Isaac Asimov - Nightfall (novel)

“They’re out,” someone said.

“And so are the computers—cut in the backup power, somebody! Hey! Backup power!”

“Fast! The solarscope isn’t tracking! The camera shutter won’t work!”

Theremon said, “Why didn’t they prepare for something like this?”

But apparently they had. There came a thrumming from somewhere in the depths of the building; and then the screens of the computers scattered around the room winked back to life. The lamps in their sconces did not, though. Evidently they were on another circuit, and the emergency generator in the basement would not restore them to functioning.

The Observatory was practically in full Darkness.

Siferra’s hand still rested on Theremon’s wrist. He debated slipping a comforting arm around her shoulders.

Then Athor’s voice could be heard. “All right, give me a hand here! We’ll be okay in a minute!”

“What’s he got?” Theremon asked.

“Athor’s brought out the lights,” came the voice of Yimot.

Theremon turned to stare. It wasn’t easy to see anything, in such a low light level, but in another moment his eyes grew somewhat accustomed to it. There were half a dozen foot-long inch-thick rods cradled in Athor’s arms. He glared over them at the staff members.

“Faro! Yimot! Come here and help me.”

The young men trotted to the Observatory director’s side and took the rods from him. One by one, Yimot held them up, while Faro, in utter silence, scraped a large clumsy match into spluttering life with the air of one performing the most sacred rite of a religious ritual. As he touched the flame to the upper end of each of the rods, the little blaze hesitated a moment, playing futilely about the tip, until a sudden crackling flare cast Athor’s lined face into yellow highlights. A spontaneous cheer ran through the great room.

The rod was tipped by six inches of wavering flame!

“Fire?” Theremon wondered. “In here? Why not use godlights, or something?”

“We discussed it,” said Siferra. “But godlights are too faint. They’re all right for a small bedroom, just a little cozy presence to get you through the sleeping-period, but for a place this size—”

“And downstairs? Are they lighting torches there too?”

“I think so.”

Theremon shook his head. “No wonder the city’s going to burn this evening. If even you people are resorting to something as primitive as fire to hold back the Darkness—”

The light was dim, dimmer even than the most tenuous sunlight. The flames reeled crazily, giving birth to drunken, swaying shadows. The torches smoked devilishly and smelled like a bad day in the kitchen. But they emitted yellow light.

There was something joyous about yellow light, Theremon thought. Especially after nearly four hours of somber, dwindling Dovim.

Siferra warmed her hands at the nearest, regardless of the soot that gathered upon them in a fine, gray powder, and muttered ecstatically to herself. “Beautiful! Beautiful! I never realized before what a wonderful color yellow is.”

But Theremon continued to regard the torches suspiciously. He wrinkled his nose at the rancid odor and said, “What are those things made out of?”

“Wood,” she replied.

“Oh, no, they’re not. They aren’t burning. The top inch is charred and the flame just keeps shooting up out of nothing.”

“That’s the beauty of it. This is a really efficient artificiallight mechanism. We made a few hundred of them, but most went to the Sanctuary, of course. You see”—she turned and dusted off her blackened hands—“you take the pithy core of coarse water reeds, dry them thoroughly, and soak them in animal grease. Then you set fire to it and the grease burns, little by little. These torches will burn for almost half an hour without stopping. Ingenious, isn’t it?”

“Wonderful,” Theremon said dourly. “Very modern. Very impressive.”

But he couldn’t remain in this room any longer. The same restlessness that had led him to come up here now afflicted him again. The reek of the torches was bad enough; but also there was the cold blast of air coming in through the open panel in the dome, a harsh wintry flow, the icy finger of night. He shivered. He wished that he and Sheerin and Beenay hadn’t finished off that whole bottle of miserable wine so quickly.

“I’m going to go back below,” he said to Siferra. “There’s nothing to see here if you aren’t an astronomer.”

“All right. I’ll go with you.”

In the flickering yellow light he saw a smile appear on her face, unmistakable this time, unambiguous.

They made their way down the clattering spiral staircase to the lower room. Not much had changed down there. The people on the lower level had lit torches there too. Beenay was busy at three computers at once, processing data from the telescopes upstairs. Other astronomers were doing other things, all of them incomprehensible to Theremon. Sheerin was wandering around by himself, a lost soul. Folimun had carried his chair directly beneath a torch and continued reading, lips moving in the monotonous recital of invocations to the Stars.

Through Theremon’s mind ran phrases of description, bits and pieces of the article he had planned to write for tomorrow’s Saro City Chronicle. Several times earlier in the evening the writing machine in his brain had clicked on the same way—a perfectly methodical, perfectly conscientious, and, as he was only too well aware, perfectly meaningless procedure. It was wholly preposterous to imagine that there was going to be an issue of the Chronicle tomorrow.

He exchanged glances with Siferra.

“The sky,” she murmured.

“I see it, yes.”

It had changed tone again. Now it was darker still, a horrible deep purple-red, a monstrous color, as though some enormous wound in the fabric of the heavens were gushing fountains of blood.

The air had grown, somehow, denser. Dusk, like a palpable entity, entered the room, and the dancing circle of yellow light about the torches etched itself into ever sharper distinction against the gathering grayness beyond. The odor of smoke here was just as cloying as it had been upstairs. Theremon found himself bothered even by the little chuckling sounds that the torches made as they burned, and by the soft pad of Sheerin’s footsteps as the heavyset psychologist circled round and round the table in the middle of the room.

It was getting harder to see, torches or no.

So now it begins, Theremon thought. The time of total Darkness—and the coming of the Stars.

For an instant he thought it might be wisest to look for some cozy closet to lock himself into until it was all over. Stay out of the way, avoid the sight of the Stars, hunker down and wait for things to become normal again. But a moment’s contemplation told him what a bad idea that was. A closet—any sort of enclosed place—would be dark too. Instead of being a safe snug harbor, it might become a chamber of terrors far more frightening than the rooms of the Observatory.

And then too, if something big was going to happen, something that would reshape the history of the world, Theremon didn’t want to be tucked away with his head under his arm while it was going on. That would be cowardly and foolish; and it might be something he would regret all the rest of his life. He had never been the sort of man to hide from danger, if he thought there might be a story in it. Besides, he was just selfconfident enough to believe that he would be able to withstand whatever was about to occur—and there was just enough skepticism left in him so that at least part of him wondered whether anything significant was going to happen at all.

He stood still, listening to Siferra’s occasional indrawn breaths, the quick little respirations of someone trying to retain composure in a world that was all too swiftly retreating into the shadow.