Edmond Hamilton - City at World's End

No human being could ever go out there, and still be like us.”

Kenniston was startled to hear his own thoughts repeated in her voice, but he said reassuringly. “They can’t have changed too much. And the others, the humanoids—they may look queer, but they’re our friends.”

It was what Mayor Garris had told his people. “Whatever these newcomers are like, they’ve got to be treated right, and there’s a jail cell waiting for anyone who makes trouble with them. Do you all get that? No matter what they look like, act as though they’re people!”

Hearing is one thing, seeing another. And now Carol’s fingers closed tight on Kenniston’s hand and her body shrank against his, and the crowd who had gathered to watch this second entrance of the incredible into their midst, stared and whispered and moved uneasily.

One of these aliens was big and bulky, walking stodgily on massive legs. His wrinkled gray skin hung in heavy folds. His face was broad and flat and featureless, with little, wise old eyes that glanced with shrewd understanding at the staring, silent crowd.

Two were lean and dark, moving like conspirators wrapped in black cloaks. Their narrow heads were hairless, and their glance was bright and full of madcap humor. Kenniston realized with a shock that the cloaks they wore were wings, folded close around their bodies.

There was another, who had peculiar gliding grace that hinted of unguessed strength and speed, and whose bearing was very cool and proud. He was handsome, with a mane of snow-white fur sweeping back from his brow, and there was only a faint touch of cruelty in his broad cheekbones and straight, smiling mouth.

These four, and Gorr Holl were manlike but not men, children of far worlds walking with easy confidence on old Earth.

“They’re horrible,” whispered Carol, drawing away. “Unholy! How can you stand to be near them?”

Kenniston was fighting down much the same reaction. The Middletowners gaped and muttered and drew back, partly from a creeping fear of the unnatural, partly from sheer racial resentment. It was hard enough to accept the fact that such non-human people existed at all. It was harder still to accept them as equals. Beast was beast and man was man, and there was no middle ground…

But not to Middletown’s children. They ignored the bronzed spacemen and clustered in droves around the humanoids. They had none of their elders’ preconceptions. These were creatures out of fairy tales come alive, and the children loved them.

Piers Eglin came up to Kenniston. Kenniston said. “Hubble has the main generator rooms opened up. He’s waiting for us there. I’ll take you.”

Eglin sighed. “Thank you,” he said. He seemed desperately unhappy.

Kenniston said a hasty goodbye to Carol, and fell in beside the little historian.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“My orders,” said Piers Eglin. “I am to interpret, and to teach some of you our language.” He shook his head dismally. “It will take days, and that old city of yours—I should be in it every moment.”

Kenniston smiled. “I’ll try to learn fast,” he said.

He led the way to where Hubble was waiting by the generators, and behind him he heard the eerie footfalls of the creatures who were not human, and it was incredible to him that he was going to have to work beside these weird beings who gave him a cold shiver every time he came near them. Surely they could not behave like men!

They went into the building, into an enormous room filled with the towering, dusty shapes of armored mechanisms that he and Hubble had not been able to make head nor tail of. The senior scientist joined them, looking askance at the humanoids.

Kenniston said, “We supposed that these were the main generators.”

He spoke to Pier Eglin, since Eglin must do the translating, but he was facing Gorr Holl and the four others who stood beside him. “If they can really repair and start them, we…”

His voice trailed off. The five pairs of alien eyes regarded him, the five alien bodies breathed and stirred, and the crest of white fur on the proud one’s skull lifted in a way so beastlike that it was impossible for Kenniston to pretend any longer to accept them as human. Doubt, distrust, and just a hint of fear crept into his face. Piers Eglin frowned a little, and started to speak.

With the suddenness of a bat darting out in the evening, one of the lean dark brothers whipped wide his wings and made a little spring at Kenniston, uttering a cry that sounded very much like “Boo!”

Kenniston leaped backward, startled almost out of his skin. And the lean one promptly doubled up with laughter, which was echoed by the others. Even the large grey creature smiled. They all looked at Kenniston and laughed, and presently Hubble got it and began to laugh too, and after that there was nothing for Kenniston to do but join in. The joke was on him, at that. They had known perfectly well how he felt about them, and the lean one had paid him back in his own coin, but with humor and not malice.

And somehow, after they had laughed together, the tension was gone.

Laughter is a human sort of thing. Kenniston mumbled something, and Gorr Holl slapped his shoulder, nearly putting him on his face.

But when he approached the dusty generators, Gorr Holl changed abruptly from a shambling, good-natured creature into a highly efficient technician. He operated hidden catches, and had a shield panel off one of the big mechanisms before Kenniston saw how he did it. He drew a flat pocket flash from a pouch on his harness, and used it for light as he poked his hairy bullet-shaped head inside the machine. His low, rumbling comments came out of the bowels of the generator. Finally Gorr Holl withdrew his head from the machine, and spoke disgustedly.

Eglin translated, “He says this old installation is badly designed and in poor condition. He says he would like to get his hands on the technician who would do a job like this.”

Kenniston laughed again. The big, furry Capellan sounded like a blood brother to every repair technician on old Earth. While Gorr Holl examined the other generators, Piers Eglin fastened onto Hubble and Kenniston, deluging them with questions about their own remote time.

They managed at last to ask a question of their own, one that was big in their minds but that they’d had no chance to ask before.

“Why is Earth lifeless now? What happened to all its people?”

Piers Eglin said, “Long ago, Earth’s people went out to other worlds.

Not so much to the other planets of this System—the outer ones were cold, and watery Venus had too small a land surface—but to the worlds of other stars, across the galaxy.”

“But surely some of them would have stayed on Earth?” said Kenniston.

Eglin shrugged. “They did, until it grew so cold that even in these domed cities life was difficult. Then the last of them went, to the worlds of warmer Suns.”

Kenniston said, “In our day, we hadn’t even reached the Moon.” He felt a little dazed by it all. “… to the worlds of other stars, across the galaxy…”

Gorr Holl finally came back to them and rumbled lengthily. Eglin translated, “He thinks they can get the generators going. But it’ll take time, and he’ll need materials—copper, magnesium, some platinum—”

They listened carefully, and Hubble nodded and said, “We can get all those for you in old Middletown.”

“The old city?” cried Piers Eglin eagerly. “I will go with you! Let us start at once!”

The little historian was afire for a look at the old town. He fidgeted until he and Hubble and Kenniston, in a jeep; were driving across the cold ocher wasteland.

“I shall see, with my own eyes, a town of the pre-atomic age!” he exulted.