Edmond Hamilton: City at World's End

“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 advice?”

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.