was screaming at the cloud of flame. The yellow-blue flicker was getting faster and faster behind the mushroom cloud. I could almost read the words! I could see that there were two of them!

  T minus 20 seconds … and counting …

  Why didn't the captain tell us? I could almost see the words!

  Then I heard the crowd around the beautiful mushroom cloud shouting: “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!”

  T minus 10 seconds … and counting …

  “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!”

  What did they want me to do? Did Duke know?

  9

  The men were waiting! What was the order? They hunched over the firing controls, waiting…. The firing controls …?”

  “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!”

  8

  “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!”: the crowd screaming.

  “Jeremy!” I shouted. “I can read the words!”

  7

  My hands hovered over my bank of firing buttons….

  “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!” the words said.

  Didn't the captain understand?

  6

  “What do they want us to do, Jeremy?”

  5

  Why didn't the mushroom cloud give the order? My men were waiting! A good sailor craves action.

  Then a great voice spoke from the pillar of fire: “DO IT … DO IT … DO IT …“

  4

  “There's only one thing we can do down here, Duke.”

  3

  “The order, men! Action! Fire!”

  2

  Yes, yes, yes! Jeremy—

  1

  I reached for my bank of firing buttons. All along the console, the men reached for their buttons. But I was too fast for them! I would be first!

  0

  THE BIG FLASH

  THE LAST MAN

  KINDNESS

  Lester del Ray

  THE WIND EDDIED idly around the corner and past the secluded park bench. It caught fitfully at the paper on the ground, turning the pages, then picked up a section and blew away with it, leaving gaudy-colored comics uppermost. Danny moved forward into the sunlight, his eyes dropping to the children's page exposed.
>
  But it was no use; he made no effort to pick up the paper. In a world where even the children's comics needed explain ing, there could be nothing of interest to the last living homo sapiens—the last normal man in the world. His foot kicked the paper away, under the bench where it would no longer remind him of his deficiencies. There had been a time when he had tried to reason slowly over the omitted steps of logic and find the points behind such things, sometimes success fully, more often not; but now he left it to the quick, intuitive thinking of those about him. Nothing fell flatter than a joke that had to be reasoned out slowly.

  Homo sapiens! The type of man who had come out of the caves and built a world of atomic power, electronics, and other old-time wonders—thinking man, as it translated from the Latin. In the dim past, when his ancestors had owned the world, they had made a joke of it, shortening it to homo sap, and laughing, because there had been no other species to rival them. Now it was no longer a joke.

  Normal man had been only a “sap” to homo intelligens— intelligent man—who was now the master of the world. Danny was only a leftover, the last normal man in the world of supermen, hating the fact that he had been born, and that his mother had died at his birth to leave him only loneliness as his heritage.

  He drew back farther on the bench as the steps of a young couple reached his ears, pulling his hat down to avoid recognition. But they went by, preoccupied with their own affairs, leaving only a scattered bit of conversation in his ears. He turned it over in his mind, trying senselessly to decode it.

  Impossible! Even the casual talk contained too many steps of logic left out. Homo intelligens had a new way of thinking, above reason, where all the long painful steps of logic could be jumped instantly. They could arrive at a correct picture of the whole from scattered bits of information. Just as man had once invented logic to replace the trial-and-error thinking that most animals have, so homo intelligens had learned to use intuition. They could look at the first page of an old-time book and immediately know the whole of it, since the little tricks of the author would connect in their in tuitive minds and at once build up all the missing links. They didn't even have to try—they just looked, and knew. It was like Newton looking at an apple falling and immediately seeing why the planets circled the sun, and realizing the laws of gravitation; but these new men did it all the time, not just at those rare intervals as it had worked for homo sapiens once.

  Man was gone, except for Danny, and he too had to leave this world of supermen. Somehow, soon, those escape plans must be completed, before the last of his little courage was gone! He stirred restlessly, and the little coins in his pocket set up a faint jingling sound. More charity, or occupational therapy! For six hours a day, five days a week, he worked in a little office, painfully doing routine work that could proba bly have been done better by machinery. Oh, they assured him that his manual skill was as great as theirs and that it was needed, but he could never be sure. In their unfailing kindness, they had probably decided it was better for him to live as normally as they could let him, and then had created the job to fit what he could do.

  Other footsteps came down the little path, but he did not look up, until they stopped. “Hi, Danny! You weren't at the library, and Miss Larsen said, pay day, weather, and all, I'd find you here. How's everything?”

  Outwardly, Jack Thorpe's body might have been the twin of Danny's own well-muscled one, and the smiling face above it bore no distinguishing characteristics. The mutation that changed man to superman had been within, a quicker, more complex relation of brain cell to brain cell that had no out ward signs. Danny nodded at Jack, drawing over reluctantly to make room on the bench for this man who had been his playmate when they were both too young for the difference to matter much.

  He did not ask the reason behind the librarian's knowledge of his whereabouts; so far as he knew, there was no particu lar pattern to his coming here, but to the others there must be one. He found he could even smile at their ability to foretell his plans.

  “Hi, Jack! Fine. I thought you were on Mars.”

  Thorpe frowned, as if an effort were needed to remember that the boy beside him was different, and his words bore the careful phrasing of all those who spoke to Danny. “I finished that, for the time being; I'm supposed to report to Venus next. They're having trouble getting an even balance of boys and girls there, you know. Thought you might want to come along. You've never been Outside, and you were always bugs about those old space stories, I remember.”

  “I still am, Jack. But—” He knew what it meant, of course. Those who looked after him behind the scenes had detected his growing discontent, and were hoping to distract him with this chance to see the places his father had con quered in the heyday of his race. But he had no wish to see them as they now were, filled with the busy work of the new men; it was better to imagine them as they had once been, rather than see reality. And the ship was here; there could be no chance for escape from those other worlds.

  Jack nodded quickly, with the almost telepathic under standing of his race. “Of course. Suit yourself, fellow. Going up to the Heights? Miss Larsen says she has something for you.”

  “Not yet, Jack. I thought I might look at—drop by the old museum.”

  “Oh.” Thorpe got up slowly, brushing his suit with idle fingers. “Danny!”

  “Uh?”

  “I probably know you better than anyone else, fellow, so—” He hesitated, shrugged, and went on. “Don't mind if I jump to conclusions; I won't talk out of turn. But best of luck—and good-bye, Danny.”

  He was gone, almost instantly, leaving Danny's heart stuck in his throat. A few words, a facial expression, probably some childhood memories, and Danny might as well have revealed his most cherished secret hope in shouted words! How many others knew of his interest in the old ship in the museum and his carefully made plot to escape this kindly, charity-filled tor ture world?

  He crushed a cigarette under his heel, trying to forget the thought. Jack had played with him as a child, and the others hadn't. He'd have to base his hopes on that and be even more careful never to think of the idea around others. In the mean time he'd stay away from the ship! Perhaps in that way Thorpe's subtle warning might work in his favor—provided the man had meant his promise of silence.

  Danny forced his doubts away, grimly conscious that he dared not lose hope in this last desperate scheme for indepen dence and self-respect; the other way offered only despair and listless hopelessness, the same empty death from an acute in feriority complex that had claimed the diminishing numbers of his own kind and left him as the last, lonely specimen. Somehow, he'd succeed, and in the meantime, he would go to the library and leave the museum strictly alone.

  There was a throng of people leaving the library as Danny came up the escalator, but either they did not recognize him with his hat pulled low or sensed his desire for anonymity and pretended not to know him. He slipped into one of the less used hallways and made his way toward the historic documents section, where Miss Larsen was putting away the reading tapes and preparing to leave.

  But she tossed them aside quickly as he came in and smiled up at him, the rich, warm smile of her people. “Hello, Danny! Did your friend find you all right?”

  “Mm-hmm. He said you had something for me.”

  “I have.” There was pleasure in her face as she turned back toward the desk behind her to come up with a small wrapped parcel. For the thousandth time, he caught himself wishing she were of his race and quenching the feeling as he realized what her attitude must really be. To her, the small talk from his race's past was a subject of historic interest, no more. And he was just a dull-witted hangover from ancient days. “Guess what?”

  But in spite of himself, his face lighted up, both at the game and the package. “The magazines! The lost issues of Space Trails?” There had been only the first installment of a story extant, and yet that single part had set his pulses throb bing as few of the other ancient stories of his ancestors’ con qu
est of space had done. Now, with the missing sections, life would be filled with zest for a few more hours as he followed the fictional exploits of a conqueror who had known no fear of keener minds.

  “Not quite, Danny, but almost. We couldn't locate even a trace of them, but I gave the first installment to Bryant Ken ning last week, and he finished it for you.” Her voice was apologetic. “Of course the words won't be quite identical, but Kenning swears that the story is undoubtedly exactly the same in structure as it would have been, and the style is du plicated almost perfectly!”

  Like that! Kenning had taken the first pages of a novel that had meant weeks and months of thought to some ancient writer and had found in them the whole plot, clearly re vealed, instantly his! A night's labor had been needed to du plicate it, probably—a disagreeable and boring piece of work, but not a difficult one! Danny did not question the accuracy of the duplication, since Kenning was their greatest historical novelist. But the pleasure went out of the game.

  He took the package, noting that some illustrator had even copied the old artist's style, and that it was set up to match the original format. “Thank you, Miss Larsen. I'm sorry to put all of you to so much trouble. And it was nice of Mr. Kenning!”

  Her face had fallen with his, but she pretended not to no tice. “He wanted to do it—volunteered when he heard we were searching for the missing copies. And if there are any others with pieces missing, Danny, he wants you to let him know. You two are about the only ones who use this division now; why don't you drop by and see him? If you'd like to go tonight—”

  “Thanks. But I'll read this tonight, instead. Tell him I'm very grateful, though, will you?” But he paused, wondering again whether he dared ask for tapes on the history of the as teroids; no, there would be too much risk of her guessing, ei ther now or later. He dared not trust any of them with a hint of his plan.

  Miss Larsen smiled again, half winking at him. “Okay, Danny, I'll tell him. Night!”