City at World's End by Edmond Hamilton (free ebook reader for ipad .txt) 📕
He stopped, again, as though he could not quite muster up the courage to voice the certainty that was in him. He gestured at the dusky sky.
"That's our Sun, our own Sun-- but it's old now, very old. And that Earth we see out there is old too, barren and eroded and dying. And the stars.... You looked at the stars, Ken, but you didn't see them. They're different, the constellations distorted by the motions of the stars, as only millions of years could distort them."
Kenniston whispered, "Millions of years? Then you think that the bomb..." He stopped, and he knew now how Hubble had felt. How did you sa
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The great ship brooded on the plain, and all that afternoon and evening the people drifted restlessly toward the wall of the dome to look at it, and stand in little groups talking angrily, and move away again. The streets seethed with a half-heard murmur of voices and movement. Crowds gathered in the plaza, and a detachment of National Guardsmen in full kit went marching down to mount guard at the portal. Dejected, oppressed, and more than a little sick with worry, Kenniston faced the unavoidable and went to Carol.
She knew, of course. Everybody in New Middletown knew. She met him with the drawn, half-bitter look that had come more and more often on her face since the June day their world had ended, and she said, “They can’t do it, can they? They can’t make us go?”
“They think they’re doing the right thing,” he said. “It’s a question of making them understand they’re wrong.”
She began to laugh, quite softly— laughter with no mirth in it. “There isn’t any end to it,” she said. “First we had to leave Middletown. Now we have to leave Earth, Why didn’t we stay in our homes and die there, if we had to, like decent human beings? It’s all been madness ever since— this city, and now…” She stopped laughing. She looked at him and said calmly, “I won’t go, Ken.”
“You’re not the only one that feels that way,” Kenniston told her. “We’ve got to convince them of that.” Restlessness rode him, and he got up and said, “Let’s take a walk. We’d both feel better.”
She went out with him into the dusk. The lights were on, the lovely radiance that they had greeted with such joy. They walked, saying very little, burdened with their own thoughts, and Kenniston was conscious again of the barrier that seemed always between them now, even when they agreed. Their silence was not the silence of understanding, but the silence which is between two minds that can communicate only with words.
They drifted toward the section of the dome through which the distant starship was visible. The unease in the city had grown, until the air quivered with it. There was a mob around the portal. They did not go close to it. Through the curved, transparent wall the lighted bulk of the Thanis was no more than a distorted gleaming. Carol shivered and turned away.
“I don’t want to look at it,” she said. “Let’s go back.”
“Wait,” said Kenniston. “There’s Hubble.”
The older man caught sight of him and swore. “I’ve been hunting the hell and gone over town for you,” he said. “Ken, that bloody fool Garris has blown his top completely, and is getting the people all stirred up to fight. You’ve got to come with me and help soothe him down!”
Kenniston said bitterly, “No wonder Varn Allan thinks we’re a bunch of primitives! Oh, all right, I’ll come. We’ll walk you back home on the way, Carol.”
They started back through the streets, whose towers now shone timelessly beautiful in the calm white radiance. But the people in those streets, the little tense, talking groups, the worried faces and questions, the angry expletives, jarred against that supernal calm.
The pulse of unease in the city seemed to quicken. A low cry ran along the streets. People were calling something, a shout was running along the ways, hands pointed upward, white faces turned and looked at the shimmer of the great dome above.
“What—” Hubble began impatiently, but Kenniston silenced him.
“Listen!”
They listened. Above the swell of distant voices, growing louder every moment, they heard a sound that they had heard only once before. A vibration, more than a sound, a deep, bass humming from the sky, too deep to be smothered even by the dome.
It came downward, and it was louder, and louder, and then quite suddenly it stopped. People were running now toward the portal and the words they shouted came drifting confusedly back.
“Another starship,” said Kenniston. “Another starship has come.”
Hubble’s face was gray and haggard. “The evacuation staff. She said they’d arrive soon. And the whole town ready to blow off— Ken, this is it!”
With a sinking heart, Kenniston stared at Hubble and listened to the sharpening voice of the city. Carol spoke, and the words reached him from a long way off.
“Never mind me, Ken. I’ll get home all right.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid we’ve got to get hold of the Mayor right away…Stay in off the streets, Carol.”
He kissed her swiftly on the cheek, and she turned away, walking fast. Kenniston hesitated, feeling that he ought to go with her, but Hubble had already started on and there was no time for punctilio. After all, there was no danger— not yet.
He caught up with Hubble. People streamed past them, going the other way, toward the portal. Frightened, belligerent people, their eyes a little too bright, their voices too loud. Kenniston and Hubble were almost running, but even so, it took them some minutes to reach the plaza in front of City Hall. As they crossed it, jeeps loaded with National Guardsmen pulled away from the government building and went tearing off down the boulevard. The men were wrapped to the eyes in heavy clothing, and Hubble groaned.
“They’re going outside. Now what the devil has that idiot done?”
They raced up the steps and into the building. In the Council chamber they found the Mayor with Borchard and Moretti and most of the Councilmen. Garris strode up and down, his face mottled, his eyes glittering with the courage born of fear. He turned to Kenniston and Hubble as they came in, and there was a curious blankness in his look, an absence of reason that made Kenniston lose what little hope he had.
“So they’re going to try to rush us away from Earth,” said Garris. “Well, we’ll see! We’ll see how far they’re going to get with that!” His voice shook, his pudgy hands were clenched. “I’ve called up all units of the National Guard, and did you see those jeeps? They’re on their way to Old Middletown, to bring the field guns from the Armory. Guns, Hubble, guns! That’s the only way to show ‘em they can’t order us around!”
“You fool,” said Hubble. “Oh, you fool.”
It was too late in the day to call the Mayor a fool, and Hubble found it out. Borchard snarled at him, “He’s acting with our complete approval. Listen, Mr. Hubble, you stick to your science and we’ll handle the government.”
“That’s right,” said Moretti. He said it two or three times, and the remaining council members backed him up.
Hubble faced them. “Listen to me!” he said. “You’re all scared so blind you can’t see what’s in front of you. Guns! All the guns we’ve got won’t make a pop like a toy pistol compared to what they can bring against us if they want to. These people have conquered the stars, can’t you understand that? They can conquer us with no more than that ray they’ve got on the ship, and violence will only anger them into doing it!”
Garris thrust his face close to Hubble’s. “You’re afraid of them,” he said. “Well we’re not. We’ll fight!” The Council cheered.
“All right,” said Hubble, “go ahead. There’s no use arguing with idiots. The only chance we had of beating this thing was to behave like civilized men. They might have listened to us, then, and respected our feelings. But now…” He made a gesture of negation, and the Mayor snorted.
“Talk! A lot of good your talking did. No, sir! We’ll handle this our way, and you can be thankful that your Mayor and Council haven’t forgotten how to defend the rights of the people!”
His voice rose almost to a shout to carry the last words to Hubble, who had walked out with Kenniston close on his heels.
Outside in the plaza, Kenniston said abruptly, “There’s only one thing to do— talk to Varn Allan. If she’d agree to call off her dogs for a while, things might simmer down.” He shook his head, making a wry face. “I hate to admit to that blonde bureaucrat that we’re governed by a bunch of half-witted children, but…”
“You can’t really blame them,” said Hubble. “We are like children, faced with the unknown, and since we can’t run and hide we have to fight. It’s just that they’re taking the wrong way.” He sighed. “You go out to the ship, Ken. Do what you can. I’m going back in and struggle with His Honor. If I’m patient enough— Oh, well, good luck.”
He went back inside, and Kenniston retraced his weary steps toward the portal.
The crowd had doubled since he had last seen it. It pushed and swirled around the portal, spreading out on both sides along the wall of the dome. Out on the plain the lights of two ships gleamed, and the people watched them, a low murmur running through them like the first mutter of wind before a storm. The company of Guardsmen in full kit had taken up their station in the portal, a barrier of olive-drab picked out with the dull gleam of gunbarrels.
Kenniston went up to them. He nodded to some of the men he knew and said, “I’m going out to the ships— important conference,” and started through the line. And they stopped him,
“Mayor’s orders,” the lieutenant said. “Nobody goes outside. Yeah, I know who you are, Mr. Kenniston! But I have my orders. Nobody goes outside.”
“Listen,” said Kenniston desperately, manufacturing a lie. “The Mayor sent me, I’m on his business.”
“Bring me a written order,” said the lieutenant, “and we’ll talk about it some more.”
The line of guns and stolid men remained unmoved. Kenniston considered trying to crash it, and gave that up at once. The lieutenant was watching him suspiciously, so suspiciously that an uncomfortable thought occurred to Kenniston. He spoke the language and he had worked closely with the star-folk, and the good people of Middletown might just possibly take him for a traitor or a spy…
“If the Mayor sent you,” the lieutenant said, “he’ll give you an order.”
Kenniston went away, back to the City Hall. And he spent the rest of the night cooling his heels with Hubble, outside the guarded door behind which the Mayor, the Council and the ranking officers of the National Guard were drawing up a plan of campaign.
Shortly after daybreak an orderly came in hastily, and was admitted to the guarded room. Immediately the Mayor, the Council, and the officers came out. Garris, haggard, heavy-eyed, but triumphant, caught sight of Kenniston and said, “Come along. We’ll need you to interpret.”
Feeling old and hopeless, Kenniston rose and joined the little procession. Falling in beside him, Hubble leaned over and murmured, “Talk fast, Ken. Your knowledge of the language is our one last ace in the hole.”
They reached the portal at almost the same time as the party from the starships. Varn Allan and Lund were the only ones in the group that Kenniston recognized. Of the others, one was a woman of mature years, and the remainder were men of varying ages. They stared, more in wonder than in apprehension, at the line of soldiers, Varn Allan frowned.
The Mayor marched up to her, as the line reformed to let him and his party through. A soiled, haggard little man, devoutly convinced of his own wisdom and secure in the knowledge that his people were with him, his courage screwed up to the last trembling notch, he faced
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