Gordon Dickson: Hour of the Horde

“Miles!” said Marie, her fingers tightening on his fist. “How terrible!”

“No,” said Miles, “not terrible.” He looked deeply into her brown eyes. “Wonderful. Marie, don’t you understand! I climbed up that cliff!”

She stared back at him, baffled.

“I know, you said that,” she said. “And you must have climbed awfully fast—”

“Yes, but that’s not it!” said Miles. “Listen! I climbed up that cliff—and I had only one arm. Only one arm and one hand to climb with!”

She still stared, without understanding.

“Of course,” she said. “That’s right, you only had one arm—” She broke off suddenly, on a quick intake of breath.

“Yes. You see?” Miles heard his own voice, sounding almost triumphant. “Marie, a cliff like that can’t be climbed by a one-handed man. You need to hold with one hand while you move the other to a fresh handhold, and so on. I came back there the next day and tried to see if I could climb it again. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t even get started. The only way I could possibly have done it would have been to balance on my feet alone while I changed handholds.”

He nodded at the clippings on the place mat before her.

“To climb like that,” he said, “I’d have needed the strength and speed written about in those news clippings.”

She gazed at him, her face a little pale.

“You don’t remember how you did it?” she asked at last.

He shook his head.

“It’s all sort of a blur,” he said. “I remember wanting to go up the cliff, and I remember climbing up it, somehow, very quickly and easily, and the next thing I knew, I was facing the kid with my painting.” He stopped, but she said nothing. “You see why I lost my head with you last night? I thought you understood that what I was after was something that didn’t leave any strength or time left over for the rest of the world. I thought you understood it without being told. It wasn’t until after that I began to see how unfair I was being in expecting you to understand something like this without knowing what I’d been through and what I was after.”

He pulled his hand out from under her now-quiet fingers and took her hand instead in his own grasp.

“But you understand now, don’t you?” he asked. “You do, don’t you?”

To his surprise she shivered suddenly, and her face grew even more pale.

“Marie!” he said. “Don’t you understand—”

“Oh, I do. I understand. Of course, Miles.” Her hand turned so that her fingers grasped his. “It’s not that. It’s just that knowing this now somehow makes it all that much worse.”

“Worse?” He stared at her.

“I mean”—her voice trembled—“all this business about the sun and the ship and the two men, or whatever they are. I’ve had a feeling from the beginning that it all meant something terrible for us—for you and me. And now, somehow, your telling me this makes me even more afraid.”

“What of?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” He could feel her shiver again, just barely feel it, but the shiver was there. “Something… something that’s going to come between us—”

From across the room a sudden, measured voice interrupted her. Looking in that direction, Miles saw that two men had just entered the restaurant and sat down at a table against the farther wall. On the table one of them placed a portable radio, and even with the volume turned down, its voice carried across to the table where he sat with Marie. Anger exploded in him.

“I’ll make them turn that thing down!” he said, starting to get to his feet. But Marie caught hold of his arm.

“No,” she said. “Sit down. Please, sit down, Miles. Listen—”

“By television and radio,” the radio was saying. “We now bring you the President of the United States, speaking to you directly from the East Room of the White House…” The musical strains of “Hail to the Chief” followed closely upon the announcer’s words. Marie got quickly to her feet.

“Miles, quickly,” she said. “Let’s find a television set.”

“Marie—” he began harshly, with the backwash of his anger at the two men and the radio across the room in his voice. Then he saw the peculiar rigidity of her face, and a feeling of uneasiness washed in to drown the fury.

“All right,” he said, getting to his feet in turn, “if you want to.”

She hurried out of the restaurant, and he had to stretch his legs to keep up with her. Outside, in the sudden glare of red sunlight, she paused and looked, almost frantically, right and left.

“Where?” she asked. “Oh, where, Miles?”

“The nearest bar, I suppose,” he said. Looking about himself, he spotted the neon sign of one, palely lit and violet-colored in the red sunlight, half a block down the street from them. “This way.”

They went quickly down the half block and into the bar. Within, no one was moving—neither bartenders nor customers. They all were sitting or standing still as carvings, staring at the large television set set up high on a dark wooden shelf at the inner end of the bar. From that ledge, the lined, rectangular face of the President of the United States looked out. Miles heard the tail end of his sentence as they entered.

“For simultaneous announcement to all countries of the world,” said the slow, pausing voice in the same heavy tones they had heard a dozen times before, speaking on smaller issues of the country and the world. “These two visitors also supplied us with a film strip to be used in conjunction with the announcement. First, here is a picture of our two friends from the civilization of worlds at the center of our galaxy.”

The rectangular face disappeared, to be replaced by the still image of two men in what seemed to be gray business suits, standing before a window in some sort of lounge or reception room—probably a room in one of the UN buildings, Miles thought.

It was as the radio announcer had said earlier. There was nothing about the two to distinguish them from any other humans. Their noses were a little long, the skin of their faces a little dark, and there was a suspicion of a mongoloid fold above the eyes. Otherwise, they might have been encountered on the streets of any large city in the world, east or west, without the slightest suspicion that they had come from anywhere off the planet.

“These gentlemen,” the Presidential voice went on slowly, “have explained to the representatives of the nations of our world that our galaxy, that galaxy of millions upon millions of stars, of which our sun is a minor star out near the edge”—the figures of the two men disappeared and were replaced by what looked like a glowing spiral of dust floating against a black background—“will shortly be facing attack by a roving intergalactic race which periodically preys upon those island universes like our galaxy which dot that intergalactic space.

“Their civilization, which represents many worlds in many solar systems in toward the center of the galaxy, has taken the lead in forming a defensive military force which will attempt to meet these predators at the edge of our galaxy and turn them aside from their purpose. They inform us that if the predators are not turned aside, over ninety percent of the life on the inhabited worlds of our galaxy will be captured and literally processed for food to feed this nomadic and rapacious civilization. Indeed, it is the constant need to search for sustenance for their overwhelming numbers that keeps them always on the move between and through the galaxies, generation succeeding generation in rapacious conquest.”

Suddenly the image of something like a white-furred weasel, with hands on its two upper limbs and standing erect on its two hind limbs, filled the television screen. Beside it was the gray outline of a man, and it could be seen that the creature came about shoulder-high on the outline.