Edmond Hamilton: City at World's End

Police Chief Kimer grasped with pathetic eagerness at the necessity of coping with a problem he could comprehend. “I can put men and barricades at all the street-ends, to see to that.”

“And our local National Guard company is assembling now at the Armory,” put in Mayor Garris. His voice was shaky, his eyes still stunned.

Hubble asked, “What about the city’s utilities?”

“Everything seems to be working—power, gas and water,” the Mayor answered.

They would, Kenniston thought. Middletown’s coal-steam electric generation plant, and its big watertower, and its artificial gas plant, had all come through time with them.

“They, and all food and fuel, must be rationed,” Hubble was saying.

“Proclaim it as an emergency measure.”

Mayor Garris seemed to feel a little better at being told what to do.

“Yes. We’ll do that at once.” Then he asked, timidly, “Isn’t there any way of getting in touch with the rest of the country?”

“The rest of the country,” Hubble reminded him, “is some millions of years in the dead past. You’ll have to keep remembering that.”

“Yes—of course. I keep forgetting,” said the Mayor. He shivered, and then took refuge in the task set him. “We’ll get busy at once.”

When the car had borne the two away, Hubble looked haggardly at his silent colleagues.

“They’ll talk, of course. But if the news spreads slowly, it won’t be so bad. It’ll give us a chance to find out a few things first.”

Crisci began to laugh, a little shrilly. “If it’s true, this is a side-splitting joke! This whole town flung into the end of the world and not even knowing it yet! All these fifty thousand people, not guessing yet that their Cousin Agnes in Indianapolis has been dead and dust for millions of years!”

“And they mustn’t guess,” Hubble said. “Not yet. Not until we know what we face in this future Earth.”

He went on, thinking aloud. “We need to see what’s out there, outside the town, before we can plan anything. Kenniston, will you get a jeep and bring it back here? Bring spare gasoline, and some warm clothing, too. We’ll need it out there. And Ken—bring two guns.”

Kenniston walked back down Mill Street, toward the garage where he had left his car a billion years ago when such things were still important.

He knew they kept a jeep there for road service, and he knew also that they would not have any need for it now because there were no longer any roads. He wished he had a topcoat. At the rate the air was chilling off it would be below zero by nightfall.

Quite literally, he began to feel as though he were walking in a nightmare. Above him was an alien sky, and the red light of it lay strangely on the familiar walls of brick. But the walls themselves were not altered.

That, he decided, was the really shocking thing—the drab everyday appearance of the town. When time and space gape open for the first time in history, and you go through into the end of the world, you expect everything to be different. Middletown did not look different, except for that eerie light.

There were a lot of people on Mill Street, but then, there always were a good many. It was the street of dingy factories and small plants that connected Middletown with the shabby South Side, and there were always buses, cars, pedestrians on it Perhaps the bumbling traffic was a bit more disorganized than usual, and the groups of pedestrians tended to clot together and chatter more excitedly, but that was all.

Kenniston knew a number of these people, by now, but he did not stop to talk to them. He was somehow unwilling to meet their eyes. He felt guilty, to know the truth where they did not. What if he should tell them, what would they do? It was a terrible temptation, to rid himself of his secret. His tongue ached to cry it out.

There were people like old Mike Witter, the fat red-faced watchman who sat all day in his little shack at the railroad crossing, with his small rat-terrier curled up by his feet. The terrier was crouching now, shivering, her eyes bright and moist with fear, as though she guessed what the humans did not, but old Mike was as placid as ever.

“Cold, for June!” he hailed Kenniston. “Coldest I ever saw. I’m going to build a fire. Never saw such a freak storm!”

There was the knot of tube-mill workers at the next corner, in front of Joe’s Lunch. They were arguing, and two or three of them that Kenniston knew turned toward him.

“Hey, there’s Mr. Kenniston, one of the guys at the Industrial Lab.

Maybe he’d know!” Their puzzled faces, as they asked, “Has a war started? Have you guys heard anything?”

Before he could answer, one asserted loudly, “Sure it’s a war. Didn’t someone say an atomic bomb went off overhead and missed fire? Didn’t you see the flash?”

“Hell, that was only a big lightning flash.”

“Are you nuts? It nearly blinded me.”

Kenniston evaded them. “Sorry, boys—I don’t know much more than you. There’ll be some announcement soon.”

As he went on, a bewildered voice enquired, “But if a war’s started, who’s the enemy?”

The enemy, Kenniston thought bitterly, is a country that perished and was dust—how many millions of years ago?

There were loafers on the Mill Street bridge, staring down at the muddy bed of the river and trying to explain the sudden vanishing of its water. In the beer-parlors that cheered the grimy street, there were more men than was normal for this hour. Kenniston could hear them as he passed, their voices high, excited, a little quarrelsome, but with no edge of terror.

A woman called across the street from an upstairs flat window, to the other housewife who was sweeping the opposite front porch. “I’m missing every one of my radio stories! The radio won’t get anything but the Middletown station today!”

Kenniston was glad when he got to Bud’s Garage. Bud Martin, a tall thin young man with a smudge of grease on his lip, was reassembling a carburetor with energetic efficiency and criticizing his harried young helper at the same time.

“Haven’t got to your car yet, Mr. Kenniston,” he protested. “I said around five, remember?”

Kenniston shook his head and told Martin what he wanted. Martin shrugged. “Sure, you can hire the jeep. I’m too busy to answer road calls today, anyway.” He did not seem particularly interested in what Kenniston intended to do with the jeep. The carburetor resisted and he swore at it.

A man in a floury baker’s apron stuck his head into the garage. “Hey, Bud, hear the news? The mills just shut down—all of them.”

“Ah, nuts,” said Martin. “I been hearing news all morning. Guys running in and out with the damnedest stories. I’m too busy to listen to ’em.”

Kenniston thought that probably that was the answer to the relative calm in Middletown. The men, particularly, had been too busy. The strong habit patterns of work, a job at hand to be done, had held them steady so far.

He sighed. “Bud,” he said, “I’m afraid this story is true.”

Martin looked at him sharply and then groaned. “Oh, Lord, another recession! This’ll ruin business—and me with the garage only half paid for!”

What was the use of telling him, Kenniston thought, that the mills had been hastily shut down to conserve precious fuel, and that they would never open again.

He filled spare gasoline cans, stacked them in the back of the jeep, and drove northward.

Topcoats were appearing on Main Street now. There were knots of people on street corners, and people waiting for buses were looking up curiously at the red Sun and dusky sky. But the stores were open, housewives carried bulging shopping-bags, kids went by on bicycles. It wasn’t too changed, yet. Not yet.