Isaac Asimov - Nightfall (novel)

“Get it straight, all of you. It’s vital to snap Dovim just before totality and change the plate. Here, you—you—one of you to each camera. We need all the redundancy we can get. You all know about—about times of exposure—”

There was a breathless murmur of agreement.

Beenay passed a hand over his eyes. “Are the torches still burning? Never mind, I see them!” He was leaning hard against the back of a chair. “Now remember, don’t—don’t try to look for fancy shots. When the Stars appear, don’t waste time trying to get t-two of them in the scope field at a time. One is enough. And … and if you feel yourself going, get away from the camera. ”

At the door, Sheerin whispered to Theremon, “Take me to Athor. I don’t see him.”

The newspaperman did not answer immediately. The vague forms of the astronomers wavered and blurred, and the torches overhead had become only yellow splotches. The room was cold as death. Theremon felt Siferra’s hand graze his for a moment—only a moment—and then he was unable to see her.

“It’s dark,” he whimpered.

Sheerin held out his hands. “Athor.” He stumbled forward. “Athor!”

Theremon stepped after him and seized his arm. “Wait. I’ll take you.” Somehow he made his way across the room. He closed his eyes against the Darkness and his mind against the pounding chaos that was rising within it.

No one heard them or paid attention to them. Sheerin stumbled against the wall.

“Athor!”

“Is that you, Sheerin?”

“Yes. Yes. Athor?”

“What is it, Sheerin?” Athor’s voice, unmistakably.

“I just wanted to tell you—don’t worry about the mob—the doors are strong enough to hold them out—”

“Yes. Of course,” Athor muttered. He sounded, Theremon thought, as if he were many miles away.

Light-years away.

Suddenly another figure was among them, moving swiftly, a whirling flail of arms. Theremon thought it might be Yimot or even Beenay, but then he felt the rough fabric of a cultist’s robe and knew that it must be Folimun.

“The Stars!” Folimun cried. “Here come the Stars! Get out of my way!”

He’s trying to get to Beenay, Theremon realized. To destroy the blasphemous cameras.

“Watch—out—” Theremon called. But Beenay still sat huddled in front of the computers that activated the cameras, snapping away as the full Darkness swept down.

Theremon reached out. He caught hold of Folimun’s robe, yanked, twisted. Suddenly there were clutching fingers at his throat. He staggered crazily. There was nothing before him but shadows; the very floor beneath his feet lacked substance. A knee drove hard into his gut, and he grunted in a blinding haze of pain and nearly fell.

But after the first gasping moment of agony his strength returned. He seized Folimun by the shoulders, somehow swung him around, hooked his arm around the Apostle’s throat. At the same moment he heard Beenay croak, “I’ve got it! At your cameras, everyone!”

Theremon seemed conscious of everything at once. The entire world was streaming through his pounding mind—and everything was in chaos, everything was screaming with terror.

There came the strange awareness that the last thread of sunlight had thinned out and snapped.

Simultaneously he heard one last choking gasp from Folimun, and a heavy bellow of amazement from Beenay, and a queer little cry from Sheerin, a hysterical giggle that cut off in a rasp—

And a sudden silence, a strange, deadly silence, from outside.

Folimun had gone limp in his loosening grasp. Theremon peered into the Apostle’s eyes and saw the blankness of them, staring upward, mirroring the feeble yellow of the torches. He saw the bubble of froth upon Folimun’s lips and heard the low animal whimper in Folimun’s throat.

With the slow fascination of fear, he lifted himself on one arm and turned his eyes toward the bloodcurdling blackness of the sky.

Through it shone the Stars!

Not the one or two dozen of Beenay’s pitiful theory. There were thousands of them, blazing with incredible power, one next to another next to another next to another, an endless wall of them, forming a dazzling shield of terrifying light that filled the entire heavens. Thousands of mighty suns shone down in a soul-searing splendor that was more frighteningly cold in its awful indifference than the bitter wind that shivered across the cold, horribly bleak world.

They hammered at the roots of his being. They beat like flails against his brain. Their icy monstrous light was like a million great gongs going off at once.

My God, he thought. My God, my God, my God!

But he could not tear his eyes away from the hellish sight of them. He looked up through the opening in the dome, every muscle rigid, frozen, and stared in helpless wonder and horror at that shield of fury that filled the sky. He felt his mind shrinking down to a tiny cold point under that unceasing onslaught. His brain was no bigger than a marble, rattling around in the hollow gourd that was his skull. His lungs would not work. His blood ran backward in his veins.

At last he was able to close his eyes. He knelt for a time, panting, murmuring to himself, fighting to regain control.

Then Theremon staggered to his feet, his throat constricting him to breathlessness, all of the muscles of his body writhing in a tensity of terror and sheer fear beyond bearing. Dimly he was aware of Siferra somewhere near him, but he had to struggle to remember who she was. He had to work at remembering who he was. From below came the sound of a terrible steady pounding, a frightful hammering against the door—some strange wild beast with a thousand heads, struggling to get in—

It didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

He was going mad, and knew it, and somewhere deep inside a bit of sanity was screaming, struggling to fight off the hopeless flood of black terror. It was very horrible to go mad and know that you were going mad—to know that in a little minute you would be here physically and yet all the real essence that was you would be dead and drowned in the black madness. For this was the Dark—the Dark and the Cold and the Doom. The bright walls of the universe were shattered and their awful black fragments were falling down to crush and squeeze and obliterate him.

Someone came crawling toward him on hands and knees and jostled up against him. Theremon moved aside. He put his hands to his tortured throat and limped toward the flames of the torches that filled all his mad vision.

“Light!” he screamed.

Athor, somewhere, was crying, whimpering horribly like a terribly frightened child. “Stars—all the Stars—we didn’t know at all. We didn’t know anything. We thought six stars is a universe is something the Stars didn’t notice is Darkness forever and ever and ever and the walls are breaking in and we didn’t know we couldn’t know and anything—”

Someone clawed at the torch, and it fell and snuffed out. In that instant the awful splendor of the indifferent Stars leaped nearer to them.

From below came the sound of screams and shouts and breaking glass. The mob, crazed and uncontrollable, had broken into the Observatory.

Theremon looked around. By the awful light of the Stars he saw the dumbstruck figures of the scientists lurching about in horror. He made his way into the corridor. A fierce blast of chilly air coming through an open window struck him, and he stood there, letting it hit his face, laughing a little at the arctic intensity of it.

“Theremon?” a voice called behind him. “Theremon?”

He went on laughing.

“Look,” he said, after a time. “Those are the Stars. This is the Flame.”

On the horizon outside the window, in the direction of Saro City, a crimson glow began growing, strengthening in brightness, that was not the glow of a sun.