City at World's End, Edmond Hamilton [free reads .txt] 📗
- Author: Edmond Hamilton
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“Then it would reproduce the basic solar reaction inside such a planet?” Kenniston said incredulously.
“Not really, for the iron-nickel cycle does not yield such terrific radiation as your Solar Phoenix,” Arnol corrected. “It would, however, create a giant solar furnace inside a planet, and raise the surface temperature of that world by many degrees.”
Kenniston voiced his worry. “There wouldn’t be danger of the nuclear reaction bursting through to the surface?”
“It can’t burst through,” Arnol declared. “The cycle can only feed on nickel and iron, and the massive outer sphere of silicon and aluminum around the core would contain the reaction forever.”
He added, “That is why the energy-bomb that triggers the reaction must be detonated in the core. And that is why we can quickly start the process on your Earth— because the ancient heat shafts there provide access to the deep core without elaborate preliminary boring.”
Kenniston nodded. The theory seemed sound enough. And yet—
He said slowly, “But when you tested it before, the planet was nearly destroyed by quakes that the convulsion in the core started.”
“Planetoid” said Arnol wearily. “Not planet. Haven’t I explained that enough times? The mass was insufficient to sustain the blast.” He was suddenly angry. “Why was I ever fool enough to accept that impossible test? But I repeat, Kenniston, I know what I am doing. The entire College of Science has not been able to find flaws in my equations. You’ll have to be content with that.”
“Yes,” said Kenniston. “Yes, I’ll have to be.” But as he left Arnol, he could not entirely crush his apprehension. This man-made creation of a solar furnace in the heart of a planet was as monstrous to his mind as the making of fire must have been to the first man. What if, by his faith in Jon Arnol, he had doomed Earth instead of helping it?
One decision came clear in his mind. If there was a possibility that Earth’s surface might be ravaged by destructive quakes, no one should remain for the detonation of the bomb who did not do so of his own free will.
With a queer pang of guilt, he thought of Varn Allan. She and Lund and Mathis, prisoners against their will, would have to be let go before the great risk was taken. He would give her that reassurance, at least.
The door of her cabin had a simple combination lock, and the dial numbers had been given to all hands in case of necessity. Kenniston opened it, and went in.
She was sitting rather as he had sat that time aboard the Thanis, her shoulders bent, her gaze brooding on the immensity of space beyond the port. He thought she had not slept, from the lines of strain and weariness in her face.
She straightened up at once, and turned toward him defiantly. “Have you come to your senses and abandoned this criminal project?” she demanded.
The hard anger in her clear eyes awakened answering anger in Kenniston.
“We have not,” he said. “I came only to tell you that you and Lund and Mathis will be allowed to leave Earth before the thing is done.”
“Do you think I’m worried about my own safety?” cried Varn Allan. “It’s the thousands of your people whom you’re endangering by this mad defiance of Federation law.”
“To the devil with Federation law,” he said roughly. Her eyes flashed hotly. “You’ll learn its power. Control ships will speed to Earth before you can even do this thing.”
Exasperated beyond measure, he grabbed her shoulders with a brutal impulse to shake her.
Then the totally unexpected happened. Varn Allan began to cry.
Kenniston’s anger melted into distress. She had always seemed so cool and self-contained that it was upsetting to see her in tears.
After a moment, he clumsily patted her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Varn. I know you were trying to help me there at Vega Center. And it must seem to you that I’m ungrateful. But I’m not! It’s just that I have to try this thing, or see Middletown’s people break their hearts trying to fight your Federation.”
She looked a him, wet-eyed, and murmured, “I’m behaving like an emotional fool.”
He looked down at her, his hands still on her shoulders. She pushed him back. She seemed to avoid his eyes as she said,
“I know you’re sincere, Kenniston. But I know too that this thing is wrong, that you can’t successfully defy the power of all the stars.”
He was strangely depressed when he left her. He tried not to think about it— tried not to remember the touch of her, tried not to recognize the choking emotion that had leaped in him for a moment.
“That’s just insane,” he muttered to himself. “And there’s Carol—”
He would not go to her again, in all the hours and days that the little starcruiser swept full speed across the galactic void. He was, somehow, afraid to see her once more.
A tension grew in Kenniston as the dim red spark of Sol largened to a sullen sphere. As the cruiser swept in at decelerating speed past the lifeless outer planets, he looked ahead.
“We must work fast, once we’re there,” Jon Arnol was saying tautly. He, too, was showing the strain. “Already Federation ships must be on their way here to stop us.”
Kenniston made no answer. That cold, haunting doubt was a deeper shadow on him as he watched the gray blob of old Earth grow big ahead.
His people were there, waiting. What was he bringing to them and their dying planet? New life, or final, ultimate death?
With tightening nerves, Kenniston walked across the dust and desolation of the plain toward the bright dome of New Middletown. Arnol was with him, and big Gorr Holl. The cold wind was as he remembered it, and the red, lowering Sun with its crown of fire.
“Perfect!” whispered Arnol. “Perfect! Such a world as I have dreamed of for a test!”
“Here they come,” said Gorr Holl, and pointed to the portal.
The armed lookouts had recognized Kenniston and the big Capellan. Word had gone around, and the folk of Middletown were pouring out through the portal to meet them.
Within seconds the crowd was around them, shouting, all but trampling them in its excitement. He recognized well-known faces— Bud Martin, John Borzak, Lauber—
McLain’s towering figure shouldered toward him. “What happened out there, Kenniston?”
“Yeah, what’s the verdict?” came a cry from beside him. “Are they going to let us be?”
He raised his voice to shout back to the wildly excited crowd. “Everybody— go to the plaza! Pass the word around. I’ll tell you all about it, there.”
“The plaza! The plaza!”
Some of them began to run back toward the city, to cry the news through the streets. Others swarmed around Gorr Holl, glad to see him back. They stared curiously at Jon Arnol, demanding to know who he was, but Kenniston shook his head. The story would be hard enough to tell once. He was not going to do it twice.
He searched for Carol’s face in the crowd. He yearned to see her— and yet deep in his mind somewhere there was a strange reluctance to see her, to face her, and he did not know why this should be so. But she was not there, he should have known she would not have ventured into this excited crowd.
Mayor Garris bustled up to him at the portal, preceding Hubble and a few of the City Council.
“Did you fix things, Kenniston?” he cried. “Did you make them understand out there?”
Kenniston said, “I’d like to make my report in the plaza, where everyone can hear.”
The Mayor gave him a worried, half-frightened look, and fell back. Kenniston reached out to take Hubble’s hand.
“I’ve got to talk to you, Hubble,” he said. “I’ve done something, and I don’t know…”
He talked in a rapid undertone to the older scientist as they made their way through the streets.
Hubble’s reaction was the same as Kenniston’s had been when the thing had been first broached to him. He recoiled from it.
“Good God, Ken! It’s mad— dangerous…”
But as he heard more, his alarm changed to grave attention, and then keenest interest.
“Yet it does sound logical, by every principle of our own physical science.” He looked at Jon Arnol. “If I could only talk clearly to him!”
“It wouldn’t do any good,” said Kenniston grimly. “That’s the awful part of it. His science is a million years beyond us.”
Hubble turned to Gorr Holl. He had worked beside the big furry Capellan. He knew and trusted his ability as an atomic technician. Haltingly, he asked, “Will Arnol’s process work?”
Gorr Holl answered simply, “I believe in it enough to risk my life helping to try it.”
Kenniston translated that. And Hubble seemed reassured. “It still seems a great gamble, Ken. But— I think it’s worth it.”
Soon Kenniston had mounted the steps of the building that was City Hall, and stood by the microphone. Before him were the gathered thousands of Middletowners— a kaleidoscope of eager faces, excited, waiting.
This was the moment he had dreaded— the moment he had thought he could not endure. And it was harder even than he had dreamed, to say the words he must say.
There was no use being gentle about it. He told them almost brutally, “The decision is against us. They say we have to go.” He listened to the roar that broke out then, the angry cry of a people driven beyond their patience.
Mayor Garris voiced the passionate reaction of all Middletown.
“We won’t leave Earth! And if they want to push it to a fight, they can!”
Kenniston raised his hands, begging for quiet.
“Wait!” he shouted into the microphone. “Listen! You may not have to go, and you may not have to fight. There’s one chance…”
He told them, as simply and carefully as he could, of Jon Arnol’s great proposed experiment.
“Earth would be warm again— perhaps not quite as warm as before, but warm enough so that you could live here comfortably for all time to come.”
There was a long silence. He knew that the concept was too enormous for them to grasp at once. But they were trying to grasp it, trying to equate it with some familiar thing. The planetary scale of it, their minds could not hold onto. They struggled for a personal significance they could understand.
Finally John Borzak stepped forward, a rawboned, grizzled man who had spent a lifetime in the mills.
“Does it mean, Mr. Kenniston, that we could go back then to Middletown?”
He answered, “Yes.”
A cheer went up that shook the very walls of the buildings. “Back to Middletown! Did you hear that? We could go back to Middletown!”
Kenniston was touched beyond measure. To them, the shocking of a planet back to life meant primarily one thing— the ability to return to the drab little city beyond the hills, the city that was still home.
He motioned to them again for silence.
“I have to warn you. This experiment has never been tried on a world like Earth. It’s possible that it may fail. If it does, the surface of the Earth may be wrecked by quakes.”
That gave them pause. Kenniston saw the shadow of fear cross their faces, saw how they turned to one another and talked, and shook their heads, and looked anxiously back and forth.
Finally a voice cried, “What do you and Doctor Hubble think? You’re scientists. What’s your
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