Edmond Hamilton: City at World's End

Kenniston felt the impact of the news as a catastrophe crushing all their desperate hopes. He stood sagging, looking at the technicians who stared frozenly back.

Like an ominous echo, Varn Allan’s warning came back into his mind.

“You cannot fight Federation law!”

But Jon Arnol, raging at seeing the dream of a lifetime threatened at this last moment, rushed forward to the messenger.

He grabbed the man’s collar. “Did you think to use a distance gauge on the message from those ships?”

The man nodded hastily. “Yes. The readings were—”

“The devil with readings! How far from Earth are those ships?”

“I’d estimate that they’re three or four hours away, if they come at full speed.”

“They’ll come at full speed, don’t worry,” said Arnol grimly. His face was a sweating mask, the bones of it standing out gauntly, as he turned to the others. “Can we be ready in time?”

“The rack-trip controls are in,” answered a technician. “It’ll take an hour or more to prepare the timers.”

Kenniston had regained a little hope, when he heard of the time limit they faced.

“Surely we can be ready in time, Arnol! I’ll start them moving out the people, at once!”

Mayor Bertram Garris was not far to seek. Round-eyed and pale with worry, the pudgy Mayor had been watching their work around the great shaft.

Kenniston ran up to him. “Get the people started out at once, to the ridge of the hills. Only the sick and old to go in cars—the rest must walk. We can’t risk a traffic tangle now!”

“Yes,” gasped the Mayor. “Yes, right away.” He caught Kenniston’s arm, looking past him at the black ovoid bulk of the bomb. As though ashamed to show the terror he felt, Garris stammered, “How much danger is there, Kenniston?”

Kenniston gave him a reassuring shake. “Don’t worry. Go along and get those people out of the city!” He wished he could find reassurance himself.

The next hours were nightmarish. Working under pressure, grudging every second, it seemed that everything conspired against them. The metal, the mechanisms, the very tools seemed determined to betray them.

And yet, at last, the dark shape of the energy bomb swung it its rack over the mouth of the shaft. The last of the timers was set, and it was done.

“Get your equipment ready,” Kenniston told them tautly. “Let’s go. There’s still a lot to be done.”

He went out with Hubble and Arnol and the rest. The city was as he had first seen it—empty, still, lifeless. The people had gone. As he passed out the portal he could see the dark, trailing mass of them already far across the plain, the thousands streaming slowly up the slope of the distant ridge.

Anxiously he scanned the sky. There was no sign yet of the Control Squadron.

Arnold sent his technical crew ahead to the ridge, with the remote control mechanisms and recording instruments. Gorr Holl and Margo and Hubble went with them. Then Kenniston and Arnol ran toward the starcruiser.

There was a little knot of people standing beside it in the dust and cold—the Middletowners who were leaving Earth.

Kenniston stared at them in amazement. Out of the two hundred, only a score had actually come to the cruiser.

Arnol told them curtly, “You can come aboard now.”

A few of them picked up their bundles and stood irresolutely glancing from their companions to Kenniston and back, wanting to speak. Then they turned and went aboard.

Kenniston counted. Two men, three women, and a child.

“Well,” he snapped at those who were left, “what are you waiting for? Get aboard!”

“I guess,” said one man, and then stopped to clear his throat. “I guess I’d rather stay with all the rest.”

He grabbed his bundle and started away, hurrying after the distant crowd.

Another and another followed him until all were gone, a small hastening group in the immense desolation of the plain.

Arnol smiled. “Among your people, Kenniston, even the cowards are brave. It must be even harder, in some ways, for those who have decided to go.”

They entered the cruiser, and released Mathis and Norden Lund and Varn Allan from their locked cabins. Varn Allan did not speak, but the Coordinator said icily, “So you are really going to do it?”

“We are,” said Arnol. “My chief pilot is about to take this ship off.

You’ll be safe.”

Norden Lund said bitterly, “I hope it blows you all to fragments! But even if it doesn’t, even if it succeeds, you won’t win. You’ll still have Federation law to face. We’ll see to that!”

“I don’t doubt it. And now we must go.”

He turned, but Kenniston paused, still looking at Varn Allan. Her face was a little pale but in it was no such anger as Lund’s. She was looking at him with a searching, level gaze.

He wanted to speak to her, he wanted to voice something that was in him, but he could find no words. He could only say, finally, “I’m sorry things had to be this way, Varn. Goodbye—”

“Wait, Kenniston.”

He stopped, and she came up to him, pale and calm, her blue eyes very steady on his face. She said, “I’m staying here, while you do this thing.”

He stared at her, dumb with astonishment. And he heard Mathis exclaim, “Are you mad? What are you thinking of?”

She told Mathis slowly, “I am Administrator of this world’s sector. If my mistakes have caused this crisis, I will not evade its consequences. I will stay.”

Lund cried to Mathis, “She’s not thinking of her responsibility! She’s thinking of this primitive, this Kenniston!”

She turned, as though to make furious reply. But she did not speak.

She looked instead at Kenniston, her face white and strained.

Mathis was saying to her coldly, “I will not order you to come with us. But be sure that your conduct will be remembered when your fitness for office is re-examined.”

She bowed silently to that, and turned and went out of the ship. And Kenniston, following her, felt a wondering, incredulous emotion that he dared not let himself recognize.

They stepped out into the red sunlight, and with a soft humming the starcruiser mounted into the sky and was lost to view.

The last, dark, trailing mass of people was disappearing over the ridge, as Kenniston and Varn Allan and Arnol started that way.

“Hurry!” urged Arnol. “Even yet, we might be too late—”

When they reached the ridge, Gorr Holl and Margo and Hubble were waiting there with the young technicians and their apparatus. And Gorr Holl uttered a rumbling exclamation when he saw them.

“I thought you’d stay, Varn!”

Her head went up and she said half angrily, “But why should you—”

She stopped abruptly, and was silent a moment, then asked, “How soon?”

“We’re all set now,” the big Capellan answered. Kenniston saw that the radio control box and the panels of strange instruments were ready. He glanced at Arnol.

The scientist’s face was filmed with sweat. All the color had gone from it, and his hands shook. In this moment, he was facing the climax of his whole life, all the years and the pain and the effort He said in a strangely toneless voice, “You’d better warn them, Kenniston. Now.”

Below them, on the far slope of the ridge, waited the thousands of Middletown’s people.

Kenniston went down toward them. He cried out to them, and his voice carried thin and unreal on the chill wind, across the dead rocks and the dust.

“Keep down behind the ridge! Pass the word to keep down! We’re going to blow it!”

They looked toward him, all the massed white faces pale in the dim light of the Sun—the dying Sun that watched them with its red uncaring eye.