They didn’t answer. Mickey moved closer.
“Fools!” he said. “Isn’t it obvious? There is life down there. But life that isn’t strong enough to kill us or chase us away with force. So what can they do? They don’t want us there. So what can they do?”
He asked them like a teacher who cannot get the right answers from the dolts in his class.
Mickey looked suspicious. But he was curious now, too, and a little timorous as he had always been with his captain, except in moments of greatest physical danger. Ross had always led them, and it was hard to rebel against it even when it seemed he was trying to kill them all. His eyes moved to the viewer where the planet began to loom beneath them like a huge dark ball.
“We’re alive,” Ross said, “and I say there never was a ship down there. We saw it, sure. We touched it. But you can see anything if you believe it’s there! All your senses can tell you there’s something when there’s nothing. All you have to do is believe it!”
“What are you getting at?” Mason asked hurriedly, too frightened to realize. His eyes fled to the altitude gauge. Seventeen thousand … sixteen thousand … sixteen-fifty …
“Telepathy,” Ross said, triumphantly decisive. “I say those men or whatever they are, saw us coming. And they didn’t want us there. So they read our minds and saw the death fear, and they decided that the best way to scare us away was to show us our ship crashed and ourselves dead in it. And it worked … until now.”
“So it worked!” Mason exploded. “Are you going to take a chance on killing us just to prove your damn theory?”
“It’s more than a theory!” Ross stormed, as the ship fell, then Ross added with the distorted argument of injured vanity, “my orders say to pick up specimens from every planet. I’ve always followed orders before and, by God, I still will!”
“You saw how cold it was!” Mason said. “No one can live there anyway! Use your head, Ross!”
“Damn it, I’m captain of this ship!” Ross yelled, “and I give the orders!”
“Not when our lives are in your hands!” Mickey started for the captain.
“Get back!” Ross ordered.
That was when one of the ship’s engines stopped and the ship yawed wildly.
“You fool!” Mickey exploded, thrown off balance. “You did it, you did it!”
Outside the black night hurtled past.
The ship wobbled violently. Prediction true was the only phrase Mason could think of. His own vision of the screaming, the numbing horror, the exhortations to a deaf heaven—all coming true. That hulk would be this ship in a matter of minutes. Those three bodies would be …
“Oh … damn!” He screamed it at the top of his lungs, furious at the enraging stubbornness of Ross in taking them back, of causing the future to be as they saw—all because of insane pride.
“No, they’re not going to fool us!” Ross shouted, still holding fast to his last idea like a dying bulldog holding its enemy fast in its teeth.
He threw switches and tried to turn the ship. But it wouldn’t turn. It kept plunging down like a fluttering leaf. The gyroscope couldn’t keep up with the abrupt variations in cabin equilibrium and the three of them found themselves being thrown off balance on the tilting deck.
“Auxiliary engines!” Ross yelled.
“It’s no use!” Mickey cried.
“Damn it!” Ross clawed his way up the angled deck, then crashed heavily against the engine board as the cabin inclined the other way. He threw switches over with shaking fingers.
Suddenly Mason saw an even spout of flame through the rear viewer again. The ship stopped shuddering and headed straight down. The cabin righted itself.
Ross threw himself into his chair and shot out furious hands to turn the ship about. From the floor Mickey looked at him with a blank, white face. Mason looked at him too, afraid to speak.
“Now shut up!” Ross said disgustedly, not even looking at them, talking like a disgruntled father to his sons. “When we get down there you’re going to see that it’s true. That ship’ll be gone. And we’re going to go looking for those bastards who put the idea in our minds!”
They both stared at their captain numbly as the ship headed down backwards. They watched Ross’s hands move efficiently over the controls. Mason felt a sense of confidence in his captain. He stood on the deck quietly, waiting for the landing without fear. Mickey got up from the floor and stood beside him, waiting.
The ship hit the ground. It stopped. They had landed again. They were still the same. And …
“Turn on the spotlight,” Ross told them.
Mason threw the switch. They all crowded to the port. Mason wondered for a second how Ross could possibly have landed in the same spot. He hadn’t even appeared to be following the calculations made on the last landing.
They looked out.
Mickey stopped breathing. And Ross’ mouth fell open.
The wreckage was still there.
They had landed in the same place and they had found the wrecked ship still there. Mason turned away from the port and stumbled over the deck. He felt lost, a victim of some terrible universal prank, a man accursed.
“You said …” Mickey said to the captain.
Ross just looked out of the port with unbelieving eyes.
“Now we’ll go up again,” Mickey said, grinding his teeth. “And we’ll really crash this time. And we’ll be killed. Just like those … those …”
Ross didn’t speak. He stared out of the port at the refutation of his last clinging hope. He felt hollow, void of all faith in belief in sensible things.
Then Mason spoke.
“We’re not going to crash—” he said somberly “—ever.”
“What?”
Mickey was looking at him. Ross turned and looked too.
“Why don’t we stop kidding ourselves?” Mason said. “We all know what it is, don’t we?”
He was thinking of what Ross had said just a moment before. About the senses giving evidence of what was believed. Even if there was nothing there at all …
Then, in a split second, with the knowledge, he saw Ross and he saw Carter. As they were. And he took a short shuddering breath, a last breath until illusion would bring breath and flesh again.
“Progress,” he said bitterly and his voice was an aching whisper in the phantom ship. “The Flying Dutchman takes to the universe.”
THE LAST DAY
HE WOKE UP AND THE FIRST THING HE THOUGHT was—the last night is gone.
He had slept through half of it.
He lay there on the floor and looked up at the ceiling. The walls still glowed reddish from the outside light. There was no sound in the living room but that of snoring.
He looked around.
There were bodies sprawled out all over the room. They were on the couch, slumped on chairs, curled up on the floor. Some were covered with rugs. Two of them were naked.
He raised up on one elbow and winced at the shooting pains in his head. He closed his eyes and held them tightly shut for a moment. Then he opened them again. He ran his tongue over the inside of his dry mouth. There was still a stale taste of liquor and food in his mouth.
He rested on his elbow as he looked around the room again, his mind slowly registering the scene.
Nancy and Bill lying in each other’s arms, both naked. Norman curled up in an arm chair, his thin face taut as he slept. Mort and Mel lying on the floor, covered with dirty throw rugs. Both snoring. Others on the floor.
Outside the red glow.
He looked at the window and his throat moved. He blinked. He looked down over his long body. He swallowed again.
I’m alive, he thought, and it’s all true.
He rubbed his eyes. He took a deep breath of the dead air in the apartment.
He knocked over a glass as he struggled to his feet. The liquor and soda sloshed over the rug and soaked into the dark blue weave.
He looked around at the other glasses, broken, kicked over,
hurled against the wall. He looked at the bottles all over, all empty.
He stood staring around the room. He looked at the record player overturned, the albums all strewn around, jagged pieces of records in crazy patterns on the rug.
He remembered.
It was Mort who had started it the night before. He had suddenly rushed to the playing record machine and shouted drunkenly.
“What the hell is music anymore! Just a lot of noise!”
And he had driven the point of his shoe against the front of the record player and knocked it against the wall. He had lurched over and down on his knees. He had struggled up with the player in his beefy arms and heaved the entire thing over on its back and kicked it again.
“The hell with music!” he had yelled. “I hate the crap anyway!”
Then he’d started to drag records out of their jackets and snap them over his kneecap.
“Come on!” he’d yelled to everybody. “Come on!”
And it had caught on. The way all crazy ideas had caught on in these last few days.
Mel had jumped up from making love to a girl. He had flung records out the windows, scaling them far across the street. And Charlie had put aside his gun for a moment to stand at the windows too and try to hit people in the street with thrown records.
Richard had watched the dark saucers bounce and shatter on the sidewalks below. He’d even thrown one himself. Then he’d just turned away and let the others rage. He’d taken Mel’s girl into the bedroom and had sex with her.
He thought about that as he stood waveringly in the reddish light of the room.
He closed his eyes a moment.
Then he looked at Nancy and remembered taking her too sometime in the jumble of wild hours that had been yesterday and last night.
She looked vile now, he thought. She’d always been an animal. Before, though, she’d had to veil it. Now, in the final twilight of everything she could revel in the only thing she’d ever really cared about.
He wondered if there were any people left in the world with real dignity. The kind that was still there when it no longer was necessary to impress people with it.
He stepped over the body of a sleeping girl. She had on only a slip. He looked down at her tangled hair, at her red lips smeared, the tight unhappy frown printed on her face.
He glanced into the bedroom as he passed it. There were three girls and two men in the bed.
He found the body in the bathroom.
It was thrown carelessly in the tub and the shower curtain torn down to cover it. Only the legs showed, dangling ridiculously over the front rim of the tub.
He drew back the curtain and looked at the blood-soaked shirt, at the white, still face.
Charlie.
He shook his head, then turned away and washed his face and hands at the sink. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. As a matter of fact, Charlie was one of the lucky ones now. A member of the legion who had put their heads into ovens, or cut their wrists or taken pills or done away with themselves in the accepted fashions of suicide.
As he looked at his tired face in the mirror he thought of cutting his wrists. But he knew he couldn’t. Because it took more than just despair to incite self-destruction.
He took a drink of water. Lucky, he thought, there’s still water running. He didn’t suppose there was a soul left to run the water system. Or the electric system or the gas system or the telephone system or any system for that matter.
What fool would work on the last day of the world?
Spencer was in the kitchen when Richard went in.
He was sitting in his shorts at the table looking at his hands. On the stove some eggs were frying. The gas was working then too, Richard thought.
“Hello,” he said to Spencer.
Spencer grunted without looking up. He stared at his hands. Richard let it go. He turned the gas down a little. He took bread out of the cupboard and put it in the electric toaster. But the toaster didn’t work. He shrugged and forgot about it.
“What time is it?”
Spencer was looking at him with the question.
Richard looked at his watch.
“It stopped,” he said.
They looked at each other.
“Oh,” Spencer said. Then he asked, “What day is it?”
Richard thought. “Sunday, I think,” he said.
“I wonder if people are at church,” Spencer said.
“Who cares?”
Richard opened the refrigerator.
“There aren’t any more eggs,” Spencer said.
Richard shut the door.
“No more eggs,” he said dully, “No more chickens. No more anything.”
He leaned against the wall with a shuddering breath and looked out the window at the red sky.
Mary, he thought. Mary, who I should have married. Who I let go. He wondered where she was. He wondered if she were thinking about him at all.
Norman came trudging in, groggy with sleep and hangover. His mouth hung open. He looked dazed.
“Morning,” he slurred.
“Good morning, merry sunshine,” Richard said, without mirth.
Norman looked at him blankly. Then he went over to the sink and washed out his mouth. He spit the water down the drain.
“Charlie’s dead,” he said.
“I know,” Richard said.
“Oh. When did it happen?”
“Last night,” Richard told him. “You were unconscious. You remember how he kept saying he was going to shoot us all? Put us out of our misery?”
“Yeah,” Norman said. “He put the muzzle against my head. He said feel how cool it is.”
“Well, he got in a fight with Mort,” Richard said. “The gun went off.” He shrugged. “That was it.”
They looked at each other without expression.
Then Norman turned his head and looked out the window.
“It’s still up there,” he muttered.
They looked up at the great flaming ball in the sky that crowded out the sun, the moon, the stars.
Norman turned away, his throat moving. His lips trembled and he clamped them together.
“Jesus,” he said. “It’s today.”
He looked up at the sky again.
“Today,” he repeated. “Everything.”
“Everything,” said Richard.
Spencer got up and turned off the gas. He looked down at the eggs for a moment. Then he said, “What the hell did I fry these for?”
He dumped them into the sink and they slid greasily over the white surface. The yolks burst and spurted smoking, yellow fluid over the enamel.
Spencer bit his lips. His face grew hard.
“I’m taking her again,” he said, suddenly.
He pushed past Richard and dropped his shorts off as he turned the corner into the hallway.
“There goes Spencer,” Richard said.
Norman sat down at the table. Richard stayed at the wall.
In the living room they heard Nancy suddenly call out at the top of her strident voice.
“Hey, wake up everybody! Watch me do it! Watch me everybody, watch me!”
Norman looked at the kitchen doorway for a moment. Then something gave inside of him and he slumped his head forward on his arms on the table. His thin shoulders shook.
“I did it too,” he said brokenly. “I did it too. Oh God, what did I come here for?”
“Sex,” Richard said. “Like all the rest of us. You thought you could end your life in carnal, drunken bliss.”
Norman’s voice was muffled.
“I can’t die like that,” he sobbed. “I can’t.”
“A couple of billion people are doing it,” Richard said. “When the sun hits us, they’ll still be at it. What a sight.”
The thought of a world’s people indulging themselves in one last orgy of animalism made him shudder. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the wall and tried to forget.
But the wall was warm.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
Richard looked at him. “Home?” he said.
“To our parents. My mother and father. Your mother.”
Richard shook his head.
“I don’t want to,” he said.
“But I can’t go alone.”
“Why?”
“Because … I can’t. You know how the streets are full of guys just killing everybody they meet.”
Richard shrugged.
“Why don’t you?” Norman asked.
“I don’t want to see her.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“You’re crazy,” Norman said. “Who else is there to …”
“No.”
He thought of his mother at home waiting for him. Waiting for him on the last day. And it made him ill to think of him delaying, of maybe never seeing her again.
But he kept thinking—How can I go home and have her try to make me pray? Try to make me read from the Bible, spend these last hours in a muddle of religious absorption?
He said it again for himself.
“No.”
Norman looked lost. His chest shook with a swallowed sob.
“I want to see my mother,” he said.
“Go ahead,” Richard said, casually.
But his insides were twisting themselves into knots. To never see her again. Or his sister and her husband and her daughter.
Never to see any of them again.
He sighed. It was no use fighting it. In spite of everything, Norman was right. Who else was there in the world to turn to? In a wide world, about to be burned, was there any other person who loved him above all others?
“Oh … all right,” he said. “Come on. Anything to get out of this place.”
The apartment house hall smelled of vomit. They found the janitor dead drunk on the stairs. They found a dog in the foyer with its head kicked in.
They stopped as they came out the entrance of the building.
Instinctively they looked up.
At the red sky, like molten slag. At the fiery wisps that fell like hot rain drops through the atmosphere. At the gigantic ball of flame that kept coming closer and closer that blotted out the universe.
They lowered their watering eyes. It hurt to look. They started walking along the street. It was very warm.
Duel: Terror Stories Page 19