He said slowly, "As I see it, this is supposed to work something like a pump handle. The lever principle, the old idea that if you had a lever long enough, and a suitable fulcrum, you could move the Earth out of its orbit."

  "Exactly!" It was the heavy-faced Dresley who spoke. "Only this works in time. You go five thousand years, the building goes a few wee ..."

  His voice faded, his eagerness drained from him as he caught the expression on McAllister's face.

  "Look!" said McAllister, "there's nothing more pitiful than a bunch of honest men engaged in their first act of dishonesty. You're strong men, the intellectual type, who've spent your lives enforcing an idealistic conception. You've always told yourself that if the occasion should ever require it, you would not hesitate to make drastic sacrifices. But you're not fooling anybody. What's the catch?"

 

  It was quite startling to have the suit thrust at him. He hadn't observed the men emerge from the back room; and it came as a distinct shock to realize that they had actually gone for the insulated clothes before they could have known that he would use them.

  McAllister stared grimly at Peter Cadron, who held the dull, grayish, limp thing toward him. A very flame of abrupt rage held him choked; before he could speak, Cadron said in a tight voice, "Get into this, and get going! It's a matter of minutes, man! When those guns out there start spraying energy, you won't be alive to argue about our honesty."

  Still he hesitated; the room seemed insufferably hot; and he was sick—sick with the deadly uncertainty. Perspiration streaked stingingly down his cheeks. His frantic gaze fell on the girl, standing silent and subdued in the background, near the front door.

  He strode toward her; and either his glare or presence was incredibly frightening, for she cringed and turned white as a sheet.

  "Look!" he said. "I'm in this as deep as hell. What's the risk in this thing? I've got to feel that I have some chance. Tell me, what's the catch?"

  The girl was gray now, almost as gray and dead-looking as the suit Peter Cadron was holding. "It's the friction," she mumbled finally, "you may not get all the way back to 1941. You see, you'll be a sort of `weight' and—"

  McAllister whirled away from her. He climbed into the soft, almost flimsy suit, crowding the overall-like shape over his neatly pressed clothes. "It comes tight over the head, doesn't it?" he asked.

  "Yes!" It was Lystra's father who answered. "As soon as you pull that zipper shut, the suit will become completely invisible. To outsiders it will seem just as if you have your ordinary clothes on. The suit is fully equipped. You could live on the moon inside it."

  "What I don't get," complained McAllister, "is why I have to wear it. I got here all right without it."

  He frowned. His words had been automatic, but abruptly a thought came: "Just a minute. What becomes of the energy with which I'm charged when I'm bottled up in this insulation?"

  He saw by the stiffening expressions of those around him that he had touched on a vast subject.

  "So that's it!" he snapped. "The insulation is to prevent me losing any of that energy. That's how it can make a `weight.' I have no doubt there's a connection from this suit to that other machine. Well, it's not too late. It's—"

  With a desperate twist, he tried to jerk aside, to evade the clutching hands of the four men who leaped at him. Hopeless movement! They had him instantly; and their grips on him were strong beyond his power to break.

  The fingers of Peter Cadron jerked the zipper tight, and Peter Cadron said, "Sorry, but when we went into that back room, we also dressed in insulated clothing. That's why you couldn't hurt us. Sorry, again!

  "And remember this: There's no certainty that you are being sacrificed. The fact that there is no crater in our Earth proves that you did not explode in the past, and that you solved the problem in some other way. Now, somebody open the door, quick!"

  Irresistibly he was carried forward. And then--

   "Wait!"

  It was the girl. The colorless gray in her face was a livid thing. Her eyes glittered like dark jewels; and in her fingers was the tiny, mirror-bright gun she had pointed in the beginning at McAllister.

  The little group hustling McAllister stopped as if they had been struck. He was scarcely aware; for him there was only the girl, and the way the muscles of her lips were working, and the way her voice suddenly flamed: "This is utter outrage. Are we such cowards—is it possible that the spirit of liberty can survive only through a shoddy act of murder and gross defiance of the rights of the individual? I say no! Mr. McAllister must have the protection of the hypnotism treatment, even if we die during the wasted minutes."

  "Lystra!" It was her father; and McAllister realized in the swift movement of the older man what a brilliant mind was there, and how quickly the older man grasped every aspect of the situation.

  He stepped forward and took the gun from his daughter's fingers—the only man in the room, McAllister thought flashingly, who could dare approach her in that moment with the certainty she would not fire. For hysteria was in every line of her face, and the racking tears that followed showed how dangerous her stand might have been against the others.

  Strangely, not for a moment had hope come. The entire action seemed divorced from his life and his thought; there was only the observation of it. He stood there for a seeming eternity and, when emotion finally came, it was surprise that he was not being hustled to his doom. With the surprise came awareness that Peter Cadron had let go his arm and stepped clear of him.

  The man's eyes were calm, his head held proudly erect; he said, "Your daughter is right, sir. At this point we rise above our petty fears, and we say to this unhappy man: 'Have courage! You will not be forgotten. We can guarantee nothing, cannot even state exactly what will happen to you. But we say: if it lies in our power to help you, that help you shall have.' And now—we must protect you from the devastating psychological pressures that would otherwise destroy you, simply but effectively."

  Too late, McAllister noticed that the others had turned faces away from that extraordinary wall—the wall that had already displayed so vast a versatility. He did not even see who pressed the activating button for what followed.

  There was a flash of dazzling light. For an instant he felt as if his mind had been laid bare; and against that nakedness the voice of Peter Cadron pressed like some ineradicable en-graving stamp: "To retain your self-control and your sanity—this is your hope: this you will do in spite of everything! And, for your sake, speak of your experience only to scientists or to those in authority who you feel will understand and help. Good luck!"

  So strong remained the effect of that brief flaring light that he felt only vaguely the touch of their hands on him, propelling him. He must have fallen, but there was no pain.

  He grew aware that he was lying on a sidewalk. The deep, familiar voice of Police Inspector Clayton boomed over him: "Clear the way; no crowding now!"

  McAllister climbed to his feet. A pall of curious faces gawked at him; and there was no park, no gorgeous city. Instead, a bleak row of one-story shops made a dull pattern on either side of the street.

  He'd have to get away from here. These people didn't understand. Somewhere on Earth must be a scientist who could help him. After all, the record was that he hadn't exploded. Therefore, somewhere, somehow--

  He mumbled answers at the questions that beat at him; and then he was clear of the disappointed crowd. There followed purposeless minutes of breakneck walking; the streets ahead grew narrower, dirtier--

  He stopped, shaken. What was happening?

  It was night, in a brilliant, glowing city. He was standing on an avenue that stretched jewel-like into remote distance.

  A street that lived, flaming with a soft light that gleamed up from its surface—a road of light, like a river flowing under a sun that shone nowhere else, straight and smooth and--

  He walked along for uncomprehending minutes, watching the cars that streamed past and wild hope came!

  Was this again the age of the Isher and the gunmakers? It could be; it looked right, and it meant they had brought him back. After all, they were not evil, and they would save him if they could. For all he knew, weeks had passed in their time and--

  Abruptly, he was in the center of a blinding snowstorm. He staggered from the first, mighty, unexpected blow of that untamed wind, then, bracing himself, fought for mental and physical calm.

  The shining, wondrous night city was gone; gone too the glowing road—both vanished, transformed into this deadly, wilderness world.

  He peered through the driving snow. It was daylight; and he could make out the dim shadows of trees that reared up through the white mist of blizzard less than fifty feet away.

  Instinctively he pressed toward their shelter, and stood finally out of that blowing, pressing wind.

  He thought: One minute in the distant future; the next where?

  There was certainly no city. Only trees, an uninhabited forest and winter

  The blizzard was gone. And the trees. He stood on a sandy beach; before him stretched a blue, sunlit sea that rippled over broken white buildings. All around, scattered far into that shallow, lovely sea, far up into the weed-grown hills, were the remnants of a once tremendous city. Over all clung an aura of incredible age; and the silence of the long-dead was broken only by the gentle, timeless lapping of the waves--

  Again came that instantaneous change. More prepared this time, he nevertheless sank twice under the surface of the vast, swift river that carried him on and on. It was hard swimming, but the insulated suit was buoyant with the air it manufactured each passing second; and, after a moment, he began to struggle purposefully toward the tree-lined shore a hundred feet to his right.

  A thought came, and he stopped swimming. "What's the use!"

  The truth was as simple as it was terrible. He was being shunted from the past to the future; he was the "weight" on the long end of an energy seesaw; and in some way he was slipping farther ahead and farther back each time. Only that could explain the catastrophic changes be had already witnessed. In a minute would come another change and--

  It came! He was lying face downward on green grass, but there was no curiosity in him. He did not look up, but lay there hour after hour as the seesaw jerked on: past—future—past—future--

  Beyond doubt, the gunmakers had won their respite; for at the far end of this dizzy teeter-totter was the machine that had been used by the Isher soldiers as an activating force; it too teetered up, then down, in a mad seesaw.

  There remained the gunmakers' promise to help him, vain now; for they could not know what had happened. They could not find him even in this maze of time.

  There remained the mechanical law that forces must balance.

  Somewhere, sometime, a balance would be struck, probably in the future—because there was still the fact that he hadn't exploded in the past. Yes, somewhere would come the balance when he would again face that problem. But now--

  On, on, on the seesaw flashed; the world on the one hand grew bright with youth, and on the other dark with fantastic age.

  Infinity yawned blackly ahead.

  Quite suddenly it came to him that he knew where the seesaw would stop. It would end in the very remote past, with the release of the stupendous temporal energy he had been accumulating with each of those monstrous swings.

  He would not witness, but he would cause, the formation of the planets.

 

ARMAGEDDON

  Unknown August by Fredric Brown (1906-1972)

 

  Fredric Brown was one of the most talented professionals in the history of science fiction. A well known mystery writer (he was a winner of the Edgar Award of the MWA), in the sf field he is best remembered for his short-shorts, but he produced excellent work at all lengths. His novel What Mad Universe (book form, 1949) remains one of the outstanding satires on the science fiction field—and much of it still hurts!

  There have been too many end-of-the-world stories. Here is a beautiful example of the rare almost-the-end-of-the-world tale, told as only Brown could tell it—with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

 

  (I suppose Fred Brown is the acknowledged master of the short-short. When Marty and I, along with Joe Olander, put out our recent One Hundred S. F. Short Short Stories, there were none included by Fred Brown for the simple reason that we could not get permissions for any. —That was the reason, wasn't it, Marty?—In any case, more than one reviewer shook his head over the omission, feeling it was a measure of our lack of good taste, and I couldn't help but feel that that was the way it indeed looked.—I. A.)

 

  It happened—of all places—in Cincinnati. Not that there is anything wrong with Cincinnati, save that it is not the center of the Universe, nor even of the State of Ohio. It's a nice old town and, in its way, second to none. But even its Chamber of Commerce would admit that it lacks cosmic significance. It must have been mere coincidence that Gerber the Great—what a name!—was playing Cincinnati when things slipped elsewhere.

  Of course, if the episode had become known, Cincinnati would be the most famous city of the world, and little Herbie would be hailed as a modern St. George and get more acclaim than a quiz kid. But no member of that audience in the Bijou Theater remembers a thing about it. Not even little Herbie Westerman, although he had the water pistol to show for it.

  He wasn't thinking about the water pistol in his pocket as he sat looking up at the prestidigitator on the other side of the footlights. It was a new water pistol, bought en route to the theater when he'd inveigled his parents into a side trip into the five-and-dime on Vine Street, but at the moment, Herbie was much more interested in what went on upon the stage.

  His expression registered qualified approval. The front-and-back palm was no mystery to Herbie. He could do it himself. True, he had to use pony-sized cards that came with his magic set and were just right for his nine-year-old hands. And true, anyone watching could see the card flutter from the front-palm position to the back as he turned his hand. But that was a detail.

  He knew, though, that front-and-back palming seven cards at a time required great finger strength as well as dexterity, and that was what Gerber the Great was doing. There wasn't a telltale click in the shift, either, and Herbie nodded approbation. Then he remembered what was coming next.

  He nudged his mother and said, "Ma, ask Pop if he's gotta extra handkerchief."

  Out of the corner of his eyes, Herbie saw his mother turn her head and in less time than it would take to say, "Presto," Herbie was out of his seat and skinning down the aisle. It had been, he felt, a beautiful piece of misdirection and his timing had been perfect.

  It was at this stage of the performance—which Herbie had seen before, alone—that Gerber the Great asked if some little boy from the audience would step to the stage. He was asking it now.

  Herbie Westerman had jumped the gun. He was well in motion before the magician had asked the question. At the previous performance, he'd been a bad tenth in reaching the steps from aisle to stage. This time he'd been ready, and he, hadn't taken any chances with parental restraint. Perhaps his mother would have let him go and perhaps not; it had seemed wiser to see that she was looking the other way. You couldn't trust parents on things like that. They had funny ideas sometimes.

  "—will please step up on the stage?" And Herbie's foot touched the first of the steps upward right smack on the interrogation point of that sentence. He heard the disappointed scuffle of other feet behind him, and grinned smugly as he went on up across the footlights.

  It was the three-pigeon trick, Herbie knew from the previous performance, that required an assistant from the audience. It was almost the only trick he hadn't been able to figure out. There must, he knew, have been a concealed compartment somewhere in that box, but where it could be he couldn't even guess. But this time he'd be holding the box himself. If from that range he couldn't spot the gimmick, he'd better go back to stamp collecting.

  He grinned confidently up at the magician. Not that he, Herbie, would give him away. He was a magician, too, and he understood that there was a freemasonry among magicians and that one never gave away the tricks of another.

  He felt a little chilled, though, and the grin faded as he caught the magician's eyes. Gerber the Great, at close range, seemed much older than he had seemed from the other side of the footlights. And somehow different. Much taller, for one thing.

  Anyway, here came the box for the pigeon trick. Gerber's regular assistant was bringing it in on a tray. Herbie looked away from the magician's eyes and he felt better. He remembered, even, his reason for being on the stage. The servant limped. Herbie ducked his head to catch a glimpse of the under side of the tray, just in case. Nothing there.

  Gerber took the box. The servant limped away and Herbie's eyes followed him suspiciously. Was the limp genuine or was it a piece of misdirection?

  The box folded out flat as the proverbial pancake. All four sides hinged to the bottom, the top hinged to one of the sides. There were little brass catches.

  Herbie took a quick step back so he could see behind it while the front was displayed to the audience. Yes, he saw it now. A triangular compartment built against one side of the lid, mirror-covered, angles calculated to achieve invisibility. Old stuff. Herbie felt a little disappointed.

  The prestidigitator folded the box, mirror-concealed compartment inside. He turned slightly. "Now, my fine young man—"

  What happened in Tibet wasn't the only factor; it was merely the final link of a chain.

  The Tibetan weather had been unusual that week, highly unusual. It had been warm. More snow succumbed to the gentle warmth than had melted in more years than man could count. The streams ran high, they ran wide and fast.

  Along the streams some prayer wheels whirled faster than they had ever whirled. Others, submerged, stopped altogether. The priests, knee-deep in the cold water, worked frantically, moving the wheels nearer to shore where again the rushing torrent would turn them.

  There was one small wheel, a very old one that had revolved without cease for longer than any man knew. So long had it been there that no living lama recalled what had been inscribed upon its prayer plate, nor what had been the purpose of that prayer.

  The rushing water had neared its axle when the lama Klarath reached for it to move it to safety. Just too late. His foot slid in the slippery mud and the back of his hand touched the wheel as he fell. Knocked loose from its moorings, it swirled down with the flood, rolling along the bottom of the stream, into deeper and deeper waters.

  While it rolled, all was well.

  The lama rose, shivering from his momentary immersion, and went after other of the spinning wheels. What, he thought, could one small wheel matter? He didn't know that—now that other links had broken—only that tiny thing stood between Earth and Armageddon.

  The prayer wheel of Wangur Ul rolled on, and on, until—a mile farther down—it struck a ledge, and stopped. That was the moment.

  "And now, my fine young man—"

 

  Herbie Westerman—we're back in Cincinnati now—looked up, wondering why the prestidigitator had stopped in mid-sentence. He saw the face of Gerber the Great contorted as though by a great shock. Without moving, without changing, his face began to change. Without appearing different, it became different.

  Quietly, then, the magician began to chuckle. In the overtones of that soft laughter was all of evil. No one who heard it could have doubted who he was. No one did doubt. The audience, every member of it, knew in that awful moment who stood before them, knew it—even the most skeptical among them—beyond shadow of doubt.

  No one moved, no one spoke, none drew a shuddering breath. There are things beyond fear. Only uncertainty causes fear, and the Bijou Theater was filled, then, with a dreadful certainty.

  The laughter grew. Crescendo, it reverberated into the far dusty corners of the gallery. Nothing—not a fly on the ceiling—moved.

  Satan spoke.

  "I thank you for your kind attention to a poor magician." He bowed, ironically low. "The performance is ended." He smiled. "All performances are ended."

  Somehow the theater seemed to darken, although the electric lights still burned. In dead silence, there seemed to be the sound of wings, leathery wings, as though invisible Things were gathering.

  On the stage was a dim red radiance. From the head and from each shoulder of the tall figure of the magician there sprang a tiny flame. A naked flame.

  There were other flames. They flickered along the proscenium of the stage, along the footlights. One sprang from the lid of the folded box little Herbie Westerman still held in his hands.

  Herbie dropped the box.

  Did I mention that Herbie Westerman was a Safety Cadet? It was purely a reflex action. A boy of nine doesn't know much about things like Armageddon, but Herbie Westerman should have known that water would never have put out that fire.

  But, as I said, it was purely a reflex action. He yanked out his new water pistol and squirted it at the box of the pigeon trick. And the fire did vanish, even as a spray from the stream of water ricocheted and dampened the trouser leg of Gerber the Great, who had been facing the other way.

  There was a sudden, brief hissing sound. The lights were growing bright again, and all the other flames were dying, and the sound of wings faded, blended into another sound—rustling of the audience.

  The eyes of the prestidigitator were closed. His voice sounded strangely strained as he said: "This much power I retain. None of you will remember this."

  Then, slowly, he turned and picked up the fallen box. He held it out to Herbie Westerman. "You must be more careful, boy," he said. "Now hold it so."

  He tapped the top lightly with his wand. The door fell open. Three white pigeons flew out of the box. The rustle of their wings was not leathery.

  Herbie Westerman's father came down the stairs and, with a purposeful air, took his razor strop off the hook on the kitchen wall.

  Mrs. Westerman looked up from stirring the soup on the stove. "Why, Henry," she asked, "are you really going to punish him with that—just for squirting a little water out of the window of the car on the way borne?"

  Her husband shook his head grimly. "Not for that, Marge. But don't you remember we bought him that water gun on the way downtown, and that he wasn't near a water faucet after that? Where do you think he filled it?"

  He didn't wait for an answer. "When we stopped in at the cathedral to talk to Father Ryan about his confirmation, that's when the little brat filled it. Out of the baptismal font! Holy water he uses in his water pistol!"

  He clumped heavily up the stairs, strop in hand.

  Rhythmic thwacks and wails of pain floated down the staircase. Herbie—who had saved the world—was having his reward.

 

ADAM AND NO EVE

  Astounding Science Fiction September by Alfred Bester (1913-  )

 

  Alfred Bester really came into his own after World War II, with stories like "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed," "Time Is the Traitor," and the spectacular novels, The Demolished Man (in Galaxy, 1952) and The Stars My Destination (1956), both considered among the finest in modern science fiction. Bester had (he is still writing) a varied career, dropping in and out of the sf field while working for the comics, television, and Holiday magazine. An astute observer of science fiction, he was one of the field's best critics as book reviewer for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1960 to 1962. Alfred Bester was a "New Wave" writer long before the term became fashionable.

  "Adam and No Eve" remains one of his best stories, and one of the finest early tales of "inner space."

 

  (I didn't meet Alfie Bester till long after this story was written—and goodness, how it impressed me. I can still quote the formula. When I did meet him, I instantly found he could be classified into the group of "Writers who have personalities like the stories they write." Others are L. Sprague de Camp and Lester del Rey. Of course, there is the group of "Writers who don't have personalities like the stories they write," such as Fredric Brown and Theodore Sturgeon. Naturally, I realize that this is subjective and that other people will group different writers into each of the two groups. I don't know in which group I belong, by the way.—I.A.)

 

  Crane knew this must be the seacoast. Instinct told him; but more than instinct. the few shreds of knowledge that clung to his torn, feverish brain told him; the stars that had shown at night through the rare breaks in the clouds, and his compass that still pointed a trembling finger north. That was strangest of all, Crane thought. Though a welter of chaos, the Earth still retained its polarity.

  It was no longer a coast; there was no longer any sea. Only the faint line of what had been a cliff, stretching north and south for endless miles. A line of gray ash. The same gray ash and cinders that lay behind him; the same gray ash that stretched before him. Fine silt, knee-deep, that swirled up at every motion and choked him. Cinders that scudded in dense mighty clouds when the mad winds blew. Cinders that were churned to viscous mud when the frequent rains fell.

  The sky was jet overhead. The black clouds rode high and were pierced with shafts of sunlight that marched swiftly over the Earth. Where the light struck a cinder storm, it was filled with gusts of dancing, gleaming particles. Where it played through rain it brought the arches of rainbows into being. Rain fell; cinder storms blew; light thrust down—together, alternately and continually in a jigsaw of black and white violence. So it had been for months. So it was over every mile of the broad Earth.

  Crane passed the edge of the ashen cliffs and began crawling down the even slope that had once been the ocean bed. He had been traveling so long that all sense of pain had left him. He braced elbows and dragged his body forward. Then he brought his right knee under him and reached forward with elbows again. Elbows, knee, elbows, knee— He had forgotten what it was to walk.

  Life, he thought dazedly, is wonderful. It adapts itself to anything. If it must crawl, it crawls. Callus forms on the elbows and knees. The neck and shoulders toughen. The nostrils learn to snort away the ashes before they inhale. The bad leg swells and festers. It numbs, and presently it will rot and fall off.

  "I beg pardon," Crane said, "I didn't quite get that—"

  He peered up at the tall figure before him and tried to understand the words. It was Hallmyer. He wore his stained lab jacket and his gray hair was awry. Hallmyer stood delicately on top of the ashes and Crane wondered why he could see the scudding cinder clouds through his body.

  "How do you like your world, Stephen?" Hallmyer asked. Crane shook his head miserably.

  "Not very pretty, eh?" said Hallmyer. "Look around you. Dust, that's all; dust and ashes. Crawl, Stephen, crawl. You'll find nothing but dust and ashes—"

  Hallmyer produced a goblet of water from nowhere. It was clear and cold. Crane could see the fine mist of dew on its surface and his mouth was suddenly coated with dry grit.

  "Hallmyer!" he cried. He tried to get to his feet and reach for the water, but the jolt of pain in his right leg warned him. He crouched back.

  Hallmyer sipped and then spat in his face. The water felt warm.

  "Keep crawling," said Hallmyer bitterly. "Crawl round and round the face of the Earth. You'll find nothing but dust and ashes—" He emptied the goblet on the ground before Crane. "Keep crawling. How many miles? Figure it out for yourself. Pi-R-Square. The radius is eight thousand or so—"

  He was gone, jacket and goblet. Crane realized that rain was falling again. He pressed his face into the warm sodden cinder mud, opened his mouth and tried to suck the moisture. He groaned and presently began crawling.

  There was an instinct that drove him on. He had to get somewhere. It was associated, he knew, with the sea—with the edge of the sea. At the shore of the sea something waited for him. Something that would help him understand all this. He had to get to the sea—that is, if there was a sea any more.

 

  The thundering rain beat his back like heavy planks. Crane paused and yanked the knapsack around to his side where he probed in it with one hand. It contained exactly three things. A pistol, a bar of chocolate and a can of peaches. All that was left of two months' supplies. The chocolate was pulpy and spoiled. Crane knew he had best eat it before all value rotted away. But in another day he would lack the strength to open the can. He pulled it out and attacked it with the opener. By the time he had pierced and pried away a flap of tin, the rain had passed.

  As he munched the fruit and sipped the juice, he watched the wall of rain marching before him down the slope of the ocean bed. Torrents of water were gushing through the mud. Small channels had already been cut—channels that would be new rivers some day. A day he would never see. A day that no living thing would ever see. As he flipped the empty can aside, Crane thought: The last living thing on Earth eats its last meal. Metabolism plays its last act.

  Wind would follow the rain. In the endless weeks that he had been crawling, he had learned that. Wind would come in a few minutes and flog him with its clouds of cinders and ashes. He crawled forward, bleary eyes searching the flat gray miles for cover.

  Evelyn tapped his shoulder.

  Crane knew it was she before he turned his head. She stood alongside, fresh and gay in her bright dress, but her lovely face was puckered with alarm.

  "Stephen," she cried, "you've got to hurry!"

  He could only admire the way her smooth honey hair waved to her shoulders.

  "Oh, darling!" she said, "you've been hurt!" Her quick gentle hands touched his legs and back. Crane nodded.

  "Got it landing," he said. "I wasn't used to a parachute. I always thought you came down gently—like plumping onto a bed. But the gray earth came up at me like a fist—And Umber was fighting around in my arms. I couldn't let him drop, could I?"

  "Of course not, dear—" Evelyn said.

  "So I just held on to him and tried to get my legs under me," Crane said. "And then something smashed my legs and side—"

  He paused, wondering how much she knew of what really had happened. He didn't want to frighten her.

  "Evelyn, darling—" he said, trying to reach up his arms. "No dear," she said. She looked back in fright. "You've got to hurry. You've got to watch out behind!"

  "The cinder storms?" He grimaced. "I've been through them before."

  "Not the storms!" Evelyn cried. "Something else. Oh, Stephen—"

  Then she was gone, but Crane knew she had spoken the truth. There was something behind—something that had been following him all those weeks. Far in the back of his mind he had sensed the menace. It was closing in on him like a shroud. He shook his head. Somehow that was impossible. He was the last living thing on Earth. How could there be a menace?

  The wind roared behind him, and an instant later came the heavy clouds of cinders and ashes. They lashed over him, biting his skin. With dimming eyes, he saw the way they coated the mud and covered it with a fine dry carpet. Crane drew his knees under him and covered his head with his arms. With the knapsack as a pillow, he prepared to wait out the storm. It would pass as quickly as the rain.

  The storm whipped up a great bewilderment in his sick head. Like a child he pushed at the pieces of his memory, trying to fit them together. Why was Hallmyer so bitter toward him? It couldn't have been that argument, could it?

  What argument?

  Why, that one before all this happened.

  Oh, that!

  Abruptly, the pieces fit themselves together.

 

  Crane stood alongside the sleek lines of his ship and admired it tremendously. The roof of the shed had been removed and the nose of the ship hoisted so that it rested on a cradle pointed toward the sky. A workman was carefully burnishing the inner surfaces of the rocket jets.

  The muffled sounds of an argument came from within the ship and then a heavy clanking. Crane ran up the short iron ladder to the port and thrust his head inside. A few feet beneath him, two men were buckling the long tanks of ferrous solution into place.

  "Easy there," Crane called. "Want to knock the ship apart?"

  One looked up and grinned. Crane knew what he was thinking. That the ship would tear itself apart. Everyone said that. Everyone except Evelyn. She had faith in him. Hallmyer never said it either. But Hallmyer thought he was crazy in another way. As he descended the ladder, Crane saw Hallmyer come into the shed, lab jacket flying.

  "Speak of the devil!" Crane muttered.

  Hallmyer began shouting as soon as he saw Crane. "Now listen—"

  "Not all over again," Crane said.

  Hallmyer dug a sheaf of papers out of his pocket and waved it under Crane's nose.

  "I've been up half the night," he said, "working it through again. I tell you I'm right. I'm absolutely right—"

  Crane looked at the tight-written equations and then at Hallmyer's bloodshot eyes. The man was half mad with fear.

  "For the last time," Hallmyer went on. "You're using your new catalyst on iron solution. All right. I grant that it's a miraculous discovery. I give you credit for that."

  Miraculous was hardly the word for it. Crane knew that without conceit, for he realized he'd only stumbled on it. You had to stumble on a catalyst that would induce atomic disintegration of iron and give 10 X 1010 foot-pounds of energy for every gram of fuel. No man was smart enough to think all that up by himself.

  "You don't think I'll make it?" Crane asked.

  "To the moon? Around the moon? Maybe. You've got a fifty-fifty chance." Hallmyer ran fingers through his lank hair. "But for God's sake, Stephen, I'm not worried about you. If you want to kill yourself, that's your own affair. It's the Earth I'm worried about—"

  "Nonsense. Go home and sleep it off."

  "Look"—Hallmyer pointed to the sheets of paper with a shaky hand—"no matter how you work the feed and mixing system you can't get one hundred percent efficiency in the mixing and discharge."

  "That's what makes it a fifty-fifty chance," Crane said. "So what's bothering you?"

  "The catalyst that will escape through the rocket tubes. Do you realize what it'll do if a drop hits the Earth? It'll start a chain of iron disintegrations that'll envelope the globe. It'll reach out to every iron atom—and there's iron everywhere. There won't be any Earth left for you to return to—"

  "Listen," Crane said wearily, "we've been through all this before."

  He took Hallmyer to the base of-the rocket cradle. Beneath the iron framework was a two-hundred-foot pit, fifty feet wide and lined with firebrick.

  "That's for the initial discharge flames. If any of the catalyst goes through, it'll be trapped in this pit and taken care of by the secondary reactions. Satisfied now?"

  "But while you're in flight," Hallmyer persisted, "you'll be endangering the Earth until you're beyond Roche's limit. Every drop of non-activated catalyst will eventually sink back to the ground and—"

  "For the very last time," Crane said grimly, "the flame of the rocket discharge takes care of that. It will envelop any escaped particles and destroy them. Now get out. I've got work to do."

  As he pushed him to the door, Hallmyer screamed and waved his arms. "I won't let you do it!" he repeated over and over. "I'll find some way to stop you. I won't let you do it—"

 

  Work? No, it was sheer intoxication to labor over the ship. It had the fine beauty of a well-made thing. The beauty of polished armor, of a balanced swept-hilt rapier, of a pair of matched guns. There was no thought of danger and death in Crane's mind as he wiped his hands with waste after the last touches were finished.

  She lay in the cradle ready to pierce the skies. Fifty feet of slender steel, the rivet heads gleaming like jewels. Thirty feet were given over to fuel the catalyst. Most of the forward compartment contained the spring hammock Crane had devised to take up the initial acceleration shock. The ship's nose was a solid mass of natural quartz that stared upward like a cyclopian eye.

  Crane thought: She'll die after this trip. She'll return to the Earth and smash in a blaze of fire and thunder, for there's no way yet of devising a safe landing for a rocket ship. But it's worth it. She'll have had her one great flight, and that's all any of us should want. One great beautiful flight into the unknown--

  As he locked the workshop door, Crane heard Hallmyer shouting from the cottage across the fields. Through the evening gloom he could see him waving frantically. He trotted through the crisp stubble, breathing the sharp air deeply, grateful to be alive.

  "It's Evelyn on the phone," Hallmyer said.

  Crane stared at him. Hallmyer was acting peculiarly. He refused to meet his eyes.

  "What's the idea?" Crane asked. "I thought we agreed that she wasn't to call—wasn't to get in touch with me until I was ready to start? You been putting ideas into her head? Is this the way you're going to stop me?"

  Hallmyer said, "No—" and studiously examined the indigo horizon.

  Crane went into his study and picked up the phone.

  "Now, listen, darling," he said without preamble, "there's no sense getting alarmed now. I explained everything very carefully. Just before the ship crashes, I take to a parachute and float down as happy and gentle as Wynken, Blynken and Mod. I love you very much and I'll see you Wednesday when I start. So long—"

  "Good-bye, sweetheart," Evelyn's clear voice said, "and is that what you called me for?"

  "Called you!"

  A brown hulk disengaged itself from the hearth rug and lifted itself to strong legs. Umber, Crane's Great Dane, sniffed and cocked an ear. Then he whined.

  "Did you say I called you?" Crane shouted.

  Umber's throat suddenly poured forth a bellow. He reached Crane in a single bound, looked up into his face and whined and roared all at once.

  "Shut up, you monster!" Crane said. He pushed Umber away with his foot.

  "Give Umber a kick for me," Evelyn laughed. "Yes, dear. Someone called and said you wanted to speak to me." "They did, eh? Look, honey, I'll call you back—"

  Crane hung up. He arose doubtfully and watched Umber's uneasy actions. Through the windows, the late evening glow sent flickering shadows of orange light. Umber gazed at the light, sniffed and bellowed again: Suddenly struck, Crane leaped to the window.

  Across the fields a solid mass of flame thrust high into the air, and within it was the fast-crumbling walls of the workshop. Silhouetted against the blaze, the figure of half a dozen men darted and ran.

  "Good heavens!" Crane cried.

  He shot out of the cottage and with Umber hard at his heels, sprinted toward the shed. As he ran he could see the graceful nose of the spaceship within the core of heat, still looking cool and untouched. If only he could reach it before the flames softened its metal and started the rivets.

  The workmen trotted up to him, grimy and panting. Crane gaped at them in a mixture of fury and bewilderment. "Hallmyer!" he shouted. "Hallmyer!"

  Hallmyer pushed through the crowd. His eyes were wild and gleamed with triumph.

  "Too bad," he said. "I'm sorry, Stephen—"

  "You swine!" Crane shouted. "You frightened old man!" He grasped Hallmyer by the lapels and shook him just once. Then he dropped him and started into the shed.

  Hallmyer cried something and an instant later a body hurtled against Crane's calves and spilled him to the ground. He lurched to his feet, fists swinging. Umber was alongside, growling over the roar of the flames. Crane smashed a man in the face, and saw him stagger back against a second. He lifted a knee in a vicious drive that sent the last man crumpling to the ground. Then he ducked his head and plunged into the shop.

  The scorch felt cool at first, but when he reached the ladder and began mounting to the port, he screamed with the agony of his bums. Umber was howling at the foot of the ladder, and Crane realized that the dog could never escape from the rocket blasts. He reached down and hauled Umber into the ship.

  Crane was reeling as he closed and locked the port. He retained consciousness barely long enough to settle himself in the spring hammock. Then instinct alone prompted his hands to reach out toward the control board. Instinct and the frenzied refusal to let his beautiful ship waste itself in the flames. He would fail— Yes. But he would fail, trying.

  His fingers tripped the switches. The ship shuddered and roared. And blackness descended over him.

 

  How long was he unconscious? There was no telling. Crane awoke with cold pressing against his face and body, and the sound of frightened yelps in his ears. Crane looked up and saw Umber tangled in the springs and straps of the ham-mock. His first impulse was to laugh; then suddenly he realized. He had looked up! He had looked up at the hammock.

  He was lying curled in the cup of the quartz nose. The ship had risen high—perhaps almost to Roche's zone, to the limit of the Earth's gravitational attraction, but then without guiding hands at the controls to continue its flight, had turned and was dropping back toward Earth. Crane peered through the crystal and gasped.

  Below him was the ball of the Earth. It looked three times the size of the moon. And it was no longer his Earth. It was a globe of fire mottled with black clouds. At the northernmost pole there was a tiny patch of white, and even as Crane watched, it was suddenly blotted over with hazy tones of red, scarlet and crimson. Hallmyer had been right.

  He lay frozen in the cup of the nose for hours as the ship descended, watching the flames gradually fade away to leave nothing but the dense blanket of black around the Earth. He lay numb with horror, unable to understand—unable to reckon up a billion people snuffed out, a green fair planet reduced to ashes and cinders. His family, home, friends, everything that was once dear and close to him—gone. He could not think of Evelyn.

  Air, whistling outside, awoke some instinct in him. The few shreds of reason left told him to go down with his ship and forget everything in the thunder and destruction, but the instinct of life forced him to his feet. He climbed up to the store chest and prepared for the landing. Parachute, a small oxygen tank—a knapsack of supplies. Only half aware of what he was doing he dressed for the descent, buckled on the 'chute and opened the port. Umber whined pathetically, and he took the heavy dog in his arms and stepped out into space.

  But space hadn't been so clogged, the way it was now. Then it had been difficult to breathe. But that was because the air had been rare—not filled with dry clogging grit like now.

  Every breath was a lungful of ground glass—or ashes—or cinders--

  The pieces of memory sagged apart. Abruptly he was in the present again—a dense black present that hugged him with soft weight and made him fight for breath. Crane struggled in mad panic, and then relaxed.

  It had happened before. A long time past he'd been buried deep under ashes when he'd stopped to remember. Weeks ago—or days—or months. Crane clawed with his hands, inching forward through the mound of cinders that the wind had thrown over him. Presently he emerged into the light again. The wind had died away. It was time to begin his crawl to the sea once more.

  The vivid pictures of his memory scattered again before the grim vista that stretched out ahead. Crane scowled. He remembered too much, and too often. He had the vague hope that if he remembered hard enough, he might change one of the things he had done—just a very little thing—and then all this would become untrue. He thought: It might help if everyone remembered and wished at the same time—but there isn't any more everyone. I'm the only one. I'm the last memory on Earth. I'm the last life.

  He crawled. Elbows, knee, elbows, knee— And then Hallmyer was crawling alongside and making a great game of it. He chortled and plunged in the cinders like a happy sea lion.

  Crane said; "But why do we have to get to the sea?" Hallmyer blew a spume of ashes.

  "Ask her," he said, pointing to Crane's other side.

  Evelyn was there, crawling seriously, intently; mimicking Crane's smallest action.

  "It's because of our house," she said. "You remember our house, darling? High on the cliff. We were going to live there forever and ever, breathing the ozone and taking morning dips. I was there when you left. Now you're coming back to the house at the edge of the sea. Your beautiful flight is over, dear, and you're coming back to me. We'll live together, just we two, like Adam and Eve—"

  Crane said: "That's nice."

  Then Evelyn turned her head and screamed: "Oh, Stephen! Watch out!" and Crane felt the menace closing in on him again. Still crawling, he stared back at the vast gray plains of ash, and saw nothing. When he looked at Evelyn again he saw only his shadow, sharp and black. Presently, it, too, faded away as the marching shaft of sunlight passed.

  But the dread remained. Evelyn had warned him twice, and she was always right. Crane stopped and turned, and settled himself to watch. If he was really being followed, he would see whatever it was, coming along his tracks.

 

  There was a painful moment of lucidity. It cleaved through his fever and bewilderment, bringing with it the sharpness and strength of a knife.

  I'm going mad, he thought. The corruption in my leg has spread to my brain. There is no Evelyn, no Hallmyer, no menace. In all this land there is no life but mine—and even ghosts and spirits of the underworld must have perished in the inferno that girdled the planet. No—there is nothing but me and my sickness. I'm dying—and when I perish, everything will perish. Only a mass of lifeless cinders will go on.

  But there was a movement.

  Instinct again. Crane dropped his head and played dead. Through slitted eyes he watched the ashen plains, wondering if death was playing tricks with his eyes. Another facade of rain was beating down toward him, and he hoped he could make sure before all vision was obliterated.

  Yes. There.

  A quarter mile back, a gray-brown shape was flitting along the gray surface. Despite the drone of the distant rain, Crane could hear the whisper of trodden cinders and see the little clouds kicking up. Stealthily he groped for the revolver in the knapsack as his mind reached feebly for explanations and recoiled from fear.

  The thing approached, and suddenly Crane squinted and understood. He recalled Umber kicking with fear and springing away from him when the 'chute landed them on the ashen face of the Earth.

  "Why, it's Umber," he murmured. He raised himself. The dog halted. "Here boy!" Crane croaked gayly. "Here, boy!"

  He was overcome with joy. He realized that a miserable loneliness had hung over him, almost a horrible sensation of oneness in emptiness. Now his was not the only life. There was another. A friendly life that could offer love and companionship. Hope kindled again.

  "Here, boy!" he repeated. "Come on, boy—"

  After a while he stopped trying to snap his fingers. The Great Dane hung back, showing fangs and a lolling tongue. The dog was emaciated to a skeleton and its eyes gleamed red and ugly in the dusk. As Crane called once more, mechanically, the dog snarled. Puffs of ash leaped beneath its nostrils.

  He's hungry, Crane thought, that's all. He reached into the knapsack and at the gesture the dog snarled again. Crane withdrew the chocolate bar and laboriously peeled off the paper and silver foil. Weakly he tossed it toward Umber. It fell far short. After a minute of savage uncertainty, the dog advanced slowly and gabbled up the food. Ashes powdered its muzzle. It licked its chops ceaselessly and continued to advance on Crane.

  Panic jerked within him. A voice persisted: This is no friend. He has no love or companionship for you. Love and companionship have vanished from the land along with life. Now there is nothing left but hunger.

  "No—" Crane whispered. "That isn't right. We're the last of life on Earth. It isn't right that we should tear at each other and seek to devour—"

 

  But Umber was advancing with a slinking sidle, and his teeth showed sharp and white. And even as Crane stared at him, the dog snarled and lunged.

  Crane thrust up an arm under the dog's muzzle, but the weight of the charge carried him backward. He cried out in agony as his broken, swollen leg was struck by the weight of the dog. With his free right hand he struck weakly, again and again, scarcely feeling the grind of teeth gnawing his left arm. Then something metallic was pressed under him and he realized he was lying on the revolver he had let fall.

  He groped for it and prayed the cinders had not clogged its mechanism. As Umber let go his arm and tore at his throat, Crane brought the gun up and jabbed the muzzle blindly against the dog's body. He pulled and pulled the trigger until the roars died away and only empty clicks sounded. Umber shuddered in the ashes before him, his body nearly shot in two. Thick scarlet stained the gray.

  Evelyn and Hallmyer looked down sadly at the broken animal. Evelyn was crying, and Hallmyer reached nervous fingers through his hair in the same old gesture.

  "This is the finish, Stephen," he said. "You've killed part of yourself. Oh—you'll go on living, but not all of you. You'd best bury that corpse, Stephen. It's the corpse of your soul."

  "I can't," Crane said. "The wind will blow the ashes away."

  "Then burn it—"

  It seemed that they helped him thrust the dead dog into his knapsack. They helped him take off his clothes and pack them underneath. They cupped their hands around the matches until the cloth caught fire, and blew on the weak flame until it sputtered and burned limply. Crane crouched by the fire and nursed it until nothing was left but more gray ash. Then he turned and once again began crawling down the ocean bed. He was naked now. There was nothing left of what-had-been but his flickering little life.

  He was too heavy with sorrow to notice the furious rain that slammed and buffeted him, or the searing pains that were shooting through his blackened leg and up his hip. He crawled. Elbows, knee, elbows, knee— Woodenly, mechanically, apathetic to everything. To the latticed skies, the dreary ashen plains and even the dull glint of water that lay far ahead.

  He knew it was the sea—what was left of the old, or a new one in the making. But it would be an empty, lifeless sea that some day would lap against a dry lifeless shore. This would be a planet of rock and stone, of metal and snow and ice and water, but that would be all. No more life. He, alone, was useless. He was Adam, but there was no Eve.

  Evelyn waved gayly to him from the shore. She was standing alongside the white cottage with the wind snapping her dress to show the clean, slender lines of her figure. And when he came a little closer, she ran out to him and helped him. She said nothing—only placed her hands under his shoulders and helped him lift the weight of his heavy pain-ridden body. And so at last he reached the sea.

  It was real. He understood that. For even after Evelyn and the cottage had vanished, he felt the cool waters bathe his face. Quietly— Calmly--

  Here's the sea, Crane thought, and here am I. Adam and no Eve. It's hopeless.

  He rolled a little farther into the waters. They laved his torn body. Quietly— Calmly--

  He lay with face to the sky, peering at the high menacing heavens, and the bitterness within him welled up.

  "It's not right!" he cried. "It's not right that all this should pass away. Life is too beautiful to perish at the mad act of one mad creature—"

  Quietly the waters laved him. Quietly— Calmly--

  The sea rocked him gently, and even the agony that was reaching up toward his heart was no more than a gloved hand. Suddenly the skies split apart—for the first time in all those months—and Crane stared up at the stars.

  Then he knew. This was not the end of life. There could never be an end to life. Within his body, within the rotting tissues that were rocking gently in the sea was the source of ten million-million lives. Cells—tissues—bacteria—endamceba— Countless infinities of life that would take new root in the waters and live long after he was gone.

  They would live on his rotting remains. They would feed on each other. They would adapt themselves to the new environment and feed on the minerals and sediments washed into this new sea. They would grow, burgeon, evolve. Life would reach out to the lands once more. It would begin again the same old re-repeated cycle that had begun perhaps with the rotting corpse of some last survivor of interstellar travel. It would happen over and over in the future ages.

  And then he knew what had brought him back to the sea. There need be no Adam—no Eve. Only the sea, the great mother of life was needed. The sea had called him back to her depths that presently life might emerge once more, and he was content.

  Quietly the waters rocked him. Quietly—Calmly—the mother of life rocked the last-born of the old cycle who would become the first-born of the new. And with glazing eyes Stephen Crane smiled up at the stars, stars that were sprinkled evenly across the sky. Stars that had not yet formed into the familiar constellations, nor would not for another hundred million centuries.

 

SOLAR PLEXUS

  Astonishing Stories September by James Blish (1921-1975)

 

  The late James Blish made several notable contributions to science fiction. As a writer, his novel A Case of Conscience (1958) remains one of the most fascinating and provoking treatments of religion in sf. His "Okie" series (collected as Cities in Flight, 1969) was a most original contribution to the classic quest theme, while his "Pantropy" stories were uniformly excellent accounts of human and more-than-human biological change.

  As a commentator, Blish was among the pioneer critical voices from within the genre, and his two collections The Issue at Hand and More Issues at Hand (both published as "William Atheling, Jr.") are insightful and perceptive. Finally, Blish was a creative editor—the one and only issue of Vanguard Science Fiction produced under his editorship is one of the most sought after collector's items in sf while New Dreams This Morning (1966) is still the definitive anthology on the portrayal of the arts in science fiction.

   "Solar Plexus" is one of his earliest stories, and the best early discussion of what a cyborg might be like, and what the effect on the human component might be.

 

  (Jim Blish is one of the most endearing of all the science fiction writers. Indeed, a photograph exists—which Jay Kay Klein shows at all available opportunities, of him planting a juicy kiss right on my cheek. I must admit, though, that my fondness for him was shaken when I discovered he was William Atheling, Jr. I don't particularly like critics and Atheling hadn't always been kind to me.—However, I recovered and decided I would forgive that rat, Atheling, for Jim's sake. —LA.)

 

  Brant Kittinger did not hear the alarm begin to ring. Indeed, it was only after a soft blow had jarred his free-floating observatory that he looked up in sudden awareness from the interferometer. Then the sound of the warning bell reached his consciousness.

  Brant was an astronomer, not a spaceman, but he knew that the hell could mean nothing but the arrival of another ship in the vicinity. There would be no point in ringing a bell for a meteor—the thing could be through and past you during the first cycle of the clapper. Only an approaching ship would be likely to trip the detector, and it would have to be close.

  A second dull jolt told him how close it was. The rasp of metal which followed, as the other ship slid along the side of his own, drove the fog of tensors completely from his brain. He dropped his pencil and straightened up.

  His first thought was that his year in the orbit around the new trans-Plutonian planet was up, and that the Institute's tug had arrived to tow him home, telescope and all. A glance at the clock reassured him at first, then puzzled him still further. He still had the better part of four months.

  No commercial vessel, of course, could have wandered this far from the inner planets; and the UN's police cruisers didn't travel far outside the commercial lanes. Besides, it would have been impossible for anyone to find Brant's orbital observatory by accident.

  He settled his glasses more firmly on his nose, clambered awkwardly backwards out of the prime focus chamber and down the wall net to the control desk on the observation floor. A quick glance over the boards revealed that there was a magnetic field of some strength nearby, one that didn't belong to the invisible gas giant revolving half a million miles away.

  The strange ship was locked to him magnetically; it was an old ship, then, for that method of grappling had been discarded years ago as too hard on delicate instruments. And the strength of the field meant a big ship.

  Too big. The only ship of that period that could mount generators that size, as far as Brant could remember, was the Cybernetics Foundation's Astrid. Brant could remember well the Foundation's regretful announcement that Murray Bennett had destroyed both himself and the Astrid rather than turn the ship in to some UN inspection team. It had happened only eight years ago. Some scandal or other ...

  Well, who then?

  He turned the radio on. Nothing came out of it. It was a simple transistor set tuned to the Institute's frequency, and since the ship outside plainly did not belong to the Institute, he had expected nothing else. Of course he had a photophone also, but it had been designed for communications over a reasonable distance, not for cheek-to-cheek whispers.

  As an afterthought, he turned off the persistent alarm bell. At once another sound came through: a delicate, rhythmic tapping on the hull of the observatory. Someone wanted to get in.

  He could think of no reason to refuse entrance, except for a vague and utterly unreasonable wonder as to whether or not the stranger was a friend. He had no enemies, and the notion that some outlaw might have happened upon him out here was ridiculous. Nevertheless, there was something about the anonymous, voiceless ship just outside which made him uneasy.

  The gentle tapping stopped, and then began again, with an even, mechanical insistence. For a moment Brant wondered whether or not he should try to tear free with the observatory's few maneuvering rockets—but even should he win so uneven a struggle, he would throw the observatory out of the orbit where the Institute expected to find it, and he was not astronaut enough to get it back there again.

  Tap, tap. Tap, tap.

  "All right," he said irritably. He pushed the button which set the airlock to cycling. The tapping stopped. He left the outer door open more than long enough for anyone to enter and push the button in the lock which reversed the process; but nothing happened.

  After what seemed to be a long wait, he pushed his button again. The outer door closed, the pumps filled the chamber with air, the inner door swung open. No ghost drifted out of it; there was nobody in the lock at all.

  Tap, tap. Tap, tap.

  Absently he polished his glasses on his sleeve. If they didn't want to come into the observatory, they must want him to come out of it. That was possible: although the telescope had a Coude focus which allowed him to work in the ship's air most of the time, it was occasionally necessary for him to exhaust the dome, and for that purpose he had a space suit. But be had never been outside the hull in it, and the thought alarmed him. Brant was nobody's spaceman.

  Be damned to them. He clapped his glasses back into place and took one more look into the empty airlock. It was still empty with the outer door now moving open very slowly... .

  A spaceman would have known that he was already dead, but Brant's reactions were not quite as fast. His first move was to try to jam the inner door shut by sheer muscle-power, but it would not stir. Then he simply clung to the nearest stanchion, waiting for the air to rush out of the observatory, and his life after it.

  The outer door of the airlock continued to open, placidly, and still there was no rush of air—only a kind of faint, unticketable inwash of odor, as if Brant's air were mixing with someone else's. When both doors of the lock finally stood wide apart from each other, Brant found himself looking down the inside of a flexible, airtight tube, such as he had once seen used for the transfer of a small freight-load from a ship to one of Earth's several space stations. It connected the airlock of the observatory with that of the other ship. At the other end of it, lights gleamed yellowly, with the unmistakable, dismal sheen of incandescent overheads.

  That was an old ship, all right.

  Tap. Tap.

  "Go to hell," he said aloud. There was no answer.

  Tap. Tap.

  "Go to hell," he said. He walked out into the tube, which flexed sinuously as his body pressed aside the static air. In the airlock of the stranger, he paused and looked back. He was not much surprised to see the outer door of his own airlock swinging smugly shut against him. Then the airlock of the stranger began to cycle; he skipped on into the ship barely in time.

  There was a bare metal corridor ahead of him. While he watched, the first light bulb over his head blinked out. Then the second. Then the third. As the fourth one went out, the first came on again, so that now there was a slow ribbon of darkness moving away from him down the corridor. Clearly, he was being asked to follow the line of darkening bulbs down the corridor.

  He had no choice, now that he had come this far. He followed the blinking lights.

  The trail led directly to the control room of the ship. There was nobody there, either.

  The whole place was oppressively silent. He could hear the soft hum of generators—a louder noise than he ever heard on board the observatory—but no ship should be this quiet. There should be muffled human voices; the chittering of communications systems, the impacts of soles on metal. Someone had to operate a proper ship—not only its airlocks, but its motors—and its brains. The observatory was only a barge, and needed no crew but Brant, but a real ship had to be manned.

  He scanned the bare metal compartment, noting the apparent age of the equipment. Most of it was manual, but there were no hands to man it.

  A ghost ship for true.

  "All right," he said. His voice sounded flat and loud to him. "Come on out. You wanted me here—why are you hiding?"

  Immediately there was a noise in the close, still air, a thin, electrical sigh. Then a quiet voice said, "You're Brant Kittinger."

  "Certainly," Brant said, swiveling fruitlessly toward the apparent source of the voice. "You know who I am. You couldn't have found me by accident. Will you come out? I've no time to play games."

  "I'm not playing games," the voice said calmly. "And I can't come out, since I'm not hiding from you. I can't see you; I needed to hear your voice before I could be sure of you."

  “Why?”

  "Because I can't see inside the ship. I could find your observation boat well enough, but until I heard you speak I couldn't be sure that you were the one aboard it. Now I know."

  "All right," Brant said suspiciously. "I still don't see why you're hiding. Where are you?"

  "Right here," said the voice. "All around you."

  Brant looked all around himself. His scalp began to creep.

  "What kind of nonsense is that?" he said.

  "You aren't seeing what you're looking at, Brant. You're looking directly at me, no matter where you look. I am the ship."

  "Oh," Brant said softly. "So that's it. You're one of Murray Bennett's computer-driven ships. Are you the Astrid, after all?"

  "This is the Astrid," the voice said. "But you miss my point. I am Murray Bennett, also."

  Brant's jaw dropped open. "Where are you?" he said after a time.

  "Here," the voice said impatiently. "I am the Astrid. I am also Murray Bennett. Bennett is dead, so he can't very well come into the cabin and shake your hand. I am now Murray Bennett; I remember you very well, Brant. I need your help, so I sought you out. I'm not as much Murray Bennett as I'd like to be."

  Brant sat down in the empty pilot's seat.

  "You're a computer," he said shakily. "Isn't that so?"

  "It is and it isn't. No computer can duplicate the performance of a human brain. I tried to introduce real human neural mechanisms into computers, specifically to fly ships, and was outlawed for my trouble. I don't think I was treated fairly. It took enormous surgical skill to make the hundreds and hundreds of nerve-to-circuit connections that were needed—and before I was half through, the UN decided that what I was doing was human vivisection. They outlawed me, and the Foundation said I'd have to destroy myself; what could I do after that?

  "I did destroy myself. I transferred most of my own nervous system into the computers of the Astrid, working at the end through drugged assistants under telepathic control, and finally relying upon the computers to seal the last connections. No such surgery ever existed before, but I brought it into existence. It worked. Now I'm the Astrid—and still Murray Bennett too, though Bennett is dead."

  Brant locked his hands together carefully on the edge of the dead control board. "What good did that do you?" he said.

  "It proved my point. I was trying to build an almost living spaceship. I had to build part of myself into it to do it—since they made me an outlaw to stop my using any other human being as a source of parts. But here is the Astrid, Brant, as almost alive as I could ask. I'm as immune to a dead spaceship—a UN cruiser, for instance—as you would be to an infuriated wheelbarrow. My reflexes are human-fast. I feel things directly, not through instruments. I fly myself: I am what I sought—the ship that almost thinks for itself."

  "You keep saying 'almost,' " Brant said.

  "That's why I came to you," the voice said. "I don't have enough of Murray Bennett here to know what I should do next. You knew me well. Was I out to try to use human brains more and more, and computer-mechanisms less and less? It seems to me that I was. I can pick up the brains easily enough, just as I picked you up. The solar system is full of people isolated on little research boats who could be plucked off them and incorporated into efficient machines like the Astrid. But I don't know. I seem to have lost my creativity. I have a base where I have some other ships with beautiful computers in them, and with a few people to use as research animals I could make even better ships of them than the Astrid is. But is that what I want to do? Is that what I set out to do? I no longer know, Brant. Advise me."

  The machine with the human nerves would have been touching had it not been so much like Bennett had been. The combination of the two was flatly horrible.

  "You've made a bad job of yourself, Murray," he said. "You've let me inside your brain without taking any real thought of the danger. What's to prevent me from stationing myself at your old manual controls and flying you to the nearest UN post?"

  "You can't fly a ship."

  "How do you know?"

  "By simple computation. And there are other reasons. What's to prevent me from making you cut your own throat? The answer's the same. You're in control of your body; I'm in control of mine. My body is the Astrid. The controls are useless, unless I actuate them. The nerves through which I do so are sheathed in excellent steel. The only way in which you could destroy my control would be to break something necessary to the running of the ship. That, in a sense, would kill me, as destroying your heart or your lungs would kill you. But that would be pointless, for then you could no more navigate the ship than I. And if you made repairs, I would be—well, resurrected."

  The voice fell silent a moment. Then it added, matter-of-factly, "Of course, I can protect myself."

  Brant made no reply. His eyes were narrowed to the squint he more usually directed at a problem in Milne transformations.

  "I never sleep," the voice went on, "but much of my navigating and piloting is done by an autopilot without requiring my conscious attention. It is the same old Nelson autopilot which was originally on board the Astrid, though, so it has to be monitored. If you touch the controls while the autopilot is running, it switches itself off and I resume direction myself."

  Brant was surprised and instinctively repelled by the steady flow of information. It was a forcible reminder of how much of the computer there was in the intelligence that called itself Murray Bennett. It was answering a question with the almost mindless wealth of detail of a public-library selector—and there was no "Enough" button for Brant to push.

  "Are you going to answer my question?" the voice said suddenly.

  "Yes, Brant said. "I advise you to turn yourself in. The Astrid proves your point—and also proves that your research was a blind alley. There's no point in your proceeding to make more Astrids; you're aware yourself that you're incapable of improving on the model now."

  "That's contrary to what I have recorded," the voice said. "My ultimate purpose as a man was to build machines like this. I can't accept your answer: it conflicts with my primary directive. Please follow the lights to your quarters."

  "What are you going to do with me?"

  "Take you to the base."

  "What for?" Brant said.

  "As a stock of parts," said the voice. "Please follow the lights, or I'll have to use force."

  Brant followed the lights. As he entered the cabin to which they led him, a disheveled figure arose from one of the two cots. He started back in alarm. The figure chuckled wryly and displayed a frayed bit of gold braid on its sleeve.

  "I'm not as terrifying as I look," he said. "Lt. Powell of the UN scout Iapetus, at your service."

  "I'm Brant Kittinger, Planetary Institute astrophysicist. You're just the faintest bit battered, all right. Did you tangle with Bennett?"

  "Is that his name?" The UN patrolman nodded glumly. "Yes. There's some whoppers of guns mounted on this old tub. I challenged it, and it cut my ship to pieces before I could lift a hand. I barely got into my suit in time—and I'm beginning to wish I hadn't."

  "I don't blame you. You know what he plans to use us for, I judge."

  "Yes," the pilot said. "He seems to take pleasure in bragging about his achievements—God knows they're, amazing enough, if even half of what he says is true."

  "It's all true," Brant said. "He's essentially a machine, you know, and as such I doubt that he can lie."

  Powell looked startled. "That makes it worse. I've been trying to figure a way out—"

  Brant raised one hand sharply, and with the other he patted his pockets in search of a pencil. "If you've found anything, write it down, don't talk about it. I think he can hear us. Is that so, Bennett?"

  "Yes," said the voice in the air. Powell jumped. "My hearing extends throughout the ship."

  There was silence again. Powell, grim as death, scribbled on a tattered UN trip ticket.

  Doesn't matter. Can't think of a thing.

  Where's the main computer? Brant wrote. There's where personality residues must lie.

  Down below. Not a chance without blaster. Must be eight inches of steel around it. Control nerves the same.

  They sat hopelessly on the lower cot. Brant chewed on the pencil. "How far is his home base from here?" he asked at length.

  "Where's here?"

  "In the orbit of the new planet."

  Powell whistled. "In that case, his base can't be more than three days away. I came on board from just off Titan, and he hasn't touched his base since, so his fuel won't last much longer. I know this type of ship well enough. And from what I've seen of the drivers, they haven't been altered."

  "Umm," Brant said. "That checks. If Bennett in person never got around to altering the drive, this ersatz Bennett we have here will never get around to it, either." He found it easier to ignore the listening presence while talking; to monitor his speech constantly with Bennett in mind was too hard on the nerves. "That gives us three days to get out, then. Or less."

  For at least twenty minutes Brant said nothing more, while the UN pilot squirmed and watched his face hope-fully. Finally the astronomer picked up the piece of paper again.

  Can you pilot this ship? he wrote.

  The pilot nodded and scribbled: Why?

  Without replying, Brant lay back on the bunk, swiveled himself around so that his head was toward the center of the cabin, doubled up his knees, and let fly with both feet. They crashed hard against the hull, the magnetic studs in his shoes leaving bright scars on the metal. The impact sent him sailing like an ungainly fish across the cabin.

  "What was that for?" Powell and the voice in the air asked simultaneously. Their captor's tone was faintly curious, but not alarmed.

  Brant had his answer already prepared. "It's part of a question I want to ask," he said. He brought up against the far wall and struggled to get his feet back to the deck. "Can you tell me what I did then, Bennett?"

  "Why, not specifically. As I told you, I can't see inside the ship. But I get a tactual jar from the nerves of the controls, the lights, the floors, the ventilation system, and so on, and also a ringing sound from the audios. These things tell me that you either stamped on the floor or pounded on the wall. From the intensity of the impressions, I compute that you stamped."

  "You hear and you feel, eh?"

  "That's correct," the voice said. "Also I can pick up your body heat from the receptors in the ship's temperature control system—a form of seeing, but without any definition."

  Very quietly, Brant retrieved the worn trip ticket and wrote on it: Follow me.

  He went out into the corridor and started down it toward the control room, Powell at his heels. The living ship remained silent only for a moment.

  "Return to your cabin," the voice said.

  Brant walked a little faster. How would Bennett's vicious brainchild enforce his orders?

  "I said, go back to the cabin," the voice said. Its tone was now loud and harsh, and without a trace of feeling; for the first time, Brant was able to tell that it came from a voder, rather than from a tape-vocabulary of Bennett's own voice. Brant gritted his teeth and marched forward.

  "I don't want to have to spoil you," the voice said. "For the last time—"

  An instant later Brant received a powerful blow in the small of his back. It felled him like a tree, and sent him skimming along the corridor deck like a flat stone. A bare fraction of a second later there was a hiss and a flash, and the air was abruptly hot and choking with the sharp odor of ozone.

  "Close," Powell's voice said calmly. "Some of these rivet-heads in the walls evidently are high-tension electrodes. Lucky I saw the nimbus collecting on that one. Crawl, and make it snappy."

  Crawling in a gravity-free corridor was a good deal more difficult to manage than walking. Determinedly, Brant squirmed into the control room, calling into play every trick he had ever learned in space to stick to the floor. He could hear Powell wriggling along behind him.

  "He doesn't know what I'm up to," Brant said aloud. "Do you, Bennett?"

  "No," the voice in the air said. "But I know of nothing you can do that's dangerous while you're lying on your belly. When you get up, I'll destroy you, Brant."

  "Hmmm," Brant said. He adjusted his glasses, which he had nearly lost during his brief, skipping carom along the deck. The voice had summarized the situation with deadly precision. He pulled the now nearly pulped trip ticket out of his shirt pocket, wrote on it, and shoved it across the deck to Powell.

  How can we reach the autopilot? Got to smash it.

  Powell propped himself up on one elbow and studied the scrap of paper, frowning. Down below, beneath the deck, there was an abrupt sound of power, and Brant felt the cold metal on which he was lying sink beneath him. Bennett was changing course, trying to throw them within range of his defenses. Both men began to slide sidewise.

  Powell did not appear to be worried; evidently he knew just how long it took to turn a ship of this size and period. He pushed the piece of paper back. On the last free space on it, in cramped letters, was: Throw something at it.

  "Ah," said Brant. Still sliding, he drew off one of his heavy shoes and hefted it critically. It would do. With a sudden convulsion of motion he hurled it.

  Fat, crackling sparks crisscrossed the room; the noise was ear-splitting. While Bennett could have had no idea what Brant was doing, he evidently had sensed the sudden stir of movement and had triggered the high-tension current out of general caution. But he was too late. The flying shoe plowed heel-foremost into the autopilot with a rending smash.

  There was an unfocused blare of sound from the voder more like the noise of a siren than like a human cry. The Astrid rolled wildly, once. Then there was silence.

  "All right," said Brant, getting to his knees. "Try the controls, Powell."

  The UN pilot arose cautiously. No sparks flew. When he touched the boards, the ship responded with an immediate purr of power.

  "She runs," he said. "Now, how the hell did you know what to do?"

  "It wasn't difficult," Brant said complacently, retrieving his shoe. "But we're not out of the woods yet. We have to get to the stores fast and find a couple of torches. I want to cut through every nerve-channel we can find. Are you with me?"

  "Sure."

  The job was more quickly done than Brant had dared to hope. Evidently the living ship had never thought of lightening itself by jettisoning all the equipment its human crew had once needed. While Brant and Powell cut their way enthusiastically through the jungle of efferent nerve-trunks running from the central computer, the astronomer said:

  "He gave us too much information. He told me that he had connected the artificial nerves of the ship, the control nerves, to the nerve-ends running from the parts of his own brain that he had used. And he said that he'd had to make hundreds of such connections. That's the trouble with allowing a computer to act as an independent agent—it doesn't know enough about interpersonal relationships to control its tongue.... There we are. He'll be coming to before long, but I don't think he'll be able to interfere with us now."

  He set down his torch with a sigh. "I was saying? Oh, yes. About those nerve connections: if he had separated out the pain-carrying nerves from the other sensory nerves, he would have had to have made thousands of connections, not hundreds. Had it really been the living human being, Bennett, who had given me that cue, I would have discounted it, because he might have been using understatement. But since it was Bennett's double, a computer, I assumed that the figure was of the right order of magnitude. Computers don't understate.

  "Besides, I didn't think Bennett could have made thousands of connections, especially not working telepathically through a proxy. There's a limit even to the most marvelous neurosurgery. Bennett had just made general connections, and had relied on the segments from his own brain which he had incorporated to sort out the impulses as they came in—as any human brain could do under like circumstances. That was one of the advantages of using parts from a human brain in the first place."

  "And when you kicked the wall—" Powell said.

  "Yes, you see the crux of the problem already. When I kicked the wall, I wanted to make sure that he could feel the impact of my shoes. If he could, then I could be sure that he hadn't eliminated the sensory nerves when he installed the motor nerves. And if he hadn't, then there were bound to be pain axons present, too."

  "But what has the autopilot to do with it?" Powell asked plaintively.

  "The autopilot," Brant said, grinning, "is a center of his nerve-mesh, an important one. He should have protected it as heavily as he protected the main computer. When I smashed it, it was like ramming a fist into a man's solar plexus. It hurt him."

  Powell grinned too. "K.O.," he said.

 

NIGHTFALL

  Astounding Science Fiction September by Isaac Asimov

 

  (Well, here it is. "Nightfall" was my sixteenth published story, but the thirty-second I had written. I wrote it in March 1941, when I was 2114 years old. It was the first story of mine that Campbell paid me a bonus for. It was the first story of mine that placed as the lead novelet in an issue of Astounding. It was the first story of mine that rated an Astounding cover.

  It was a milestone for me, obviously.

  I was not aware at the time just exactly how much of a milestone it was.

  At the time, it was just another story I had written, and it didn't make a terribly big splash, but as the months and years passed, it seemed to get bigger and bigger in retrospect until now there is not only a general consensus that it is the best short piece I have ever written, but there seems to be a general consensus that it is the best short piece of science fiction ever written. At least it placed first in several polls, including one of the membership of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

  I hasten to say that I disagree. In my own opinion I have written three short pieces that are better and I shall see to it that each is included in this series when the appropriate year is reached. In fact, I think "Nightfall" has serious flaws and crudities as far as writing style is concerned. However—after it appeared I never again wrote another science fiction story that remained unpublished, and very few that weren't accepted by the first editor to whom it was offered—so I guess "Nightfall," not quite three years after I had begun to submit stories for publication, marked the end of my apprenticeship—I.A. )

 

 

  Aton 77, director of Saro University, thrust out a belligerent lower lip and glared at the young newspaperman in a hot fury.

  Theremon 762 took that fury in his stride. In his earlier days, when his now widely syndicated column was only a mad idea in a cub reporter’s mind, he had specialized in “impossible” interviews. It had cost him bruises, black eyes, and broken bones; but it had given him an ample supply of coolness and self-confidence. So he lowered the outthrust hand that had been so pointedly ignored and calmly waited for the aged director to get over the worst. Astronomers were queer ducks, anyway, and if Aton’s actions of the last two months meant anything; this same Aton was the queer-duckiest of the lot.

  Aton 77 found his voice, and though it trembled with restrained emotion, the careful, somewhat pedantic phraseology, for which the famous astronomer was noted, did not abandon him.

  “Sir,” he said, “you display an infernal gall in coming to me with that impudent proposition of yours.” The husky telephotographer of the Observatory, Beenay 25, thrust a tongue’s tip across dry lips and interposed nervously, “Now, sir, after all--”

  The director turned to him and lifted a white eyebrow.

  “Do not interfere, Beenay. I will credit you with good intentions in bringing this man here; but I will tolerate no insubordination now.”

  Theremon decided it was time to take a part. “Director Aton, if you’ll let me finish what I started saying, I think--”

  “I don’t believe, young man,” retorted Aton, “that anything you could say now would count much as compared with your daily columns of these last two months. You have led a vast newspaper campaign against the efforts of myself and my colleagues to organize the world against the menace which it is now too late to avert. You have done your best with your highly personal attacks to make the staff of this Observatory objects of ridicule.”

  The director lifted a copy of the Saro City Chronicle from the table and shook it at Theremon furiously. “Even a person of your well-known impudence should have hesitated before coming to me with a request that he be allowed to cover today’s events for his paper. Of all newsmen, you!”

  Aton dashed the newspaper to the floor, strode to the window, and clasped his arms behind his back.

  “You may leave,” he snapped over his shoulder. He stared moodily out at the skyline where Gamma, the brightest of the planet’s six suns, was setting. It had already faded and yellowed into the horizon mists, and Aton knew he would never see it again as a sane man. He whirled. “No, wait, come here!” He gestured peremptorily. “I’ll give you your story.”

  The newsman had made no motion to leave, and now he approached the old man slowly. Aton gestured outward.

  “Of the six suns, only Beta is left in the sky. Do you see it?”

  The question was rather unnecessary. Beta was almost at zenith, its ruddy light flooding the landscape to an unusual orange as the brilliant rays of setting Gamma died. Beta was at aphelion. It was small; smaller than Theremon had ever seen it before, and for the moment it was undisputed ruler of Lagash’s sky.

  Lagash’s own sun, Alpha, the one about which it revolved, was at the antipodes, as were the two distant companion pairs. The red dwarf Beta--Alpha’s immediate companion--was alone, grimly alone.

  Aton’s upturned face flushed redly in the sunlight. “In just under four hours,” he said, “civilization, as we know it, comes to an end. It will do so because, as you see. Beta is the only sun in the sky.” He smiled grimly. “Print that! There’ll be no one to read it.”

  “But if it turns out that four hours pass--and another four--and nothing happens?” asked Theremon softly.

  “Don’t let that worry you. Enough will happen.”

  “Granted! And still--if nothing happens?”

  For a second time, Beenay 25 spoke. “Sir, I think you ought to listen to him.”

  Theremon said, “Put it to a vote, Director Aton.”

  There was a stir among the remaining five members of the Observatory staff, who till now had maintained an attitude of wary neutrality.

  “That,” stated Aton flatly, “is not necessary.” He drew out his pocket watch. “Since your good friend, Beenay, insists so urgently, I will give you five minutes. Talk away.”

  “Good! Now, just what difference would it make if you allowed me to take down an eyewitness account of what’s to come? If your prediction comes true, my presence won’t hurt; for in that case my column would never be written. On the other hand, if nothing comes of it, you will just have to expect ridicule or worse. It would be wise to leave that ridicule to friendly hands.”

  Aton snorted. “Do you mean yours when you speak of friendly hands?”

  “Certainly!” Theremon sat down and crossed his legs.

  “My columns may have been a little rough, but I gave you people the benefit of the doubt every time. After all. this is not the century to preach ‘The end of the world is at hand’ to Lagash. You have to understand that people don’t believe the Book of Revelations anymore, and it annoys them to have scientists turn about-face and tell us the Cultists are right after all--”

  “No such thing, young man,” interrupted Aton. “While a great deal of our data has been supplied us by the Cult, our results contain none of the Cult’s mysticism. Facts are facts, and the Cult’s so-called mythology has certain facts behind it. We’ve exposed them and ripped away their mystery. I assure you that the Cult hates us now worse than you do.”

  “I don’t hate you. I’m just trying to tell you that the public is in an ugly humor. They’re angry.”

  Aton twisted his mouth in derision. “Let them be angry.”

  “Yes, but what about tomorrow?”

  “There’ll be no tomorrow!”

  “But if there is. Say that there is--just to see what happens. That anger might take shape into something serious. After all, you know, business has taken a nosedive these last two months. Investors don’t really believe the world is coming to an end, but just the same they’re being cagy with their money until it’s all over. Johnny Public doesn’t believe you, either, but the new spring furniture might just as well wait a few months--just to make sure.

  “You see the point. Just as soon as this is all over, the business interests will be after your hide. They’ll say that if crackpots--begging your pardon--can upset the country’s prosperity any time they want, simply by making some cockeyed prediction--it’s up to the planet to prevent them. The sparks will fly, sir.”

  The director regarded the columnist sternly. “And just what were you proposing to do to help the situation?”

  “Well”--Theremon grinned--“I was proposing to take charge of the publicity. I can handle things so that only the ridiculous side will show. It would be hard to stand, I admit, because I’d have to make you all out to be a bunch of gibbering idiots, but if I can get people laughing at you, they might forget to be angry. In return for that, all my publisher asks is an exclusive story.”

  Beenay nodded and burst out, “Sir, the rest of us think he’s right. These last two months we’ve considered everything but the million-to-one chance that there is an error somewhere in our theory or in our calculations. We ought to take care of that, too.”

  There was a murmur of agreement from the men grouped about the table, and Aton’s expression became that of one who found his mouth full of something bitter and couldn’t get rid of it.

  “You may stay if you wish, then. You will kindly refrain, however, from hampering us in our duties in any way. You will also remember that I am in charge of all activities here, and in spite of your opinions as expressed in your columns, I will expect full cooperation and full respect--”

  His hands were behind his back, and his wrinkled face thrust forward determinedly as he spoke. He might have continued indefinitely but for the intrusion of a new voice.

  “Hello, hello, hello!” It came in a high tenor, and the plump cheeks of the newcomer expanded in a pleased smile. “What’s this morgue-like atmosphere about here? No one’s losing his nerve, I hope.”

  Aton started in consternation and said peevishly, “Now what the devil are you doing here, Sheerin? I thought you were going to stay behind in the Hideout.”

  Sheerin laughed and dropped his stubby figure into a chair. “Hideout be blowed! The place bored me. I wanted to be here, where things are getting hot. Don’t you suppose I have my share of curiosity? I want to see these Stars the Cultists are forever speaking about.” He rubbed his hands and added in a soberer tone. “It’s freezing outside. The wind’s enough to hang icicles on your nose. Beta doesn’t seem to give any heat at all, at the distance it is.”

  The white-haired director ground his teeth in sudden exasperation. “Why do you go out of your way to do crazy things, Sheerin? What kind of good are you around here?”

  “What kind of good am I around there?” Sheerin spread his palms in comical resignation. “A psychologist isn’t worth his salt in the Hideout. They need men of action and strong, healthy women that can breed children. Me? I’m a hundred pounds too heavy for a man of action, and I wouldn’t be a success at breeding children. So why bother them with an extra mouth to feed? I feel better over here.”

  Theremon spoke briskly. “Just what is the Hideout, sir?”

  Sheerin seemed to see the columnist for the first time. He frowned and blew his ample cheeks out. “And just who in Lagash are you, redhead?”

  Aton compressed his lips and then muttered sullenly, “That’s Theremon 762, the newspaper fellow. I suppose you’ve heard of him.”

  The columnist offered his hand. “And, of course, you’re Sheerin 501 of Saro University. I’ve heard of you.” Then he repeated, “What is this Hideout, sir?”

  “Well,” said Sheerin, “we have managed to convince a few people of the validity of our prophecy of--er--doom, to be spectacular about it, and those few have taken proper measures. They consist mainly of the immediate members of the families of the Observatory staff, certain of the faculty of Saro University, and a few outsiders. Altogether, they number about three hundred, but three quarters are women and children.”

  “I see! They’re supposed to hide where the Darkness and the--er--Stars can’t get at them, and then hold out when the rest of the world goes poof.”

  “If they can. It won’t be easy. With all of mankind insane, with the great cities going up in flames--environment will not be conducive to survival. But they have food, water, shelter, and weapons--”

  “They’ve got more,” said Aton. “They’ve got all our records, except for what we will collect today. Those records will mean everything to the next cycle, and that’s what must survive. The rest can go hang.”

  Theremon uttered a long, low whistle and sat brooding for several minutes. The men about the table had brought out a multi-chess board and started a six-member game. Moves were made rapidly and in silence. All eyes bent in furious concentration on the board. Theremon watched them intently and then rose and approached Aton, who sat apart in whispered conversation with Sheerin.

  “Listen,” he said, “let’s go somewhere where we won’t bother the rest of the fellows. I want to ask some questions.”

  The aged astronomer frowned sourly at him, but Sheerin chirped up, “Certainly. It will do me good to talk. It always does. Aton was telling me about your ideas concerning world reaction to a failure of the prediction--and I agree with you. I read your column pretty regularly, by the way, and as a general thing I like your views.”

  “Please, Sheerin,” growled Aton.

  “Eh? Oh, all right. We’ll go into the next room. It has softer chairs, anyway.”

  There were softer chairs in the next room. There were also thick red curtains on the windows and a maroon carpet on the floor. With the bricky light of Beta pouring in, the general effect was one of dried blood.

  Theremon shuddered. “Say, I’d give ten credits for a decent dose of white light for just a second. I wish Gamma or Delta were in the sky.”

  “What are your questions?” asked Aton. “Please remember that our time is limited. In a little over an hour and a quarter we’re going upstairs, and after that there will be no time for talk.”

  “Well, here it is.” Theremon leaned back and folded his hands on his chest. “You people seem so all-fired serious about this that I’m beginning to believe you. Would you mind explaining what it’s all about?”

  Aton exploded, “Do you mean to sit there and tell me that you’ve been bombarding us with ridicule without even finding out what we’ve been trying to say?”

  The columnist grinned sheepishly. “It’s not that bad, sir. I’ve got the general idea. You say there is going to be a world-wide Darkness in a few hours and that all mankind will go violently insane. What I want now is the science behind it.”

  “No, you don’t. No, you don’t,” broke in Sheerin. “If you ask Aton for that--supposing him to be in the mood to answer at all--he’ll trot out pages of figures and volumes of graphs. You won’t make head or tail of it. Now if you were to ask me, I could give you the layman’s standpoint.”

  “All right; I ask you.”

  “Then first I’d like a drink.” He rubbed his hands and looked at Aton.

  “Water?” grunted Aton.

  “Don’t be silly!”

  “Don’t you be silly. No alcohol today. It would be too easy to get my men drunk. I can’t afford to tempt them.”

  The psychologist grumbled wordlessly. He turned to Theremon, impaled him with his sharp eyes, and began.

  “You realize, of course, that the history of civilization on Lagash displays a cyclic character--but I mean cyclic!”

  “I know,” replied Theremon cautiously, “that that is the current archaeological theory. Has it been accepted as a fact?”

  “Just about. In this last century it’s been generally agreed upon. This cyclic character is--or rather, was--one of the great mysteries. We’ve located series of civilizations, nine of them definitely, and indications of others as well, all of which have reached heights comparable to our own, and all of which, without exception, were destroyed by fire at the very height of their culture.

  “And no one could tell why. All centers of culture were thoroughly gutted by fire, with nothing left behind to give a hint as to the cause.”

  Theremon was following closely. “Wasn’t there a Stone Age, too?”

  “Probably, but as yet practically nothing is known of it, except that men of that age were little more than rather intelligent apes. We can forget about that.”

  “I see. Go on!”

  There have been explanations of these recurrent catastrophes, all of a more or less fantastic nature. Some say that there are periodic rains of fire; some that Lagash passes through a sun every so often; some even wilder things. But there is one theory, quite different from all of these, that has been handed down over a period of centuries.”

  “I know. You mean this myth of the ‘Stars’ that the Cultists have in their Book of Revelations.”

  “Exactly,” rejoined Sheerin with satisfaction. “The Cultists said that every two thousand and fifty years Lagash entered a huge cave, so that all the suns disappeared, and there came total darkness all over the world! And then, they say, things called Stars appeared, which robbed men of their souls and left them unreasoning brutes, so that they destroyed the civilization they themselves had built up. Of course they mix all this up with a lot of religio-mystic notions, but that’s the central idea.”

  There was a short pause in which Sheerin drew a long breath. “And now we come to the Theory of Universal Gravitation.” He pronounced the phrase so that the capital letters sounded--and at that point Aton turned from the window, snorted loudly, and stalked out of the room.

  The two stared after him, and Theremon said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing in particular,” replied Sheerin. “Two of the men were due several hours ago and haven’t shown up yet. He’s terrifically short-handed, of course, because all but the really essential men have gone to the Hideout.”

  “You don’t think the two deserted, do you?”

  “Who? Faro and Yimot? Of course not. Still, if they’re not back within the hour, things would be a little sticky.” He got to his feet suddenly, and his eyes twinkled. “Anyway, as long as Aton is gone--”

  Tiptoeing to the nearest window, he squatted, and from the low window box beneath withdrew a bottle of red liquid that gurgled suggestively when he shook it.

  “I thought Aton didn’t know about this,” he remarked as he trotted back to the table. “Here! We’ve only got one glass so, as the guest, you can have it. I’ll keep the bottle.”

  And he filled the tiny cup with judicious care. Theremon rose to protest, but Sheerin eyed him sternly.

  “Respect your elders, young man.”