City at World's End, Edmond Hamilton [free reads .txt] 📗

Kenniston hesitated. Then he said slowly, “If I were alone on Earth, I would try it. But I cannot advise you. You must make your own decision.”

Hubble said into the microphone, “We can’t advise you, because we don’t know ourselves. We are dealing here with the science of this future age, which is far beyond us. We can only take what their scientists tell us on faith.

“They say that the theory is entirely workable. We have warned you of the possibility of failure. It’s up to you to decide how great the risk is, and how much you are willing to gamble.”

Kenniston turned and spoke to Mayor Garris. “Tell them to think it over carefully. Then call for a vote— those in favor of trying it to go to one side of the plaza, those against it to the other.” Aside, to Hubble, he said, “They should have months to decide a thing like this, instead of minutes!”

Hubble said, “It may be just as well. They won’t torture themselves with too much waiting and thinking.”

Mayor Garris talked to the crowd. There was a deepening, seething turmoil in the plaza then as people tried to reach others, to gather opinions from each other on what they ought to do. Scraps of heated conversations reached Kenniston’s ears:

“These guys from outside have done pretty well so far, getting this city going again. They know what they’re doing!”

“I don’t know. Suppose it does bring on terrible quakes?”

“Listen, these people know their stuff! They’d have to, to live out there in the stars the way they do!”

“Yeah. And I’d rather sit through an earthquake than go kiting off to the Milky Way!”

At last Mayor Garris asked, “Are you ready for the vote?”

They were, as ready as they would ever be.

Kenniston watched, his heart pounding. And beside him, Jon Arnol watched also. Kenniston had explained the procedure to him. He knew what Arnol must be going through as he waited while his life’s work was weighed in the balance.

For a time, the motion of the crowd was only a chaotic churning. Then, gradually, the separating motion came clear.

Those for the experiment, to the right side of the plaza…

Those against it, to the left…

The channel between the two factions widened. And Kenniston saw that on the left were a scant two hundred people.

The vote was carried. The experiment was approved.

Kenniston’s knees felt weak. He saw Arnol’s face, moved almost to tears with relief and joy. He himself was conscious of a wild excitement— and yet, even now, he could not stifle all his fear. They were committed, now, he and Arnol and the rest. For life or death, they were committed.

He spoke again into the microphone. “We must do this thing as soon as we can. We have very little time before ships of the Federation will arrive to stop us.

“You will please, all of you prepare to leave the city at a moment’s notice. As a precaution, no one is to remain under the dome when the energy bomb is detonated.

“Those of you who voted against the experiment will be given a chance to leave Earth before it takes place. The starcruiser can take only part of you, so it is suggested that you draw lots for space aboard her.” He swung around to the Mayor. “Will you take over now? Start the work of organizing the departure— we’ll need every minute we’ve got!”

Hubble said, “I think we’d better let Jon Arnol see the shaft.” Arnol’s technical crew came in from the ship. They studied the great heat shaft, with Gorr Holl and Magro and Arnol himself, while Kenniston and Hubble stood by and watched.

Arnol finally said, “It’ll do. It goes right down to the core. But the similar shafts in the other domed cities here— they’ll have to be exploded and sealed, first.”

Kenniston was startled. He hadn’t though of that “But that’ll take time—”

“No, not so long. A few of my men can whip around to them in the cruiser and do it quickly. Of course I brought Earth maps— and there are only half a dozen of the domed cities.”

Kenniston asked him. “How long will it take to get things ready here?”

Arnol said, “If we perform a miracle, we can be ready by noon tomorrow.”

Kenniston nodded. “I’ll do my damnedest to help you, and so will everybody here. Just let me have ten minutes, first.”

Ten minutes wasn’t much. Not much, for a man who has just been halfway across a universe to spend with his girl. But time was what they didn’t have, an inexorable limit was closing down on them every second, and even this little time he took to go to Carol was time cheated and stolen from the common need.

Yet in the face of this terrible decision that had been taken, this thing that they were going to do to Earth, he had to see her, to quiet her fears and reassure her as best he could. He thought she would want to take frightened refuge on the cruiser, when the moment came, and he could only hope that he could get her on it.

Carol was waiting, as though she had known he would come. And to Kenniston’s amazement, there was no fear in her face— it was bright with eagerness and hope, her eyes lighted in a way he had not seen since the old time.

“Ken, can it really be done?” she cried. “Will it really work, make Earth warmer?”

“We’re so sure that we’re gambling everything it will,” he said. “Of course, there’s always a chance of failure—”

She didn’t even listen to that. Her hands clutched his arms, her face had a breathless excitement, as she explained, “But that doesn’t matter! It’s worth running any chance, if it succeeds! If it lets us go back to Middletown—”

He saw the mist in her eyes, the hunger, the yearning, as she whispered, “Just to think of it— of going back to our own town, our own homes, our own people—”

Kenniston understood, now. Deep indeed was her homesickness for the old town, for the old way of life. So deep, that it had completely conquered the fear she might otherwise have felt

He took her in his arms and kissed her, and touched her hair, and he was thinking, She does love me— but only as part of a life that’s gone, not me alone, not just John Kenniston by himself, but the Kenniston of Middletown. And she’ll be happy with me again, if we can change our life back a little to what it was.

Why did that thought bring no joy? Why must he think of Varn Allan, tired and lonely, and yet courageously facing the wide universe, carrying a burden of duty too heavy for her?

Carol was asking him, “What was it like, Ken? Out there?”

He shook his head. “Strange— and hostile— and beautiful, in a terrible way.”

She said, “I think it changed you, a little. I think it would change anybody.”

And she shivered a little, as though even in the touch of him now was a freezing breath of alien deeps, a taint of unearthly worlds.

“No, Carol,” he said. “I’m not changed! But I can’t stay now. I have to get back— every minute is precious—”

As he hurried back to the others, Kenniston saw that New Middletown had become a rushing, surging swirl of excitement. Voices called to him, hands grabbed to delay him, men and women tried to reach him with questions. He was glad to rejoin the others around the lip of the great heat shaft.

Gorr Holl grinned his frightening grin at him. “Now, get ready to work!”

For what seemed an eternity, Kenniston worked. Machinists and sheet metal workers of Middletown were called in, every available man and piece of equipment. Great loads were brought in from the ship. Hammers rang with a deafening clamor, shaping metal on improvised forges. Riveting machines gave out their staccato thunder.

And gradually, painfully, shaped out of the sweat and effort of their bodies, a scaffolding of steel girders rose above the mouth of the great shaft

Magro labored with the technicians over the complicated and delicate electrofuses, and the timing devices, and the radio control that from a distance would drop and detonate the charge.

Kenniston had little time to think of anything but the work. Yet his mind reverted strangely often to Varn Allan, locked in her cabin aboard the cruiser, and he wondered what her thoughts were.

Morning came. The city was to be cleared by noon, and the men and women of Middletown were gathering their children in readiness. They would not take much out of the city with them. They would not need much, either way.

The cryptic black ovoid was wheeled into position by the shaft. And with it were brought four small round objects of a different look.

“Capper bombs, that we made in the ship’s laboratory on the way here,” explained Arnol. “They will drop an instant after the energy bomb and will explode in the shaft just before it detonates below, sealing the shaft to prevent backlash.”

Kenniston watched while the technicians set the capper bombs in their racks, one above the other, inside the frame of girders. The racks would be tripped by electronic relay, from the remote control box.

Kenniston felt an increasing dread, as the fateful moment loomed close. His dread was for the trusting thousands of Middletown, who accepted the powers of scientists with the same unquestioning faith with which men had once accepted the powers of wizards.

He hoped that, if the experiment were a disastrous failure, he would not survive to know it.

A crane had been rigged to handle the energy bomb. The electronics crew were working desperately to finish the intricate wiring of the rack mechanisms, the split second timing of the relays. One of the cantilever support girders had flawed, and steel workers were sweating away to replace it.

A few more hours now, and the thing would be done. By noon, or a little after, they would know whether Earth was to live or die.

Then one of Arnol’s men came running. He had run all the way from the starcruiser. He was breathless, and his eyes were wild.

He cried out to Arnol, “A message on the televisor from a Control Squadron! They say they are approaching Earth, and order us to cease operations at once!”