Clifford Simak - Ring Around the Sun

"Seems to me," the neighbor said, "I've seen you somewhere."

"You must be mistaken. I've never been East before."

"Your voice…"

Vickers struck with all the power he had, starting the fist down low and bringing it up in a vicious arc, twisting his body to line it up behind the blow, to put the weight of his body behind the balled-up fist.

He hit the man in the face and the impact of flesh on flesh, of bone on bone, made a whiplike sound and the man went down.

Vickers did not wait. He spun away and went racing for the gate. He almost tore the car door from its hinges getting in. He thumbed the starter savagely and trod down on the gas and the car leaped down the street, spraying the bushes with gravel thrown by its frightened wheels.

His arm was numb from the force of the blow he'd struck and when he held his hand down in front of the lighted dash panel, he saw that his knuckles were lacerated and slowly dripping blood.

He had a few minutes' start; the neighbor might take that long to shake himself into a realization of what had happened. But once he was on his feet, once he could reach a phone, they'd start hunting him, screaming through the night on whining tires, with shotgun and rope and rifle.

And he had to get away. Now he was on his own.

Eb was dead, attacked without warning, surely, without a chance to escape to the other earth. Eb had been shot down or strung up or kicked to death. And Eb had been his only contact.

Now there was no one but himself and Ann.

And Ann, God willing, didn't even know that she was a mutant.

He struck the main highway and swung down the valley, pouring on the gas.

There was an old abandoned road some ten miles down the highway, he remembered. A man could duck a car in there and wait until it was safe to double back again. Although doubling back probably wouldn't be too safe.

Maybe it would be better to take to the hills and hide out until the hunt blew over.

No, he told himself, there was nothing safe.

And he had no time to waste.

He had to get to Crawford, had to head Crawford off the best way that he could. And he had to do it alone.

The abandoned road was there, halfway up a long, steep hill. He wheeled the car into it and bumped along it for a hundred feet or so, then got out and walked back to the road.

Hidden behind a clump of trees, he watched cars go screaming past, but there was no way to know if any of them might be hunting him.

Then a rickety old truck came slowly up the hill, howling with the climb.

He watched it, an idea growing in his mind.

When it came abreast, he saw that it was closed in the back only with a high end gate.

He ran out into the traffic lane and raced after it, caught up with it and leaped. His fingers caught the top of the end gate and he heaved himself clear of the road, scrambled over the gate and clambered over the piled up boxes stacked inside the truck.

He huddled there, staring out at the road behind him. A hunted animal, he thought; hunted by men who once had been his friends.

Ten miles or so down the road someone stopped the truck. A voice asked: "You see anyone up the road a ways? Walking, maybe?"

"Hell, no," the truck driver said. "I ain't seen a soul."

"We're looking for a mutant. Figure he must have ditched his car."

"I thought we had all of them cleaned out," the driver said.

"Not all. Maybe he took to the hills. If he did, we've got him."

"You'll be stopped again," another voice said. "We phoned ahead both ways. They got road blocks set up."

"I'll keep my eyes peeled," the driver said.

"You got a gun?"

"No."

"Well, keep watching anyway."

When the truck rolled on, Vickers saw the two men standing in the road. The moonlight glinted on the rifles that they carried.

He set to work cautiously, moving some of the boxes, making himself a hideout.

He needn't have bothered.

The truck was stopped at three other road blocks. At none of them did anyone do more than flash a light inside the truck. They seemed half-hearted in their search, convinced that they wouldn't find a mutant that easily, perhaps thinking that this one had already vanished, as so many other forewarned mutants had done.

But Vickers could not allow himself to take that avenue of escape. He had a job to do on this Earth.

HE knew what he would find at the store, but he went there just the same, for it was the only place he could think of where he might establish contact. But the huge show window was broken and the house that had stood there was smashed as utterly as if it had stood in a cyclone's path.

The mob had done its work.

He stood in front of the gaping, broken window and stared at the wreckage of the house and remembered the day that he and Ann had stopped on their way to the bus station. The house, he recalled, had had a flying duck weather vane and a sun dial had stood in the yard and there had been a car standing in the driveway, but the car had disappeared completely. Dragged out into the street, probably, he thought, and smashed as his own car had been smashed in that little Illinois town.

He turned away from the window and walked slowly down the street. It had been foolish to go to the showroom, he told himself, but there had been a chance — although the chance had been a slim one, as he knew all his chances were.

He turned a corner and there, in a dusty square across the street, a good-sized crowd had gathered and was listening to someone who had climbed a park bench and was talking to them.

Idly, Vickers walked across the street, stopped opposite the crowd.

The man on the park bench had taken off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie. He talked almost conversationally, although his words carried clear across the park to where Vickers stood.

"When the bombs come," asked the man, "what will happen then? They say don't be afraid. They say, stay on your jobs and don't be afraid. They have told you to stay and not be afraid, but what will they do when the bombs arrive? Will they help you then?"

He paused and the crowd was tense, tense in a terrible silence. You could feel the knotted muscles that clamped the jaws tight shut and the hand that squeezed the heart until the body turned all cold. And you could sense the fear — "They will not help," the speaker told them, speaking slowly and deliberately. "They will not help you, for you will be past all help. You will be dead, my friends. Dead by the tens of thousands. Dead in the sun that flamed upon the city. Dead and turned to nothing. Dead and restless atoms.

"You will die…."

From far away came the sound of sirens and at the sound the crowd stirred restlessly, almost angrily.

"You will die," the speaker said, "and there is no need to die, for there is another world that waits you.

"Poverty is the key to that other world. Poverty is the ticket that will take you there. All you need to do is to quit your job and give away everything you have — and _throw_ away everything you have. You cannot go except with empty hands…"

The sirens were closer and the crowd was murmuring, stirring, like some great animal arousing itself from sleep. The sound of its voice swept across the square like the sudden rustle of leaves in the wind that moved before a storm.

The speaker raised his hand again and there was instant silence.

"My friends," he said, "why don't you heed? The other world awaits. The poor go first. The poor and desperate, the ones for which this world you stand on has no further use. The only way you can go is in utter poverty, with empty hands, with no possessions.

"In that other world there are no bombs. There is a beginning over, a starting over again. An entire new world, almost exactly like this world, with trees and grass and fertile land and game upon the hills and fish teeming in the rivers. The kind of place you dream of. And there is peace."