What he said made no sense. He still looked at Sam, but he lifted his voice slightly and called, “All right, Hale, it’s up to you.”
There was a challenge in the words. Sam had no time to puzzle it out. He set his teeth grimly and tugged the needle gun from his scorched pocket, lifted it toward Zachariah’s face. There at least the Immortal could not be wearing armor.
He never pulled the trigger. From somewhere beyond him a familiar voice said wearily, “Harker—you win.” And a searing light flashed blindingly into Sam’s eyes.
He knew what it was. He and the Free Companion carried the little riot-breaker flashes instead of deadlier weapons for discipline. Blindness was not usually permanent after that glare had burned a man’s eyes, but it did not pass quickly.
In the sudden darkness that had engulfed the room Sam heard Zachariah’s voice saying, “Thank you, Hale. I was pretty sure you would—but not quite. That was close.”
The Free Companion said, “I’m sorry, Sam.”
And that was the last thing Sam heard in Plymouth Colony.
And Moses went up from the plains of Moab . . . and the Lord said unto him, This is the land . . . I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither . . . And Moses died there in the land of Moah, but no man knoweth of his scpulchre unto this day.
—Deuteronomy
There was a swimming dark, and the roaring of winds. And then vague patterns of light that were presently a face—the head and torso of an old man, a shrewd-faced, wrinkled old man Sam recognized. Beyond him was a bare alloy wall, and a dim light came from somewhere.
Sam tried to sit up, failed, tried again. He could not move. Panic leaped in his mind. The old man smiled.
“Take it easy, son. This is the way it has to be.” He was packing tobacco into his pipe as he spoke. Now he held a flame to if, sucked the fire down into the bowl, blew out smoke. His mild gaze focused on Sam.
“Had to tell you a few things, son,” he said. “Just in case. You’re good and healthy again, in case you’re wondering. You been here a few weeks, resting up, getting cured. Nobody knows but me.”
Where? Sam tried to move his head enough to see the source of the light, the shape of the room. He could not.
“I got this hideout ready quite some while ago,” Crowell went on, puffing. “Figured I might need it for something like this. It’s under my potato patch. I’ll be hoeing spuds on this parcel of land for a good long spell yet, I figure. Maybe a hundred years, maybe five hundred. That’s right, I’m an Immortal. Don’t look it, do I? But I was born on Earth.”
He blew out blue smoke. “Earth had a good many fine things—the old place. But I could see what was coming, even then. I could see you, Sam Reed. Oh, not your name or your face, but I knew you’d be along. A man like you always is, at the right time. I can figure out the future, Sam. It’s a talent I got. Only I can’t interfere or I’ll change the pattern to something different—what it’ll be I can’t tell for a while, after I’ve stepped in.”
Sam made a frantic effort to stir one finger. Colored flecks of light danced before his eyes. He scarcely heard as the old man rambled on.
“Easy now,” Crowell said quietly. “Just try to listen for a bit. I’m the Logician, Sam. Remember the Temple of Truth? You didn’t believe the oracle at first, did you? Well; I was right. I was the machine, and I don’t make mistakes, at least, not that kind.
“You were in the Temple for forty years, Sam. You wouldn’t remember that, either. You were dream-dusting.”
Dream-dusting? Sam’s attention came back sharply. Was this the answer he had sought so long, given casually now, when it no longer meant anything? Crowell, the unknown guardian? But how—why—“Zachariah was out to kill you. I could see that. I could see he’d succeed, unless I interfered. So I interfered—which upset the apple cart considerable. After that I couldn’t figure out the future quite so close, till things evened up again. That’s one reason I waited forty years. It’s why I let you wake up in an alley, broke and disgraced. To even the scale, son. The way things are, when I give a good present I’ve got to give a bad one too, or it won’t come out right.
“You had your troubles to straighten out then, and when you finished, the pattern was all set again. I could see what was coming.”
Sam did not care. If he could only break this paralysis. He must—he must! Always before now he had drawn upon some deep reserve of strength no other man possessed. And it must not fail him now.
But it was failing him.
“You’re not Sam Reed, you know,” the Logician was saying. “Remember Blaze Harker? He had a son. Blaze was starting to go crazy then, or he’d never have hated the baby enough to do what he did.
You know what it was, don’t you? You grew up looking like a short-termer, but your name wasn’t really Reed.”
Blaze Harker. Blaze Harker, his face distorted, struggling in the strait-jacket—
I let him go! I could have killed him! He was the one—I let him go!
Blaze Harker!
Harker!
Sam—Harker!
“I couldn’t tell you before,” Crowell said. “It would have changed the future, and I didn’t want it changed that way. Up till now we’ve needed you, Sam. Once in along while a fella like you comes along, somebody strong enough to move a world. Oh, I guess other men had qualifications—like Rob Hale. Only Hale couldn’t have done it. He could have done part of what was necessary, but there are things he never could make himself do.
“There’s nothing you wouldn’t do, son—nothing at all—if it would get you what you want.
“If you hadn’t been born, if Blaze hadn’t done what he did, mankind would be in the Keeps yet. And in a few hundred years, or a thousand, say, the race would have died out. I could see that ahead, clear as could be. But now we’ve come landside. We’ll finish colonizing Venus. And then we’ll go out and colonize the whole universe, I expect.
“You’re the one who did it, Sam. We owe you a lot. In your day you were a great man. But your day’s over. You got your power by force, and you’re like most dictators, son, who reach the top that way. All you could think of was repeating the things that made you a success—more fighting, more force. There wasn’t any way but down for you, once you’d reached the top, because of the man you are. You had the same drive that made the first life-form leave water for land, but we can’t use your kind any more for awhile, Sam.”
Drive? It was fury. It burned with blinding white violence in him, so hot it seemed strange the fetters of his paralysis were not consumed—it seemed strange the sheer violence of his rage could not send him headlong across the room at Crowell to strangle him. To get above ground—smash Hale. Smash the Harkers—
The Hackers. But he was a Harker, too.
Crowell said, “Men like you are mighty rare, Sam. When they get to the right position, at the right time, they’re the salvation of the race of man. But it’s got to be the right time—a time of disaster. The drive never stops, in a man like you. You’ve got to get on top. You’ve got to, or die.
“If you can’t conquer an enemy, you’ll conquer your friends. Up to now the enemy was Venus, and you licked it. But what have you got to fight now?”
“Man.”
“There’s going to be a good long time of peace, now. The Immortals have taken over. They’ll rule well.
You’ve left them a good foundation to build on. But it’s time you bowed out.”
Suddenly Crowell chuckled. “You thought you were telling a lie, Sam, when you promised immortality was up here landside, didn’t you? It was the truth. They’ll get their immortality. Ever think of that? Man was dying in the Keeps. Up here he’ll live on—well, not forever, but long enough, long enough. The race has got immortality, Sam, and you gave it to ’em.”
He puffed again at the pipe and looked down reflectively through smoke at Sam. “I hardly ever interfere with the running of things,” he said. “Only once I had to kill a m
an. I had to. It changed the patterns so much I couldn’t see the future for a long time after, but I’d already seen enough to know what would have happened if the man kept on living. It was bad. I couldn’t think of anything worse. So I killed him.
“I’ve interfered again, because I know what the future would be like with you in it. This means I won’t be able to guess what’s coming for quite a spell. After that things will level off and I can take a look.
“This time I’m not killing. I learn more as I get older. Also, you’re an Immortal. You can sleep a long, long while without losing anything. That’s what you’re going to do, son—sleep.
“And I hope you die in your sleep. I hope I’ll never have to wake you up. Because if I do, it’ll mean things have gone mighty bad again. You and I are long-termers. We’ll still be around, barring accidents, for quite a stretch yet. And plenty of bad things can happen.
“I get glimpses. Nothing’s set yet—too far ahead. But I see possibilities. The jungle could come back. New life-forms may mutate—Venus critters are tricky. And we won’t stay on Venus forever. This is just the first colony. We’ll go on out to the planets and the stars. There may be trouble there, too, sooner than you’d think. Maybe something will try to colonize our worlds, as we colonize theirs. Plenty we don’t know yet, but we’re not the only intelligent species in the universe. There’s peace and there’s war, and it’s always kept on that way, and I guess it always will.
“So maybe we’ll need a man like you again, Sam.
“I’ll wake you if we do.”
The shrewd brown face regarded him from coils of smoke. The friendly, remorseless, judging eyes considered him.
“For now, though,” Crowell said, “Go to sleep. You’ve done your job. Sleep well, son—and good night.”
Sam lay motionless. The light was dimming. He could not be sure if it were his own vision that dimmed. The rage ebbed in him, and the darkness rose.
There was so much he wanted to think about, and so little time for thinking. He was Immortal. He wanted to live—he must live—
Sam Harker, Immortal. Harker. Harker.
He heard the music of carnival ringing through Delaware Keep, saw the bright ribbons of the moving Ways, smelled drifting perfume, smiled into Kedre’s face.
There was a second of desperate urgency, as though he clawed at the edge of a crumbling cliff, while life and awareness fell to pieces beneath his hands.
Darkness and silence brimmed the buried room. Here the Man Underground slept at last, rooted deep, waiting.
EPILOGUE
Sam woke—
THE END.
ATOMIC?
What nuclear war may do to the world we know is a closed book to mankind—but here’s what coming eras may bring!
CHAPTER I
The Eye
THE alarm went off just after midnight. The red signal showed emergency. But it was always emergency at first. We all knew that. Ever since the arachnid tribe in the Chicago Ring had mutated we’d known better than to take chances. That time the human race had very nearly gone under. Not many people knew how close we’d been to extinction. But I knew.
Everybody in Biological Control Labs knew. To anyone who lived before the Three-Hour War such things would have sounded incredible. Even to us now they sound hard to believe. But we know.
There are four hundred and three Rings scattered all. over the world and every one of them is potentially deadly.
Our Lab was north of what had been Yonkers and was a deserted, ruinous wilderness now. The atomic bomb of six years ago hadn’t hit Yonkers of course. What it struck was New York. The radiation spread far enough to wipe out Yonkers and the towns beyond it, and inland as far as White Plains—but everyone who lived through the Three-Hour War knows what the bomb did in the New York area.
The war ended incredibly fast. But what lingered afterward made the real danger, the time-bomb that may quite easily lead to the wiping out of our whole civilization. We don’t know yet. All we can do is keep the Labs going and the planes out watching.
That’s the menace—the mutations.
It was familiar stuff to me. I recorded the televised report on the office ticker, punched a few buttons and turned around to look at Bob Davidson, the new hand. He’d been here for two weeks, mostly learning the ropes.
My assistant, Williams, was due for a vacation and I had about decided to take young Davidson on as a substitute.
“Want to go out and look it over, Dave?” I asked.
“Sure. That’s a red alarm, isn’t it? Emergency?”
I pulled a mike forward.
“Send up relief men,” I ordered, “and wake Williams to take over. Get the recon copter ready. Red flight.” Then I turned to Davidson.
“It’ll be routine,” I told him, “unless something unexpected happens. Not much data yet. The sky-scanners showed a cave-in and some activity around it. May be nothing but we can’t take chances. It’s Ring Seventy-Twelve.”
“That’s where the air liner crashed last week, isn’t it?” Dave asked, looking up with renewed interest. “Any dope yet on what became of the passengers?”
“Nothing. The radiations would have got them if nothing else did. That’s in the closed file now, poor devils. Still, we might spot the ship.” I stood up. “The whole thing may be a wild-goose chase but we never take any chances with the Rings.”
“It ought to be interesting, anyhow,” Dave said and followed me out.
We could see it from a long way off. Four hundred and three of them dot the world now, but in the days before the War no one could have imagined such a thing as a Ring and it would be hard to make anyone visualize one through bare description. You have to feel the desolation as you fly over that center of bare, splashed rock in which nothing may ever grow again until the planet itself disintegrates, and see around that dead core the violently boiling life of the Ring.
It was a perimeter of life brushed by the powers of death. The sun-forces unleashed by the bombs gave life, a new, strange, mutable life that changed and changed and changed and would go on changing until a balance was finally struck again on this world which for three hours reeled in space under the blows of an almost cosmic disaster. We were still shuddering beneath the aftermath of those blows. The balance was not yet.
When the hour of balance comes, mankind may no longer be the dominant race. That’s why we keep such a close watch on all the Rings. From time to time we work them over with flame-throwers. Only atomic power, of course, would quiet that seething life permanently—which is no solution. We’ve got Rings enough right now without resorting to more atom bombs.
It’s a hydra-headed problem without an answer. All we can do is watch, wait, be ready . . .
THE world was still dark. But the Ring itself was light, with a strange, pale luminous radiance that might mean anything. It was new. That was all we knew about it yet.
“Let’s have the scanner,” I said to Davidson. He handed me the mask and I pushed the head-clips past my ears and settled the monocular view-plate before my eyes, expecting to see the darkness melt into the reversed vision of the night-scanner.
It melted, all right—the part that didn’t matter. I could see the negative images of trees and ruined houses standing ghostly pale against the dark. But within the Ring—nothing.
It wasn’t good. It could be very bad indeed. In silence I pulled off the mask and handed it to Davidson, watched him look down. When he turned I could see his troubled frown through the monocular lens even before he lowered the scanner. He looked a little pale in the light of the instrument board.
“Well?” he asked.
“Looks as if they’d hit on something good this time,” I said.
“They?”
“Who knows? Could be anything this time. You know how the life-forms shoot up into mutations without the least warning. Something’s done it again down there. Maybe something that’s been quietly working away underground for a long time, just waiting for the
right moment. Whatever it is they can stop the scanners and that isn’t an easy thing to do.”
“The first boys over reported a cave-in,” Davidson said, peering futilely down. “Could you see anything?”
“Just the luminous fog. Nothing inside. Total blackout. Well, maybe daylight will show us what’s up. I hope so.”
It didn’t. A low sea of yellow-gray fog billowed slowly in a vast circle over the entire Ring as far as we could see. Dead central core and outer circle of unnatural life had vanished together into that mist which no instrument we had could penetrate—and we’ve developed a lot of stuff for seeing through fog and darkness. This was solid. We couldn’t crack it.
“We’ll land,” I told Davidson finally. “Something’s going on behind that shield, something that doesn’t want to be spied on. And somebody’s got to investigate—fast! It might as well be us.”
We wore the latest development in the way of lead-suits, flexible and easy on the body. We snapped our face-plates shut as the ground came up to meet us and the little Geiger-counter each of us carried began to tick erratically, like a sort of Morse code mechanically spelling out the death in the air we sank through.
I was measuring the ground below for a landing when Davidson grabbed my shoulder suddenly, pointing down.
“Look!” His voice came tinnily through the ear-diaphragms in my helmet. I looked.
Now this is where the story gets difficult to tell.
I know what I saw. That much was clear to me from start to finish. I saw an eye looking up through the pale mist at us. But whether it was an enormous lens far below or a normal-sized eye close to us I couldn’t have said just then. My distance-sense had stopped functioning.
I stared into the Eye . . .
The next thing I remember is sitting in the familiar lab office across the desk from Williams, hearing myself speaking.
“. . . no signs of activity anywhere in the Ring. Perfectly normal—”
“There’s that lake, of course,” Davidson interrupted in a conscientious voice. I looked at him. He was turning his cap over and over in his hands as he sat there by the wall. His pink-cheeked face was haggard and there was something strained and dazed in the glance he turned to meet mine. I knew I looked dazed too.
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