Edmond Hamilton: City at World's End

“I forgot about anti-freeze in the jeep’s radiator,” Kenniston said, inconsequentially.

It was that cold, now. The wind had the edge of a razor of ice, and even in their heavy coats they couldn’t stop shivering.

Hubble nodded. “People have to be warned about things like that. They don’t know yet how cold it will be tonight.”

Kenniston said hopelessly, “But after tonight—when the fuel and food are gone, what then? Is there any use struggling?”

“Why, no, if you look at it that way, there’s no use,” Hubble said. “Stop the jeep, and we’ll lie down beside it and freeze to death quickly and comfortably.”

Kenniston drove in silence for a moment. Then he said, “You’re right.”

“It isn’t completely hopeless,” Hubble said. “There may be other domed cities on Earth that aren’t dead. People, help, companionship. But we have to hang on, until we find them. That’s what I’ve been thinking about—how to hang on.” He added, as they neared the town, “Drive to City Hall first.”

The barricade at the end of Jefferson Street had a leaping bonfire beside it now. The police guards, and a little knot of uniformed National Guardsmen, had been staring out into the gathering darkness. They greeted the jeep excitedly, asking eager questions, their breath steaming on the frosty air. Hubble steadily refused answers. There would be announcements soon.

But the terrier-like little police captain who cleared the way through the group for them had his own questions before they left him. “They’re talking stuff around City Hall about the whole Earth being dead. What’s there to this story about falling through time?”

Hubble evaded. “We’re not sure of anything yet. It’ll take time to find out.”

The police captain asked shrewdly, “What did you find out there? Any sign of life?”

“Why, yes, there’s life out there,” Hubble said. “We didn’t meet any people yet, but there’s life.”

Furred and furtive life timidly searching for its scant food, Kenniston thought. The last life, the poor last creatures who were the inheritors of Earth.

Swept by an icy wind, South Street was as empty-looking as on a February night. But the red beer signs beckoned clamorously, and the bars seemed crowded.

Bundled-up children were hanging about the pond in Mill Street Park.

Kenniston realized the reason for their whooping excitement when he saw the thin ice that already sheeted the pond. The cold was already driving the crowd off Main Street. Yet puzzled-looking people still clotted at corners, gesturing, arguing.

Hubble said suddenly, “They have to be told, Ken. Now. Unless they know the truth, we’ll never get them to do the things that must be done.”

“They won’t believe,” Kenniston said. “Or if they do, it’ll likely start a panic.”

“Perhaps. We’ll have to risk that. I’ll get the Mayor to make the announcement over the radio station.”

When Kenniston started to follow Hubble out of the jeep at City Hall, the other stopped him.

“I won’t need you right now, Ken. And I know you’re worried about Carol. Go on and see she’s all right.”

Kenniston drove north through streets already almost deserted. The cold was deepening, and the green leaves of trees and shrubs hung strangely limp and lifeless. He stopped at his lodgings. His landlady’s torrent of questions he answered with a reference to a forthcoming announcement that sent her hurrying to her radio. He went up to his rooms and dug out a bottle of Scotch and drank off half a tumbler straight. Then he went to Carol’s house.

From its chimney, as from all the chimneys along the street, smoke was curling up. He found Carol and her aunt beside a fireplace blaze.

“It won’t be enough,” Kenniston told them. “We’ll need the furnace going. And the storm windows up.”

“In June?” wailed Mrs. Adams, shocked again by the crazy vagaries of weather.

Carol came and stood before him. “You know a lot you’re not telling us, Ken. Maybe you think you’re being kind, to spare us, but—I want to know.”

“As soon as I get the house fixed up,” said Kenniston heavily, “I’ll tell you what I can. Turn the radio on, Mrs. Adams, and keep it going.”

It seemed strange to him that the end of the world meant fussing with furnace-shakers and ashes in a cold basement, hauling out storm windows and swearing at catches that wouldn’t catch. He worked outside in almost total darkness, his hands stiff with the frigid chill.

As though she could no longer endure the waiting, Carol came out as Kenniston finished with the windows. He heard her low, startled cry and turned, alert for any danger. But she was standing still, looking at the eastern sky. An enormous dull-copper shield was rising there. The Moon—but a Moon many times magnified, swollen to monstrous size, its glaring craters and plains and mountain chains frighteningly clear to the unaided eye. Kenniston had a moment of vertigo, a feeling that that unnatural bulk was about to topple forward and crush them, and then Carol had him by the arms in such a painful grip that he forgot about the Moon.

“What is it, what’s happening?” she cried, and for the first time her voice had a shrill edge of hysteria.

Mrs. Adams called from the doorway to come quickly. “It’s the Mayor. He’s going to make an important announcement.”

Kenniston followed them inside. Yes, an important announcement, he thought. The most important ever.

World’s end should be announced by a voice of thunder speaking from the sky. By the trumpets of the archangels. Not by the scared, hesitating voice of Mayor Bertram Garris.

Even now, politician-like, Mayor Garris tried to shift responsibility a little. He told what he had to tell, but he prefixed it by, “Doctor Hubble and his associates are of the opinion that—” and, “It would appear from scientific evidence that—” But he told it. And the silence that followed in the living room of Mrs. Adams’ comfortable house was, Kenniston knew, only a part of the stunned silence that whelmed all Middletown.

Later, he knew, would come the outburst. But now they could not speak, they could only look at him with terrified faces pleading for a reassurance that he could not give.

Kenniston was aroused next morning by the sharp summons of the telephone. He awoke with chill, stiff limbs on the sofa where he had dozed fitfully during the night. He had fired the coal furnace half a dozen times, but the house was cold and white frost was thick on the storm windows. He stood up, heavy with sleep, oppressed with a sense of evil things but still mercifully vague, and stumbled mechanically toward the phone. It was not until he heard Hubble’s voice on the wire that his mind cleared and he remembered yesterday.

Hubble’s message was brief. “Will you get over here, Ken? The Keystone coal yard. I’m afraid there’s going to be trouble.” Kenniston said,

“Right away.” He hung up and stood where he was for a moment, painfully adjusting himself to the realization of how different today was from all the other days of his life. His hands and feet were numb, and his breath steamed faintly in the room. Presently he stirred himself, going hastily to the cellar, where he dug into the dwindling dregs of last winter’s coal.

Carol was there when he went back up. She wore her fur coat over her night things, and her eyes were heavy and shadowed, as though she had not slept much. “The phone woke me,” she said. “Is it…?”

She did not finish. It was ridiculous to inquire whether the call had brought bad news. They were all existing in a horror dream in which everything was bad.

He only told her that Hubble wanted him for a while. Then, a little hesitantly, he put his arms around her. “You’re all right now?” he asked.