Мюррей Лейнстер - The Wailing Asteroid

The living creatures on the world to be destroyed would have no warning. One instant everything would be as it had always been. The next, the ground would rise and froth out flames, and more than two thousand million human beings would hardly know that anything had occurred before they were destroyed.

There was no purpose to be served by notifying the world that it was to die. The rulers of the nations had decided that it was kinder to let men and women look at each other and rejoice, thinking they had all their lives before them. It was kinder that children should be let play valorously, and babies wail and instantly be tended. It was better for humanity to move unknowing under blue and sunshine–filled skies than that they should gaze despairingly up at white clouds, or in still deeper horror at the shining night stars from which devastation would presently come.

In the one place where there was foreknowledge, no attention at all was paid to the coming doom. Burke went raging about brightly lighted corridors, shouting horrible things. He cried out to Sandy to answer him, and defied whatever might have seized her to dare to face him. He challenged the cold stone walls. He raged up and down the gallery in which she had vanished, and feverishly explored beyond it, and returned to the place where she had disappeared, and pounded on solid rock to see if there could be some secret doorway through which she had been abducted. It seemed that his heart must stop for pure anguish. He knew such an agony of frustration as he had never known before.

Presently method developed in his searching. Whatever had happened, it must have been close to the tall archway with the large metal plate in its floor and the brilliant lights overhead. Sandy could not have been more than twenty feet from him when she was seized. When he heard her gasp, he was at this spot. Exactly this spot. He'd whirled, and she was gone. She could not have been farther than the door beyond the archway, or else the one facing it. He went into the most probable one. It was a perfectly commonplace storage–room. He'd seen hundreds of them. It was empty. He examined it with a desperate intentness. His hands shook. His whole body was taut. He moved jerkily.

Nothing. He crossed the corridor and examined the room opposite. There was a bit of dust in one corner. He bent stiffly and fingered it. Nothing. He came out, and there was the tall archway, brightly lighted. The other compartments had no light–tubes. Being for storage only, they would not need to be lighted except to be filled and emptied of whatever they should contain. But the archway was very brilliantly lighted.

He went into it, his hand–weapon shaking with the tension in him. There was the metal plate on the floor. It was large—yards in extent. He began a circuit of the walls. Halfway around, he realized that the walls were masonry. Not native rock, like every other place in the fortress. This wall had been made! He stared about. On the opposite wall there was a small thing with a handle on it, to be moved up or down. It was a round metal disk with a handle, set in the masonry.

He flung himself across the room to examine it. He was filled with terror for Sandy, which would turn into more–than–murderous fury if he found her harmed. The metal floor–plate lay between. He stepped obliviously on the plate….

The universe dissolved around him. The brightly lit masonry wall became vague and misty. Simultaneously quite other things appeared mistily, then solidified.

He was abruptly in the open air, with a collapsed and ruined structure about and behind him. This was not emptiness, but the surface of a world. Over his head there was a sunset sky. Before him there was grass, and beyond that a horizon, and to his left there was collapsed stonework and far off ahead there was a hill which he knew was not a natural hill at all. There was a moon in the sky, a half–moon with markings that he remembered. There were trees, too, and they were trees with long, ribbony leaves such as never grew on Earth.

He stood frozen for long instants, and a second, smaller moon came up rapidly over the horizon and traveled swiftly across the sky. It was jagged and irregular in shape.

Then flutings came from somewhere to his rear. They were utterly familiar sounds. They had distinctive pitch, which varied from one to another, and they were of different durations like half–notes and quarter–notes in music. And they had a plaintive quality which could have been termed elfin.

All this was so completely known to him that it should have been shocking, but he was in such an agony of fear for Sandy that he could not react to it. His terror for her was breath–stopping. He held his weapon ready in his hand. He tried to call her name, but he could not speak.

The long, ribbony leaves of the trees waved to and fro in a gentle breeze. And then Burke saw a figure running behind the swaying foliage. He knew who it was. The relief was almost greater pain than his terror had been. It was such an emotion as Burke had experienced only feebly, even in his recurrent dream. He gave a great shout and bounded forward to meet Sandy, crying out again as he ran.

Then he had his arms about her, and she clung to him with that remarkable ability women have to adapt themselves to circumstances they've been hoping for, even when they come unexpectedly. He kissed her feverishly, panting incoherent things about the fear he'd felt, holding her fast.

Presently somebody tugged at his elbow. It was Holmes. He said drily, "I know how you feel, Burke. I acted the same way just now. But there are things to be looked into. It'll be dark soon and we don't know how long night lasts here. Have you a match?"

Pam regarded the two of them with a peculiar glint of humor in her eyes. Keller was there too, still shaken by an experience which for him had no emotional catharsis attached.

Burke partly released Sandy and fumbled for his cigarette lighter. He felt singularly foolish, but Sandy showed no trace of embarrassment.

"There was a matter–transposer," she said, "and we found it, and we all came through it."

Keller said awkwardly, "I turned on the communicator to base. It must have been a matter–transposer. I thought, in the instrument–room, that it was only a communicator."

Holmes moved away. He came back bearing broken sticks, which were limbs fallen from untended trees. He piled them and went back for more. In minutes he had a tiny fire and a big pile of branches to keep it up, but he went back for still more.

"It works both ways," observed Sandy. "Or something does! There must be another metal plate here to go to the fortress. That huge, crazy bird I saw in the gravity–generator room must have come from here. He probably stepped on the plate because it was brightly lighted and—"

"You've got your pistol?" demanded Burke.

The sunset sky was darkening. The larger, seemingly stationary moon floated ever–so–slightly nearer to the zenith. The small and jagged moon had gone on out of sight.

"I have," said Sandy. "Pam gave hers to Holmes. But that's all right. There won't be savages. Over there, beyond the trees, there's a metal railing, impossibly old and corroded. But no savage would leave metal alone. I don't think there's anybody here but us."

Burke stared at something far away that looked like a hill.

"There's a building, or the ruins of one. No lights. No smoke. Savages would occupy it. We're alone, all right! I wonder where? We could be anywhere within a hundred or five hundred light–years from Earth."

"Then," said Sandy comfortably, "we should be safe from the Enemy."

"No," said Burke. "If the Enemy has an unbeatable weapon, destroying one solar system won't be enough. They'll smash every one that humanity ever used. Which includes this one. They'll be here eventually. Not at once, but later. They'll come!"