Chapter 1 of The City at World's End by Edmund Hamilton This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org Recording by Mark Nelson The City at World's End by Edmund Hamilton Chapter 1 Cataclysm Keniston realized afterward that it was like death.  He had known that there was a danger of the long dreaded atomic war beginning with a sneak punch, but he hadn't really believed it. Not until that June morning, when the missile came down on Middletown, and then there was no time for realization, you don't hear or see a thing that comes faster than sound. One moment he was striding down Mill Street toward the plant, getting ready to speak to the policeman coming toward him. The next moment the sky split open. It split wide open, and above the whole town there was a burn and blaze of light so swift, so violent that it seemed the air itself had burst into instantaneous flame. In that fraction of a second, as the sky flared and the ground heaved wildly under his feet, Keniston knew that the surprise attack had come, and that the first of the long-feared, super-atomic bombs had exploded overhead. Shock, thought Keniston, as his mouth crushed against the grimy sidewalk. The shock that keeps a dying man from feeling pain. He lay there, waiting for the ultimate destruction, and the first eye-blinding flair across the heavens faded, and the shuddering world grew still. It was over as quickly as that. He ought to be dead. He thought it very probable that he was dying right now, which would explain the fading lights and the ominous quiet. But in spite of that he raised his head, and then scrambled shakily to his feet, gasping over his own wild heartbeats, fighting an animal urge to run for the mere sake of running. He looked down Mill Street. He expected to see pulverized buildings, smoking craters, fire and steam and devastation. But what he saw was more stunning than that, and in a strange way, more awful. He saw Middletown lying unchanged and peaceful in the sunlight. The policeman he had been going to speak to was still there ahead of him. He was getting up slowly from his hands and knees, where the quake had thrown him.  His eyes were very wide and dazed and frightened. But him was an old woman with a shawl over her head. She too had been there before. She was clinging now to a wall, the sack of groceries she had carried split open around her feet, spilling onions and cans of soup across the walk. Cars and streetcars were still moving along the street in the distance, beginning erratically to jerk to a halt. Apart from these small things, nothing was different, nothing at all. The policeman came up to Keniston. He looked like a young, efficient officer, or he would have if his face had not gone so slack and his eyes so stunned. He asked hoarsely, What happened? Keniston answered, and the words sounded queer and improbable as he said them. We've been hit by a bomb, a super-atomic. The policeman stared at him.  Yes, said Keniston. I think maybe I am. I think that's the only explanation. His brain had begun to pound. The air felt suddenly cold and strange. The sunshine was duskier and redder, and did not warm him now. The woman in the shawl was crying. Presently, still weeping, she got painfully down upon her thick old knees and Keniston thought she was going to pray. But instead she began to gather up her onions, fumbling with them as a child does, trying to fit them into the broken paper bag. Look, said the policeman, I've read stuff about those super-atomic bombs in the papers. It said they were thousands of times more powerful than the atom bombs they used to have. If one of them hit any place, there wouldn't be anything left of it. His voice was getting stronger, he was convincing himself. So no super-atomic bomb could have hit us? It couldn't have been that. You saw that terrific flash in the sky, didn't you? Said Keniston. Sure I did, but... And then the policeman's face cleared, saying it was a fizzle. That's what it was. This super-atomic bomb they've been scaring the world with. It turned out to be just a fizzle. He laughed noisily in vast relief. Isn't that rich? They tell for years what terrible things it's going to do, and then it just makes a big fizz and flash like a bad Fourth of July firecracker. It could be true, Keniston thought, with a wild surge of hope. It could be true. And then he looked up and saw the sun. It was maybe a bluff all the time, the policeman's voice rattled on. They maybe didn't really have any super-atomic bomb at all. Keniston, without lowering his gaze, spoke in a dry whisper. They had them all right, and they used one on us. And I think we're dead and don't know it yet. We don't know yet that we're only ghosts and not living on Earth anymore. Not on Earth, said the policeman angrily. Now listen! And then his voice trailed away to silence as he followed Keniston's staring gaze and looked up at the sun. It wasn't the sun. Not the sun they and all the generations of men had known as a golden dazzling orb. They could look right at this sun without blinking. They could stare at it steadily, for it was no more than a very big, dull glowing red bulb with tiny flames writhing around its edges. It was higher in the sky now than it had been before, and the air was cold. It's in the wrong place, said the policeman, and it looks different. He groped in half-forgotten high school science for an explanation. Refraction! Dust at the fizzle-bomb stirred up. Keniston didn't tell him. What was the use? What was the good of telling him what he, as a scientist knew? That no conceivable refraction can make the sun look like that. He said, Maybe you're right. Sure, I'm right," said the policeman loudly. He didn't look up at the sky and sun any more. He seemed to avoid looking at them. Keniston started on Down Mill Street. He had been on his way to the lab when this happened. He kept on going now. He wanted to hear what Hubble and the others would say about this. He laughed a little. I am a ghost, going to talk with other ghosts about our sudden deaths.  What good is your science if it cracks up in the face of an unexplained phenomenon? That certainly was an understatement. A superatomic bomb went off over a quiet little midwestern town of fifty thousand people, and it didn't change a thing except to put a new sun into the sky. And you called that an unexplained phenomenon. Keniston walked on Down the Street. He walked fast, for the air was unseasonably cold. He didn't stop to talk to the bewildered-looking people he met. They were mostly men who had been on their way to work in Middletown's mills when it had happened. They stood now, discussing the sudden flash and shock. The word Keniston heard most often was earthquake. They didn't look too upset, these men. They looked excited and little bit glad that something had happened to interrupt their drab daily routine. Some of them were staring up at that strange, dull red sun, but they seemed more perplexed than disturbed. The air was cold and musty, and the red, dusky sunlight was queer. But that hadn't disturbed these men too much. It was, after all, not much stranger than the chill and the lurid light that often foreshadow a midwestern thunderstorm. Keniston turned in at the gate of the smoke-grimmed brick structure that bore the sign, Industrial Research Laboratories. The Watchman at the gate nodded to him unperturbably as he let him through. Neither the Watchman nor any of Middletown's fifty thousand people, except a few city officials, knew that this supposed Industrial Laboratory actually housed one of the key nerve centers of America's atomic defense setup. Clever, thought Keniston, it had been clever of those in charge of dispersal to tuck this key atomic laboratory into a prosaic little midwestern Middletown. But not clever enough, he thought. No, not quite clever enough. The unknown enemy had learned the secret and had struck the first stunning blow of his surprise attack at the hidden nerve center of Middletown. A superatomic to smash that nerve center before war even started. Only the superatomic had fizzled. Or had it. The sun was a different sun, and the air was strange and cold. Creechy met Keniston by the entrance of the big brick building. Creechy was the youngest of the staff, a tall, black-haired youngster, and because he was the youngest, he tried hard not to show emotion now. It looks like it's beginning, said Creechy, trying to smile. Atomic Armageddon, the final fireworks. Then he quit trying to smile. Why didn't it wipe us out, Keniston? Why didn't it? Keniston asked him, don't the Geiger show anything? Nothing, not a thing. That, Keniston thought, numbly, fitted the crazy improbability of it all. He asked, where's Hubble? He gestured vaguely. Over there, he's had us trying to call Washington, but the wires are all dead and even the radio hasn't been able to get through yet. Keniston walked across the cluttered plant-yard. Hubble, his chief, stood looking up at the dusky sky and at the red, dull sun you could stare at without blinking. He was only fifty, but he looked older at the moment, his graying hair disordered and his thin face tightly drawn. There isn't any way yet to figure out where that missile came from, Keniston said. Then he realized that Hubble's thoughts weren't on that, for the other only knotted abstractedly. Look at those stars, Keniston. Stars? Stars in the daytime? And then, looking up, Keniston realized that you could see the stars now. You could see them as faint, glimmering points all across the strangely dusky sky, even near the dull sun. They're wrong, said Hubble. They're very wrong. Keniston asked, what happened? Did their superatomic really fizzle? Hubble lowered his gaze and blinked at him. No, he said softly. It didn't fizzle. It went off. But Hubble, if that superatomic went off, why? Hubble ignored the question. He went on into his own office in the lab and began to pull down reference volumes. To Keniston's surprise, he opened them to pages of astronomical diagrams. Then Hubble took a pencil and began to scroll quick calculations on a pad. Keniston grabbed him by the shoulder. For Christ's sake, Hubble, this is no time for scientific theorizing. The town hasn't been hit, but something big has happened, and get the hell away from me, said Hubble without turning. The sheer shock of hearing Hubble swear silenced Keniston. Hubble went on with his figures, referring often to the books. The office was as silent as though nothing had happened at all. Finally Hubble turned. His hand shook a little as he pointed to the figures on the pad. See those Ken, they're proof, proof of something that cannot be. What does a scientist do when he faces that kind of a situation? He could see the sick shock and fear in Hubble's gray face, and it fed his own fear. But before he could speak, Cresci came in. He said, We haven't been able to contact Washington yet, and we can't understand. Our calls go completely unanswered, and not one station outside Middletown seems to be broadcasting. Hubble stared at his pad. It all fits in, yes, it all fits in. What do you make of it, doctor? asked Cresci anxiously. That bomb went off over Middletown even though it didn't hurt us. Yet it's as though all the world outside Middletown has been silenced. Keniston, cold from what he had seen in Hubble's face, waited for the senior scientist to tell them what he knew or thought. But the phone rang suddenly with strident loudness. It was the intercom from the watchman at the gate. Hubble picked it up. For a minute he said, Yes, let him come in. He hung up. It's Johnson. You know, the electrician who did some installations for us. He lives out on the edge of town. He told the watchman that was why he had to see me, because he lives on the edge of town. Johnson, when he came, was a man in the grip of a fear greater than Keniston had even begun to imagine, and he was almost beyond talking. I thought you might know, he said to Hubble. It seems like somebody's got to tell me what's happened, or I'll lose my mind. I've got a cornfield, Mr. Hubble. It's a long field, and then there's a fence row, and my neighbor's barn beyond it. He began to tremble, and Hubble said, What about your cornfield? Part of it's gone, said Johnson, and the fence row, and the barn. Mr. Hubble, they're all gone, everything! Blast effect, said Hubble gently. A bomb hit here a little while ago, you see. No, said Johnson. I was in London last war. I know what blast can do. This isn't destruction. It's— He sought for a word, and could not find it. I thought you might know what it is. His chill premonition, the shapeless growing terror in him, became too evil to be born. He said, I'm going out and take a look. Hubble glanced at him, and then nodded, and rose to his feet, slowly, as though he did not want to go, but was forcing himself. He said, We can see everything from the water-tower, I think. That's the highest point in town. You keep trying to get through, crechie. Johnson walked with him out of the lab grounds and across Mill Street, and the cluttered railroad tracks to the huge, still-legged water-tower of Middletown. The air had grown colder. The red sunshine had no warmth in it, and when Keniston took hold of the iron rungs of the ladder to begin the climb, they were like bars of ice. He followed Hubble upward, keeping his eyes fixed on the retreating soles of Hubble's shoes. It was a long climb. They had to stop to rest once. But the wind blew harder the higher they got, and it had a dry, musty taint in it that made Keniston think of the air that blows from deep rock tombs with dust of ages in them. They came out at last on the railed platform around the big, high tank. Keniston looked down on the town. He saw knots of people gathered on the corners and the tops of cars, a few of them moving slowly, but most of them stopped and jamming the streets. There was a curious sort of silence. Hubble did not bother to look at the town, except for a first brief glance that took it all in, the circumference of Middletown with all its buildings standing just as they always had, with the iron Civil War soldier still stiffly mounting guard on the square and the smoke still rising steadily from the stacks of the mills. Then he looked outward. He did not speak, and presently Keniston's eyes were drawn also to look beyond the town. He looked for a long time before it began to penetrate. His retinas relayed the image again and again, but the brain recoiled from its task of making sense out of that image, that unbelievable, impossible, no, it must be dust, or a fraction, or an illusion created by the dusky red sunlight, anything but truth. There could not, by any laws known to creation, be a truth like this one. The whole countryside around Middletown was gone. The fields, the green flat fields of the Middle West, and the river and the streams, and the old scattered farms, they were all gone, and it was a completely different and utterly alien landscape that now stretched outside the town. Rolling ochre yellow plains, sad and empty, lifted toward a ridge of broken hills that had never been there before. The wind blew over that barren, lifeless world, stirring the ochre weeds, lifting heavy little clouds of dust and dropping them back again to the earth. The sun peered down like a great dull eye with lashes of writhing fire, and the glimmering stars swung solemn in the sky, and all of them, the earth, the stars, the sun, had a look of death about them, a stillness and a waiting, a remoteness that had nothing to do with men or with anything that lived. Keniston gripped the rail tightly, feeling all reality crumbling away beneath him, searching frantically for an explanation, for any rational explanation of that impossible scene. The bomb. Did it somehow blast the countryside out there instead of Middletown? Would it take away a river and bring instead those hills and that yellow scrub, said Hubble, would any bomb blast do that? But for God's sake, then what? It hit us, Keniston. It went off right over Middletown. And it did something. He faltered and then said, nobody really knew what a super atomic bomb would do. There were logical theories and assumptions about it, but nobody really knew anything except that the most violent concentrated force in history would be suddenly released. Well, it was released over Middletown. And it was violent. So violent that he stopped again as though he could not quite muster up the courage to voice the certainty that was in him. He gestured at the dusky sky. That's our son, our own son. But it's old now, very old. And that earth we see out there is old too, barren and eroded and dying. And the stars, you looked at the stars, Ken, but you didn't see them. They're different, the constellations distorted by the motions of the stars, as only millions of years could distort them. Keniston whispered, millions of years? Then you think that the bomb? Ken stopped, and he knew now how Hubble had felt. How did you say a thing that had never been said before? Yes, the bomb, said Hubble. A force of violence greater than any ever known before. Too great to be confined by the ordinary boundaries of matter. Too great to waste its strength on petty physical destruction. Instead of shattering buildings, it shattered space and time. Keniston's denial was a horse cry. Hubble, no. That's madness. Time is absolute. Hubble said, you know it isn't. You know from Einstein's work that there's no such thing as time by itself, that instead there is a space-time continuum. And that continuum is curved, and a great enough force could hurl matter from one part of the curve to another. He raised a shaking hand toward the deathly alien landscape outside the town. And the released force of the first supra-atomic bomb did it. It blew this town into another part of the space-time curve, into another age, millions of years in the future, into this dying future earth. End of chapter one. Chapter two of The City at World's End by Edmund Hamilton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The City at World's End. Chapter two. The Incredible. The rest of the staff was waiting for them when they came back into the lab grounds. A dozen men, ranging in age from creasy to old bites, were standing shivering in the chilled red sunlight in front of the building. Johnson was with them, waiting for his answer. Hubble looked at him and at the others. He said, I think we'd better go inside. They did not ask the questions that were clamoring inside them. Silently, with the jerky, awkward movements of men strung so taut that the reflex centers no longer functioned smoothly, they followed Hubble through the doorway. Keniston went with them, but not all the way. He turned aside toward his own office and said, I've got to find out if Carol is all right. Hubble said sharply, don't tell her yet, Ken, not yet. No, said Keniston, no, I won't. He went into the small room and closed the door. The telephone was on his desk and he reached for it, and then he drew his hand away. The fear had altered now into a kind of numbness, as though it were too large to be contained within a human body and had ebbed away, carrying with it all the substances of strength and will as water carries sand. He looked at the black familiar instrument and thought how improbable it was that there should still be telephones, and fat books beside them with quantities of names and numbers belonging to people who had lived once in villages and nearby towns, but who were not there any more, not since how long, an hour or so, if he figured it one way, if he figured it another. He sat down in the chair behind the desk. He had done a lot of hard work sitting in that chair, and now all that work had ceased to matter. Quite a lot of things had ceased to matter, plans and ideas and where you were going to on your honeymoon, and exactly where you wanted to live and in what kind of house. Florida and California and New York were words as meaningless as yesterday and tomorrow. They were gone, the times and the places, and there wasn't anything left of them, but Carol herself and maybe even Carol wasn't left. Maybe she'd been out with her aunt for a little drive in the country, and if she wasn't in Middletown when it happened, she's gone, gone, gone. He took the phone in both hands and set a number over and over into it. The operator was quite patient with him. Everybody in Middletown seemed to be calling someone else, and over the roar and click of the exchange and the ghostly confusion of voices, he heard the pounding of his own blood in his ears, and he thought that he did not have any right to want Carol to be there, and he ought to be praying that she had gone somewhere, because why would he want anybody he loved to have to face what was ahead of them, and what was ahead of them? How could you guess which one, out of all the shadowy, formless horrors that might be? Ken, said a voice in his ear, Ken, is that you, hello? Carol, he said. The room turned misty around him, and there was nothing anywhere but that voice on the line. I've been trying and trying to get, you Ken. What on earth happened? The whole town is excited. I saw a terrible flash of lightning, but there wasn't any storm, and then that quake. Are you all right? Sure, I'm fine. She wasn't really frightened yet. Anxious, upset, but not yet frightened. A flash of lightning and a quake. Alarming, yes, but not terrifying. Not the end of the world. He caught himself up hard. He said, I don't know yet what it was. Can you find out? Somebody must know. She did not guess, of course, that Keniston was an atomic physicist. He had not been allowed to tell that to anyone, not even his fiance. To her, he was merely a research technician in an industrial laboratory, vaguely involved with test tubes and things. She had never questioned him very closely about his work. Apparently, content to leave all that up to him, and he had been grateful, because it had spared him the necessity of lying to her. Now he was even more grateful, because she would not dream that he might have special information. That way, he could spare her a little longer, get himself in hand, before he told her. I'll do my best, he told her, but until we're sure, I wish you and your aunt would stay in the house off the street. No, I don't think your bridge luncheon will come off anyway. And you can't tell what people will do when they're frightened. Promise? Yes, yes. I'll be over as soon as I can. He hung up, and as soon as that contact with Carol was broken, reality slipped away from him again. He looked around the office, and it became suddenly rather horrible, because it had no longer any meaning. He had an urgent wish to get out of it, yet when he rose he stood for some while with his hands on the edge of the desk, going over Hubble's words in his mind, remembering how the sun had looked, and the stars and the sad alien earth, knowing that it was all impossible, but unable to deny it. The long haul of time and a shattering force. He wanted desperately to run away, but there was no place to run to. Presently he went down the corridor to Hubble's office. They were all there, the twelve men of the staff and Johnson. Johnson had gone by himself into a corner. He had seen what lay out there beyond the town, and the others had not. He was trying to understand it, to understand the fact and the explanation of it he had just heard. It was not a pleasant thing to watch him try. Keniston glanced at the others. He had worked closely with these men. He had thought he knew them all so well, having seen them under stress, in the moments when their work succeeded, and the others when it did not. Now he realized that they were all strangers, to him and to each other, alone and wary with their personal fears. Old Bytes was saying, almost truculately, even if it were true, you can't say exactly how long a time has passed, not just from the stars. Hubble said, I'm not an astronomer, but anyone can figure it from the tables of known star motions, and the change in the constellations. Not exactly, no, but as close as will ever matter. But if the continuum were actually shattered, if this town has actually jumped millions of years, Bytes' voice trailed off. His mouth began to twitch, and he seemed suddenly bewildered by what he was saying, and he, and all of them, stood looking at Hubble in a haunted silence. Hubble shook his head. You won't really believe until you see for yourselves. I don't blame you, but in the meantime, you'll have to accept my statement as a working hypothesis. Morrow cleared his throat and asked, what about the people out there, the town? Are you going to tell them? They'll have to know, at least part of it, Hubble said. It'll get colder, very much colder by night, and they'll have to be prepared for it, but there must not be any panic. The mayor and the chief of police are on their way here now, and we'll work it out with them. Do they know yet themselves? Asked Keniston, and Hubble said, no. Johnson moved abruptly. He came up to Hubble and said, I don't get all this scientific talk about space and time. What I want to know is, is my boy safe? Hubble stared at him. Your boy? He went out to Martinsons Farm early to borrow a cultivator. It's two miles out north road. What about him, Mr. Hubble? Is he safe? That was the secret agony that had been writing him, the one he had not voiced. Hubble said gently, I would say that you don't have to worry about him at all, Johnson. Johnson nodded, but still looked worried. He said, thanks, Mr. Hubble. I'd better go back now. I left my wife in hysterics. A minute or two after he left, Keniston heard a siren scream outside. It swung into the lab yard and stopped. That, said Hubble, would be the mayor. A small and infirm reed to lean upon thought Keniston at a time like this. There was nothing particularly wrong about Mayor Garrus. He was no more bumbling, inefficient, or vino than the average mayor of any average small city. He liked banquets and oratory. He worried about the right necktie. And he was said to be a good husband and father. But Keniston could not somehow picture Bertram Garrus shepherding his people safely across the end of the world. He thought so even less when Garrus came in, his bones well padded with the plump pink flesh of good living, his face the perfect pattern of the successful little man who was pleased with the world and his place in it. Just now he was considerably puzzled and upset, but also rather elated at the prospect of something important going on. Kimer, the chief of police, was another matter. He was a large, angular man with a face that had seen many grimy things and had learned from them a hard kind of wisdom. Not a brilliant man, Keniston thought, but one who could get things done. And he was worried, far more worried than the mayor. Garrus turned immediately to Hubble. It was obvious that he had a great respect for him and was proud to be on an equal footing with such an important person as one of the nation's top atomic scientists. Is there any news yet, Dr. Hubble? We haven't been able to get a word from outside and the wildest rumors are going around. I was afraid at first that you might have had an explosion here in the laboratory, but Kimer interrupted him. Talk is going around that an atomic bomb hit here, Dr. Hubble. Some of the people are getting scared. If enough of them get to believe it, we'll have a panic on our hands. I've got our officers on the street soothing them down, but I'd like to have a straight story they'll believe. Atomic bomb, said Mayor Harris, preposterous. We're all alive and there's been no damage. Dr. Hubble will tell you that atomic bombs. For the second time he was cut short. Hubble broke in sharply. We're not dealing with an ordinary bomb and the rumors are true as far as they go. He paused and went on more slowly, making every word distinct. A superatomic was exploded an hour ago for the first time in history right here. He let that sink in. It was a lingering and painful process and while it was going on, Keniston looked away up through the window at the dusky sky and the sullen red sun and felt the nod in his stomach tighten. We were warned, he thought. We were all warned for years that we were playing with forces too big for us. It didn't destroy us, Hubble was saying. We're lucky that way, but it did have certain effects. I don't understand, said the Mayor piteously. I simply don't, certain effects, what? Hubble told him with quiet bluntness. The Mayor and the Chief of Police of Middletown, normal men of a normal city, adjusted to life in a normal world, listening to the incredible. Listening, trying to comprehend, trying and failing and rejecting it utterly. That's insane, said Garrus angrily. Middletown thrown into the future? Why, the very sound of it. What are you trying to do, Dr. Hubble? He said a great deal more than that, so did Chimer, but Hubble wore them down. Quietly, implacably, he pointed to the alien landscape around the town, the deepening cold, the red, aged sun, the ceasing of all wire and radio communication from the outside. He explained, sketchily, the nature of time and space, and how they might be shattered. His scientific points they could not understand, but those they took on faith, the faith which the people of the 20th century had come to have in the interpreters of the complex sciences, they themselves were unable to comprehend. The physical facts they understood well enough. Too well, once they were forced to it. It got home at last. Mayor Garrus sank down into a chair and his face was no longer pink and the flesh sagged on it. His voice was no more than a whimper when finally he asked, What are we going to do? Hubble had an answer ready, to a part of that question at least. We can't afford a panic. The people of Middletown will have to learn the truth slowly. That means that none of them must go outside the town yet, or they'd learn at once. I'd suggest you announce the area outside town is possibly radioactive contaminated and forbid anyone to leave. Police Chief Keimer grasped with pathetic eagerness at the necessity of coping with a problem he could comprehend. I can put men in barricades at all the street ends to see to that. And our local national guard company is assembling now with the armory, put in Mayor Garrus. 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, Keniston thought. Middletown's coal steam electric generation plant and its big water tower 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 Garrus 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.  If it's true, this is a side-splitting joke. The whole town flung into the end of the world and not even knowing it yet. All these 50,000 people, not guessing yet that their cousin Agnes in Indianapolis has been dead in dust for a million 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. Keniston, 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 can. Bring two guns. End of Chapter Two. Chapter Three of The City at World's End by Edmund Hamilton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The City at World's End. Chapter Three. Dying Planet. Keniston 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 that 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. Keniston 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.  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 Keniston, "'coldest I ever saw. "'I'm going to build a fire.  "'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 somebody say an atomic bomb "'went off overhead and missed fire?  "'It nearly blinded me.' "'Keniston 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 inquired, "'But if a war started, who's the enemy?' "'The enemy,' Keniston 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-parters that cheered the grimy street, "'there were more men that was normal for this hour. "'Keniston 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.' "'Keniston 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.' "'I haven't got to your car yet, Mr. Keniston,' he protested. "'I said around five, remember?' "'Keniston 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 Keniston intended to do with the Jeep. "'The carburetor resisted, and he swore at it.' "'A man in a flowery 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've been hearing news all morning. "'Guys running in and out with the damnedest stories. "'I'm too busy to listen to them.' "'Keniston 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!  "'Top coats 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 buying on bicycles. "'It wasn't too changed yet. "'Not yet.' "'Nor was quiet Walters Avenue, "'where he had his rooms, "'though the rows of maples were an odd color "'in the reddish light. "'Keniston was glad his landlady was out, "'for he didn't think he could face "'many more puzzled questions right now. "'He loaded his hunting kit, "'a 30-30 rifle, "'and a 16-gauge repeating shotgun "'with boxes of shells into the Jeep. "'He put on a Mackinaw, "'brought a leather coat for Hubble, "'and remembered gloves. "'Then, before re-entering the Jeep, "'he ran down the street half a block "'at the Carol Lane's house. "'Her aunt met him at the door. "'Mrs. Adams was stout, pink, and worried.  "'Maybe you can tell me what to do. "'Should I cover my flowers?' "'She babbled on anxiously. "'It seems so silly on a June day, "'but it's so much colder, "'and the petunias and bleeding heart "'are so easily frostbitten, "'and the roses.' "'I'd cover them, Mrs. Adams,' he told her. "'The prediction is that it will be even colder.' "'She threw up her hands. "'Though weather these days, "'it never used to be like this.' "'And she hurried away to secure covering for the flowers, "'the flowers that had but hours to live. "'It hit Keniston with another "'of those sickening little shocks of realization. "'No more roses on earth after today. "'No more roses ever again. "'Ken, did you find out what happened? "'It was Carol's voice behind him, "'and he knew, even before he turned to face her, "'that he could not evade with her "'as he had with the others. "'She didn't know about science, "'and such things as time warps and shattered continuums "'had never entered her head. "'But she knew him, "'and she gave him no chance to temperize. "'Are they true, "'the stories about an atom bomb "'going off over Middletown? "'She had had time, "'as he called her, to become really alarmed. "'She had dark hair and dark eyes. "'She was slim in a sturdy fashion, "'and her ankles were nice, "'and her mouth was firm and sweet. "'She liked Tennyson and children and small dogs, "'and her ways were the ways of pleasant houses "'and fragrant kitchens, "'of quiet talk and laughter. "'It seemed a dreadful thing to Keniston "'that she should be standing in a dying garden "'asking questions about atomic bombs.' "'Yes,' he said. "'They're true.' "'He watched the color drain out of her face, "'and he went on hastily. "'Nobody was killed. "'There are no radiation effects in the city, "'nothing at all to be afraid of. "'There is something. "'I can see it in your face.' "'Well, there are things we're not sure of yet. "'Hubble and I are going to investigate them now.' "'He caught her hands. "'I haven't time to talk, but...' "'Ken,' she said, "'Why you? "'What would you know about such terrible things?' "'He saw it coming now, "'the necessity he had always a little dreaded, "'and had hoped might be forever postponed. "'The time when Carol had to learn about his work. "'With what eyes would she look on him when she knew? "'He was not sure, not sure at all. "'He was glad he could evade a little longer.' He smiled. "'I'll tell you all about it when I get back. "'Stay in the house, Carol. Promise me. Then I won't worry.' "'All right,' she said slowly, and then sharply, "'Ken?' "'What?' "'Nothing. "'Be careful.'" He kissed her and ran back toward the jeep. Thank God she wasn't the hysterical type. That would have been the last straw right now. He climbed in and drove to the lab, wondering all the way what this was going to do to Carol and himself, whether they would both be alive tomorrow or the next day, and if so, what kind of a life it would be. Grim cold thoughts and bitter with regret. He had had it all so nicely planned before this nightmare happened. The loneliness would all be over, and the rootless drifting from place to place. He would have a home again, which he had not had since his parents died, and as much peace as a man was allowed in the modern world. He would have the normal things a man needed to keep him steady and give meaning to his ears. And now... Hubble was waiting for him outside the lab, holding a Geiger counter and a clutter of other instruments. He placed them carefully in the jeep, then put on the leather coat and climbed into the seat beside Keniston. "'All right, Ken, let's go out the south end of town. From the hills we glimpse that way we can see more of the lay of the land." They found a barricade and police on guard at the southern edge of town. They were delayed until the mayor phoned through a hasty authorization for Hubble and Keniston to go out for inspection of the contaminated region. The jeep rolled down a concrete road between green little suburban farms for less than a mile. Then the road and the green farmland suddenly ended. In this sharp demarcation, rolling ochre plains ran away endlessly to east and west. Not a tree, not a speck of green broke the monotony. Only the ochre yellow scrub and the dust and the wind. Hubble, studying his instrument, said, "'Nothing, not a thing. Keep going.'" Ahead of them the low hills rose, gone to naked, and above was the vast bowl of the sky. A cold darkness clamped down upon the horizons. Dim sun, dim stars, and under them no sound but the cheerless whimper of the wind. Its motor rattling and roaring, its body lurching over the uneveness of the ochre plain, the jeep bore them out into the silence of the dead earth. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Of the City at World's End by Edmund Hamilton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The City at World's End Chapter 4 Dead City Keniston concentrated on the wheel, gripping it until his hands ached. He stared fixedly at the ground ahead, noting every rock, guiding the jeep carefully across shallow gullies, driving as though there were nothing in the universe but the mechanical act. He envied the jeep its ability to chug unemotionally over the end of the world. It struck him as so amusing that he laughed a little. Hubble's fingers clamped his shoulder, hard enough to hurt even through the heavy coat. Don't, Ken. Keniston turned his head. He saw that Hubble's face was drawn in gray and that his eyes were almost pleading. I'm sorry, he said. Hubble nodded. I know, I'm having a hard enough time hanging on myself. They went on across the empty plain toward the low skeletal hills that were like bony knees thrust up from the ochre dust. Soon the jeep was climbing an easy slope, its motor clattering and roaring. Somehow the familiar motor sound only served to emphasize the fact that around them lay the silence and red dusk of World's End. Keniston wished that Hubble would say something, anything. But the older man did not and Keniston's own tongue was frozen. He was lost in a nightmare and there was nothing to do but drive. A sudden whistling scream came piping down the slope at them. Both men started violently. With hands slippery with cold sweat, Keniston swung the jeep a little and saw a brown furry shape about the size of a small horse bolting over the ridge, going with long, awkward bounds. Keniston slowed down until he had stopped shaking. Hubble said in a low whisper, Then there is still animal life on earth, of a sort, and look there. He pointed to a deep little pit in the dusty ground with a ridge of freshly dark new soil around it. The thing was digging there, probably for water. The surface is arid, so it must dig to drink. They stopped the jeep and examined the pit and the scrub around it. There were marks of teeth on the bark of the low shrubs. Rodential teeth, said Hubble, enormously larger than anything like them occurring in our time, but still recognizable. They looked at each other, standing in the chill red light. Then Hubble turned back to the jeep. We'll go on. They went on up the ridge. They saw two more of the pits made by the diggers, but these were old and crumbling. The blind red eye of the sun watched them coldly. Keniston thought of a frightened, furry thing loping on and on over the ochre desolation that once, long ago, had been the home of men. They came up onto the low ridge, and he stopped the jeep so they could look out across the red-lit plain beyond. Hubble stared south-west, and then his hands began to tremble a little. Ken, do you see it? He looked that way and saw. The stunning shock of relief and joy, the wild gladness at finding that you and your people are not alone on a lifeless earth. Out there on the barren plain stood a city, a city of white buildings, completely enclosed and roofed and bounded by the great shimmering bubble of a transparent dome. They looked and looked, savoring the exquisite delight of relief. They could see no movement in that domed city at this distance, but just to see it was enough. Then slowly, Hubble said, There are no roads, no roads across the plain. Perhaps they don't need roads, perhaps they fly. Instictively both men crane their necks to examine the bleak heavens, but there was nothing there but the wind and the stars and the dim sun with its medusa crown of flames. There aren't any lights either, said Hubble. It's daytime, said Keniston. They wouldn't need lights. They'd be used to this dusk. They've had it a long time. A sudden nervousness possessed him. He could barely perform the accustomed motions of starting the jeep again, grating the gears horribly, letting in the clutch with a lurching jerk. Take it easy, said Hubble. If they're there, there's no hurry. If they're not... His voice was not quite steady. After a moment, he finished. There's no hurry then either. Words, nothing but words. It seemed to Keniston that he could not bear the waiting. The plain stretched endlessly before him. The jeep seemed to crawl. Rocks and pits and gullies moved themselves maliciously into its path. The city mocked and came no nearer. All at once the domed city was full before them. It loomed in the sky like a glassy mountain out of a fairytale, for from this angle its curved surface reflected the sunlight. Here at last they struck a smooth, broad road. It went straight toward a high, arched portal in the glassy wall of the city. The portal was open. If they domed the city to keep it warm, why should the door be open? Hubble said. Everyone had no answer for that. No answer except the one that his mind refused to accept. They drove through the portal, were beneath the city dome. And after the emptiness of the plain, the weight of the city and its mighty shield was a crushing thing. And it was warmer here beneath the dome. Not really warm, but the air here lacked the freezing chill of the outside. They went down a broad avenue, going slowly now, timidly, again by the beating of their own hearts. And the noise of the motor was very loud in the stillness, echoed and re-echoed from many facets of stone, blasphemously loud against the silence. Dust blew heavily along the pavement, hung, done-colored veils across the open places where boulevards met. It lay in ruffled drifts in the sheltered spots, in doorways and arches and the corners of window ledges. The windows were tall and massive, infinitely more beautiful and simple in line than anything Henniston had ever imagined. A city of grace and symmetry and dignity, made lovely with the soft tints and textures of plastics, the clean strength of metal and stone. A million windows looked down upon the jeep and the two men from another time. A million eyes dimmed with cataracts of dust, empty, blind. Some were open, some shut, but none saw. The chill wind from the portal whispered in and out of sagging doorways, prowling up and down the streets, wandering restlessly across the wide parks that were no longer green and bright with flowers, but only wastes of scrub and drifting dust. Nowhere was there anything but the little wind that stirred. Yet Henniston drove on. It seemed too terrible a thing to accept that this great domed city was only a shell, an abandoned corpse, and that Middletown was alone on the face of the dying earth.   Henniston drove more and more slowly. He ceased to sound the horn and call out. Presently he ceased even to look. He allowed the jeep to roll to a halt in a great central plaza. He cut the motor and the silence descended upon him and Hubble like an avalanche. He bowed his head in his hands and sat that way for a long time. He heard Hubble's voice saying, They're all dead and gone. Henniston raised his head. Yes, dead and gone, all of them, long ago. He looked around at the beautiful buildings. You know what that means, Hubble. It means that earth won't support human life any more, for even in this domed city they couldn't live. But why couldn't they, Hubble said. He pointed to a wide space of low, flat, open tanks that covered acres of the city nearby. Those were hydroponic tanks, I think. They could raise food in them. If they had water, perhaps that's what ran out on them. Hubble shook his head. Those rat-like digging animals we saw could find water, men could find it too. I'm going to see. He got out of the jeep and walked toward the dusty tanks nearby. Henniston Dully watched him. But presently he too climbed out and began looking into the buildings around the plaza. He could see little but lofty, shadowy rooms illuminated only by the sad light that filtered through dusty windows. In some of the rooms was heavy furniture of metal, massive, yet graceful. In others nothing but the quiet dust. A great sadness and futility came upon Henniston as he went slowly around the silent streets. What did it matter, after all, that a town lost out of its time was facing death? Here a race had died, and the face of the earth was barren wilderness. Henniston was roused from his numbness by Hubble's voice. There's still water there, Ken, big reservoirs of it under those tanks, so that isn't what ended them, it was something else. What difference does it make now when it was, Henniston said heavily. It makes a difference, Hubble said. I've been thinking, but there isn't time to talk now. The night and cold are coming. With a start Henniston realized that the sun was sinking in the west, and that the shadow of the mighty buildings lay black upon the streets of the city. It shivered a little and led the way back to the jeep. Again its clattering roar profane the deathly silence as they drove back to and through the portal. We have to get back, Hubble was saying. They don't know yet in Middletown what they're facing. If we tell them of this place, Henniston said, if they learn that there are no more people, that there may be all alone on earth, they'll go mad with panic. The sun was very low, a splotch of crimson that bulked huge in the western sky as the jeep whined and lurched toward the ridge. The stars were brighter, the unfamiliar stars that had done with man. The cold became more piercing by the minute as the dusk deepened. A horror of the dying planets gathering night gripped both men. The uttered exclamations of shaken relief when the jeep finally topped the ridge. For there, ahead, incongruous on this nighted elder-earth, gleamed the familiar street lights of Middletown. The bright axes of Main Street and Mill Street, the fainter gridiron of the residential sections, the red neon beer signs of South Street, all shining out on the icy night of a dead world. I forgot about antifreeze in the jeep's radiator, Henniston 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. Henniston 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. Henniston 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 nod 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. Ferd and Fertive life timidly searching for its scant food, Keniston thought.  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 bar seemed crowded. Bundled up children were hanging about the pond in Mill Street Park. Keniston 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, Keniston 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 Keniston started to follow hobbled 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. Keniston 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, Keniston 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 can. Maybe you think you're being kind to Sparris, but I want to know. As soon as I get the house fixed up, said Keniston 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 Keniston 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. A moon. But a moon many times magnified, swollen to monstrous eyes, its glaring craters and planes and mountain chains frighteningly clear to the unaided eye. Keniston 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. Keniston 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 Garrus. Even now, politician-like, Mayor Garrus tried to shift responsibility a little. He told what he had to tell, but he prefixed it by, Dr. Hubbell 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, Keniston 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. CHAPTER V. IN THE RED DAWN. Keniston was aroused next morning by the sharp summons of the telephone. He awoke with chill, stiff limbs on the sofa where he adosed 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 Hubbell's voice on the wire that his mind cleared and he remembered yesterday. Hubbell's message was brief. Will you get over here, Ken? The Keystone Coal Yard. I'm afraid there's going to be trouble. Ken said, right away. He hung up and stood where he was for a moment, painfully adjusting himself to the realization of how different a day 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. He 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 Hubbell wanted him for a while. Then, a little hesitantly, he put his arms around her. You're all right now, he asked. Yes, Ken, I'm all right. But her voice was remote and tired, and had no life in it. Keniston did not refer to the night before, to the time after the mayor's apocalyptic announcement. Of all the bad moments he had had that day, that one had been the worst. Mrs. Adams did the expected things which he could cope with by means of brandy and ammonia capsules, but Carol did not. He sat quite still, looking at him in a way that he had never seen before. The mayor had told the full truth about the industrial research laboratory. It had been necessary to explain why Hubbell's statements were authoritative. Keniston wished that he had told Carol about it himself. It seemed an unimportant thing in the face of the world's end, and yet he felt that to her it was not unimportant at all. He could not talk it out with her then, with Mrs. Adams' hysterics dominating everything. And she had not come out to him later, and now, facing her again this morning, Keniston felt unsure of himself and of her for the first time since he had met her. "'Stay inside and keep the furnace going,' he said. "'I'll be back as soon as I can.' He kissed her, and she stood there in the circle of his arms, neither yielding nor resisting. He said, almost desperately, "'Don't give up, Carol. We'll find an answer to it all somehow.' She nodded and said, "'Yes, be careful,' and turned away.' Keniston went out alone into the bitter morning. It was still half dark, for the sullen sun had not quite risen, sprawling in the east like some bloated monster heavy with blood. He refilled the jeep's radiator which he had drained the night before. The mill whistles, the delivery trucks, the peremptory voices of locomotives quarreling at the junction, all were gone. Even the children were silent now, afraid of the red, cold dawn. The roses all were dead, and the frost had blackened the summer shrubs and trees. The streets seemed empty as Keniston drove the jeep down Main Street. Middletown had taken on, overnight, the aspect of a tomb. The smoke arose from every chimney, in the houses where the people crouched indoors, peering sometimes with pale faces, framed in frost-rimed glass as the jeep went clattering by in the silence. From every church he passed came sounds of hymns and praying. The bars, too, were noisy, having apparently defied law to remain open all night. Keniston realized that this town was dying as it stood. Fuel would run out fast, and without it life could not survive these bitter nights. A feeling of utter hopelessness swept over him. It seemed ironic that Middletown should have come safely through the most staggering cataclysm in history, only to perish miserably of cold. Dimly, in the back of his mind, a thought began to form. It tempered his hopelessness a little, but before he could get it clear he had made the turn in Divine Street and the keystone coal-yard lay before him. And at that place in the still and deathly city there was life and noise enough. Policemen and national guardsmen formed a cordon around the yard in its great black heaps of coal.  Keniston saw people he knew in that crowd, people who sat on their front porches in the warm summer nights and talked with neighbors and laughed. Mill hands, merchants, housewives, solid decent folk, but turned wolfish now with the cold and the fear of dying. Hubble met him inside the yard. A worried police sergeant was with him and Bortchard who owned the yard. "'They were starting to loot the coal-piles,' Hubble said. Poor devils, it was summer and they didn't have much fuel. Some of them burned their furniture last night to keep alive.' Keniston said anxiously.  Hubble nodded. "'You talk to them, Ken. You've gotten to know them better than I have, and they'll trust you more.'  And anyway, what'll I say to them?  They'll love that.' "'Maybe they don't have to freeze,' said Hubble. Maybe there's an answer to that.'" The half-formed thought in the back of Keniston's mind leaped forward. He looked at Hubble and knew that the older man had had the same thought, but sooner and clearer. A small flicker of hope began to stir again in Keniston. "'The domed city,' he said." Hubble nodded. "'Yes, it retains heat to a considerable degree at night. We saw that. That's why the dome was built, how long ago. No matter. It's our only half-warm refuge. We have to go there, Ken, all of us, and soon. We can't go through many more nights here. But will they go? And if they do, what'll happen when they see that city and realize Earth is a dead world?' Hubble made an impatient gesture. We'll have to take care of that when it comes. The thing now is to give these people some hope. Tell them to wait in their homes, that soon they'll be safe. Tell them anything you like, but make them go." Keniston scrambled up a black ridge of coal to stand above the crowd. From outside the cordon they snarled at him when he began. But he shouted them down, calling out the names of the ones he knew, ordering them to listen. Being masterful, while his heart pounded with the same dread that drove the men and women in the street. "'Don't talk to us about law when it's the end of the world,' yelled a heart-phased woman. "'It's the end of nothing unless you lose your heads,' Keniston hammered. "'The mayor is arranging now to give you what you want, an answer to how you're going to live and be safe. Your lives and the lives of your families depend on how you cooperate. Go home to your radios and wait for the orders.' "'Will they give us coal?' shouted a burly millhand. "'Cole, food, everything you need. Nobody's going to cheat anyone. We're all in the same boat. We'll stay in or get out together. Now go home and keep your families together and wait.' He called suddenly to the men on guard. "'You too. Get out of here and report back to your headquarters. The orders coming up are more important than this coal.' He climbed back down from the black heap, wondering whether his feeble attempt at psychology would work. Borchard started angry remonstrance about dismissal of the guards, but Hubble shut him up. "'It worked,' he said. "'Look, they're going.' As the crowd dispersed, chief of police Chimer arrived. His unshaven face was gray from lack of sleep, his eyes red rimmed. He did not seem to be much excited by the trouble at the coal-yard. "'We've had a lot more than this on our hands during the night,' he said. Keniston learned then what had gone on in Middletown since the mayor had finished speaking, the deaths from shock, the scattering of suicides, the outbreaks of looting in the downtown streets quickly checked. A dozen people, mostly drunks, had died of cold. "'But the barricades at the edge of town were the worst,' Chimer said tiredly. "'You know, a good number of people from outside Middletown were trapped here by this thing. They, and some of our own people, gone panicky, tried to stampede out of town.' He added as he turned back to his car. "'They tell me, more than two thousand people were baptized last night.' "'We'll go with you to City Hall,' Hubble told him. "'Yes, you too, Ken. I'll need your help with the mayor.' It seemed impossible that the pudgy little mayor could be a problem. He had been so docile, so pathetically eager to take advice and follow orders. But when, in City Hall, Hubble confronted him with the plan to evacuate Middletown, Mayor Gare's face took on a mule-ish look. "'It's crazy,' he said. "'Take up a whole city of fifty thousand people and transport them to another place we don't know anything about. It's insane!' There are enough cars, buses and trucks to transport the population and supplies. There's enough gasoline to run them. "'But, this other city, what do we know about it? Nothing. There might be any kind of danger there. No. I was born in Middletown. I've lived here all my life. I've worked hard to get where I am. I just spent five thousand dollars to redecorate my house, and I'm not going to leave it.' He glared at them and his plump body trembled. Hubble said gently, "'We're all afraid, Mr. Garrus. It's a hard thing to do. People have their roots and they can't break them easily all at once. But we must go. We must seek shelter or die.' The Mayor shook his head. "'My wife and daughter, they've been hysterical all night, pleading with me to do something, to make things go as they always have. This has been an awful shock to them. I don't think they could stand any more.' "'Slapped their faces, Mr. Garrus,' Hubble said brutally, "'This has been a shock to all of us. Now what are you going to do? Will you call in the city council or won't you?' "'I can't. Not on that proposal.'"  "'Honestly, gentlemen, I can't.'" Some thought of Carol shivering in her fur coat, struggling with the last shovels of coal, and the thought made him grasp Garrus savagely by the shirt front. "'All right, don't,' he snapped. "'The people are waiting for an announcement from you, but I'll make one myself. I'll tell them that there's a way to save them, but that Mayor Garrus won't hear of it.  Would you like me to tell them that, Mr. Garrus?' Caniston thought he had never seen a man turn so white. "'They'd tear me to pieces,' whispered Garrus. "'No, no, don't.'" He looked piteously from one to the other, and then he said, "'I'll call in the council.'" The men of the council reacted at first, very much as the Mayor had done. Caniston did not entirely blame them. The difficulties of uprooting a population of fifty thousand and moving it bodily in a short space of time to a place it had never seen nor heard of were enough to daunt anybody. But Hubble's arguments were unanswerable. It was move or die, and they knew it, and in the end the decision was made.  On the way to the broadcasting station, Caniston looked at Middletown, the big houses standing lordly on the north side, the little houses in close set rows with their tiny gardens. It was going to be hard, very hard. The people who lived in those houses would not want to leave them. In a low, tired voice, bereft now of pomposity and guile, the Mayor spoke to the people of Middletown. "'So, we must leave Middletown temporarily,' he concluded. And he repeated the word, "'Temperarily. The domed city out there will be a little cold, too, but not so cold as unprotected Middletown. We can live there until—until things clear up. Stay by your radios. You will be given instructions. Please co-operate to save all our lives. Please.'" End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of The City at World's End by Edmund Hamilton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The City at World's End. Chapter 6 Caravan into Tomorrow. Caniston lost track of his own emotions very quickly in the rush of urgent tasks. City Hall became the nerve center of the evacuation. The police and National Guard officers were already there, and other men were called in—the wholesale grocers, the housemen, the heads of trucking and bus and van lines. McClain, the big raw-boned manager of the largest trucking company, proved at tower of strength. He had been a transport officer in the last war and knew something about moving men and supplies. "'You'll have a traffic madhouse, and you won't get these people out for weeks,' he said crisply. "'It's got to be organized by wards. There have to be quarters in your domed city assigned for each ward, so they can go into their own streets when they get there.'" Hubbell nodded. "'I can get a crew of twenty men ready to handle that.'" "'Good. I figure the move will take three days. A third of the population is about all we can handle safely at one time. Civilian populations are the devil and all. Now, there'll have to be a squad assigned to distribute fuel to the ones who have to wait here in Middletown, and to quarter them as to conserve that fuel. Also..." Hubbell sighed.  Will you organize the march? Keniston can lead the first contingent when you're ready.'" McLean nodded brusquely, sat down at someone else's desk, and began to fire orders. Hubbell departed with his twenty-picked men, well armed, to set up a base in the domed city. The radio chattered incessantly now, urging, soothing, cajoling, issuing instructions. Police and guardsmen were dispatched to each ward, with a responsible man heading each squad. They were ordered to take the streets house by house, to assure complete evacuation, and also to ascertain how many private cars could be counted on for transportation. The city buses could carry only a fraction of the evacuees. McLean was the one who thought of the patients in the Middletown hospitals, and set men to collecting ambulances, whatever would carry the sick comfortably. The police patrol wagons and a few big army trucks from the armory, he assigned to move prisoners in the jail, who could not safely be released. But they and the sick would be left until the last day, to ensure proper quarters for their reception. Fleets of trucks were started to the warehouses, with hasty lists of the food and other emergency supplies that must go with them. We could run a truck line back to Middletown for more supplies later, McLean told Keniston, but this stuff will need right away. The first and second wards were to go first, and that meant that Carol and her aunt would be in the first day's evacuation. Keniston managed to get away long enough to see them. He was sorry he went. Mrs. Adams sat weeping in the living room, and Carol struggled alone with blankets and mattresses and suitcases, in a bitter, stony-faced mood that Keniston could not quite understand. He stayed longer than he should have done to help them pack, trying earnestly to penetrate Carol's tight-lipped silence. "'I know it's hard to leave your home,' he said, but it's hard for everybody, and after all, we'll have shelter and warmth and can stay alive.' "'Shelter and warmth,' said Carol. She looked around at the starched white curtains, the polished furniture, the pictures on the walls and the bits of fine china that were so lovingly placed, and she said bitterly, "'We had those. We had them for generations, until we had to have scientific progress, too.' "'I'll admit you have a point there,' said Keniston heavily, but it's too late to argue now.' "'Yes,' she said, "'too late.' Suddenly she began to cry, in a slow, painful way that was not in the least like Mrs. Adams' whimpering. "'Oh, Ken, my house and all the things I loved!' She had wit enough to know that it was not for glass and china that she wept, but for a way of life that was gone and could never possibly return. He felt a terrible pity for her, which almost smothered his irritation at the inability of the female mind to grapple with the essentials of a situation. "'It won't be so bad,' he said reassuringly, and I'll be leading tomorrow's first evacuation and won't be far from you at any time.' It was before nine o'clock the next morning when Keniston left City Hall with MacLaine to check the progress of preparations, under the cold red eye of the sun, Middletown seeded with an excited activity that centered in the first and second wards. Cars were being hastily loaded, piled high on roofs and fenders. Children were being called together, barking dogs being caught and leashed, families gathering in excited haste. Roar of motors filled the wintry air. Motors of great trucks rumbling to and from the warehouse. Motors of police cars dashing with sirens screaming, sputtering motors of old cars being agonizedly coaxed to life. The people on the streets, the people hurrying with bundles and children and dogs, looked more dazed and frightened. Some of them were laughing, a false merriment edged with excitement. Only a few women were sobbing. MacLaine and Keniston rode down in the jeep to the center of town, the square. This was the downtown first ward of Middletown. "'The first and second ward will move out in that order,' MacLaine told Keniston. "'You take charge of the first, since you're to lead the way.' Police and National Guardsmen were already forming up cars on South Jefferson Street. Cadillacs, Buicks, Fords, ancient Hupmobiles, city and school buses were crowded with those who had no cars and piled high with their belongings. Policemen on motorcycles roared past. MacLaine boomed rapid orders. "'Get side cars on those motorcycles. They won't make it without them over rough ground. Divide up the garbage tow trucks as they come in. Lead them evenly between the wards so they can haul any car that conks out.'" And to a worried National Guard officer. "'No! What the devil use would we have for your field guns? Leave them in the armory and bring cots, blankets, camp equipment instead.' Then MacLaine commandeered a car, jumped in, and shouted back to Keniston, "'Have them ready to move out by noon. I'll have the tube mill whistle sounded for a starting signal.'" And he was gone, racing off to the other ward gathering point. Keniston found himself faced by police, guardsmen, deputies, officials, all clamoring for orders. "'What are we going to do with these cars? Half of them are so overloaded they'll never get anywhere.'" Keniston saw that. The arriving cars were piled not only with bedding and other essentials, but with radios, musical instruments, big-framed family portraits, hobby horses, every sort of possession. "'Go along and tear some of that junk off,' he ordered. "'Form up all the way down south Jefferson, but only two abreast, for some of those southside streets are narrow.'" As he sweated to marshal the gathering cars, he watched for Carol's blue coupe. When she came, driving with pale self-possession while her aunt looked scaredly at the jam, he got her as near the front of the form up as he could, and then raced back to the square. The squad leaders rapidly reported in on their assigned streets. "'Everybody's out of Adam Street, everybody's out of Perry Street, Lincoln Avenue. But we haven't got them all out of North Street, Mr. Keniston. Some of those old people just won't go.'" Keniston swore and then jumped back into the jeep and drove around to North Street. It was the street of shabby, ancient brick houses, only two blocks off Main Street, and the first person he saw there was a grim-looking, shod old woman standing with folded arms on her front porch. "'I'm not leaving my home,' she snapped to Keniston before he could speak. "'I've lived in this house all my life, and my mother before me. I'll not leave it now.'" She sniffed scornfully. "'The idea of the whole town taking up and running away just because it's got a little cold.'" Keniston, baffled, saw a little girl of six peering at him from inside the window of the house. "'That your granddaughter?' he asked. "'Listen, she'll be dead in a few days. Stone frozen dead, unless you bring her and your warm clothes and blankets along now.'" The shod old woman stared at him. Then, her voice suddenly dull, she asked. "'Where do I go?' He hastened on along the street. A peppery old man was being carried out in a wheelchair by two squad men, and was viciously striking at them with his cane. "'Goddamn foolishness!' he was swearing. They got them into the waiting buses and hastily loaded on their belongings. Then Keniston raced back to the square. His watch said eleven ten, and he knew how far they were from ready. On the square, under the big sycamore tree, a gaunt, tall man with burning eyes was brandishing a Bible and shouting to no one. "'End of the world! Punishment for sin!' Lobber, the truck dispatcher whom McLean had left in charge of the First Ward caravan under Keniston, came running up to him when he reached South Jefferson. "'These people are crazy,' he patted. "'The ones already here want to start right now, and they don't even know the way.'" Keniston saw that the police had drawn a barricade of big trucks across the street some block southward. Motors were surging against it, motors roaring, drivers shouting, horns sounding in a deafening chorus. Panic! He knew it was in the air. He, all of them, had known there was danger of it when the mayor had made his broadcast. They had had to risk it, for only real fear could make people leave their lifelong homes. But if it got out of hand... He rode along the line shouting, "'Form up, form in line! If you jam the street you'll be left behind!' He couldn't even be heard. Limousines, trucks, jalapes, they crowded each other, banged fenders, bumped and recoiled and pressed forward again, and the horns never stopped their shrieking cacophony. Keniston, sweating now despite the frozen chill of the air, prayed that the gathering panic would not burst into violence.  "'Shouldn't we go?' he shouted to Keniston over the uproar of horns and motors. "'Everyone seems ready here!' "'McClane's running the traffic movement, and we've got to stick to his orders!' he shouted back. "'But if these people break loose!' the mayor began. He stopped. Over the shrieking horns and thundering motors a new sound was rising. A distant, banshee wail, a faraway scream that swelled into a horse's giant howl. The auto-horns, the shouting voices from the cars, fell silent. Only the sound of motors was background to that unending scream that wailed across Middletown like a requiem. "'That's the two-mill whistle!' cried Lauber. "'That's the signal!' Keniston sent the jeep jumping ahead. "'Okay, let those trucks roll! But keep people in line, back of them! No stampeding!' The big diesels that barricaded the way began to snort and rumble, and then started to move out as ponderously as elephants. Keniston's jeep swung in front, but almost at once cars behind pressed to get around them. "'Run the truck's three uprest in front!' he shouted to Lauber. "'It'll keep them from getting around!' Down Jefferson Street, down over the muddy bed of the Vanished River, past the old houses with their doors carefully shut and locked, past the playground that looked as forlorn as though it knew that children were going never to return. Past Homestreet, past the silent mills, past the beer signs of South Street, where from an upstairs window a drunken man shouted and waved a bottle at them. Past the last rows of drab-frame houses, the last brave lilliards whose flowers were blackened now by frost. Keniston saw ahead of them the line of demarcation, the boundary between the past and what was now earth. They reached it, passed it. And then the rolling ochre-yellow plains were all about them, barren and drab beneath the great, fire-lashed red eye of the sun. The cold wind whooped around them as they started to climb the easy slope toward the bridge. Behind his jeep, diesels, jalapes, buses, shiny station wagons, rolled with roaring, sputtering, purring motors. Keniston looked back down the slope at them. Already the other ward was moving out and he rode at the head of a huge caravan of vehicles crawling endlessly out of Middletown, a caravan out of the earth that was gone forever into this unguessable to-morrow. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of The City at World's End by Edmund Hamilton. When they came up over the bridge and for the first time had view of the distant dome-city that shimmered in the one light far out on the desolate plain, Keniston could sense the shock of doubt and fear that ran through all of his host who were seeing it for the first time. He could see it in all their peering faces, pale and strained in the red light of the dying sun. Even he, seeing it for only the second time, felt an inner recoiling. With his mind still filled with every sight and sound and smell of the old town they had left, the alien, solemn, deathly city of the dome seemed to him impossible as a refuge. He choked down that feeling. He had to choke it down.  Keep moving! He shouted, sounding the jeep's horn to command attention, gesturing authoritatively forward. Keep going! He conquered that brief pause of recoil, got them moving over the ridge, skidding and sliding down the other slope in clouds of heavy dust. He glimpsed Mayor Garrus staring ahead, his plump face shocked and pallid. He wondered what Carol was thinking as she looked out at the lonely shining rubble in the sad wastes. The endless caravan, shrouded in dust, was half way down the long slope when Keniston heard a raging of horns and looked back. An old sedan had stopped squarely in the middle of the narrow track the trucks had beaten down across a shallow gully. Cars were pulling out around it, wallowing in soft earth, jamming their low-hung frames against the banks, getting inextricably tangled. Behind them the line was damming up. Keniston yelled to Lover to keep the head of the caravan moving on toward the distant dome, and then sent his jeep snorting back along the line. A knot of people had collected now around the offending sedan. Keniston hastily shouldered his way through them. What the hell's going on here? He demanded. Whose car is this?  Mine, my car, I'm John Borsak. He gestured to the back seat of the old sedan. My wife, she's having a baby in there. He added, as an afterthought, my fifth. Oh, Christ, that's all we needed! Keniston cried. Borsak looked instantly guilty. He looked so sad that Keniston began to laugh. Suddenly all of them were laughing in sheer relief from nervous tension. He said men scurrying to get a doctor and ambulance out of the procession, and, meanwhile, willing hands carefully roll the old sedan a little aside. The dammed-up lines of cars began to roll again. But the pause, the waiting, the minutes spent in staring at the drear landscape had been too much for some of those in line. Keniston saw cars, only a few of them as yet, curving out of line and scrambling on the slope to swing back toward Middletown. He'd feared that, above all things. People, people of a twentieth-century Middle-Western town, could take only so much of the unknown. But he had to stop them, or panic would spread like fire that nobody could stop. He bucketed the Jeep after them, got ahead of them by the advantage of his four-wheel drive, and then blocked their way back and stood up in the Jeep and shouted at them and pointed ahead. A man who looked like an aging carpenter, with a knobby face, sheet-pale now, cursed Keniston out of the depths of his fear.  We're going back home! You'll never even get near it, Keniston warned. There are special guards who won't let anyone back into Middletown.  Oh, Hugh, maybe we'd better go on, whippered the shapeless woman beside the man.  I am a free American, and this isn't any dictatorship! Keniston found the only argument that could sway these people who were recoiling from the deathliness of the desert. If you go back, if you do get into Middletown and stay there, you'll soon be all alone there.  Go alone, here at the end of the world, with the night and the cold. That got to them, replacing their fear with a greater dread, the dread of aloneness in this lonely world.  Keniston's squad cars had come up, but they weren't needed. He told them, Watch the line close! Don't let one start to turn again, not one! He fought the jeep back up along the line, choking on dust and exhaust fumes, hanging precariously to the wheel, deafened by the continuous roar of motors. At the head of the caravan he was at least out of the dust, and could look ahead at the distant city. It was still only a shimmering, tiny bubble on the horizon, only a glittering point lost and drowned in the vast indifference of the ochre-colored wastes that stretched. How far? Clear around the world, over the beds of dried-up oceans and the sights of vanished cities, was the bottom of the Atlantic, like this, was New York, was Paris, were the poles? He had to forget that and keep his mind on the city ahead, on the job of getting these thousands of people to it, for if he didn't, the weight of the whole dying world would come down upon him like an avalanche, and he would cease to struggle. The world couldn't all be like this. There must be green valleys and people somewhere yet. But there wasn't time to think of it now. They had hit the road that led to the portal and the dome of man's last refuge was towering colossal in front of them. He saw that Hubble's men had closed the portal. That would be the first step, of course, to conserve what warmth there was and keep out the frigid wind. It opened now to receive them, and an armed man waved and smiled, and then clung on to the side of the jeep. Straight up this boulevard and then turn. I'll show you. Yeah, we got the section ready. No, no sign of anything. I don't think even a mouse lives here any more. A pause. I'm sure glad you people have got here.  The tall white silent towers watched them. The long, long line of dusty cars and trucks and buses that crept along the empty boulevards. The noise of motors greatly magnified, echoed, and rebounded from the walls, and was repeated faintly from the dome, and the very shocking loudness of the sound made Keniston shiver. Apart from that mechanical racket, a curious hush had come over the Middletowners. All down the lines heads were thrust forth out of car windows, ringing, peering, savoring the height of the buildings whose tops they could not see, staring at the lines and colors that were alien to all they knew, listening to the emptiness. Keniston knew how they felt. It was too big and too strange. Even a native New Yorker would have found awe among these mighty towers and to the folk of Middletown used to the little slate-roofed houses on the squat buildings of dingy brick. They were overpowering, crushing, with something in them of dread because they were all deserted. The head of the caravan reached a section that was barred off with ropes. The ropes were laid aside and the cars went in. Hubble's advance squad was ready. Without them the assignment of nearly seventeen thousand people to improvised quarters would have been impossible. With them it was a scrambling chaos, carried out strangely without much noise. Men and women moved with a sort of stunned oscillity, glancing side long into the dust and the shadows, peering at the blank windows and the tall strange rooms, afraid to raise their voices. Gradually the sound of motors died and the streets were ghastly in their silence, and it was a silent so great that the scuffling of many feet and the murmur of many voices and the labor of unpacking trucks and cars did not disturb it but were merely lost. Even the dogs were cowed. Keniston made his report to Hubble and then went in search of Carol. Here and there people still sat in their cars, refusing to move from their one last familiar reality, and he passed a woman who crouched in the dust of the street and wept with her arms full of blankets. Something of the same feeling of despair infected Keniston. It was not going to work. It was not going to work at all. And he dreaded to talk to Carol. But he plotted on until he found her. There was a great vaulted room on the street level, smelling dismally of the dust and desertion of ages. Very tall windows led in what light they could, but still it was dusky. There were twenty women in the room, of all sorts and ages, milling about with suitcases and loads of bedding, uttering vague wails and words of complaint, struggling with rolled-up mattresses. Carol and her aunt were two of the twenty. Characteristically, they had managed to get off in a corner as much by themselves as possible. Mrs. Adams had collapsed on to her improvised bed, and Carol was making what order she could of their scanty belongings. Are you all right? He asked her anxiously and she nodded. From the nested blankets on the floor Mrs. Adams whimpered. Why did they bring us here to this dreadful place? Why couldn't they have let us stay at home? Carol hushed her as she would a fretful child. Two sniffling, mouse-faced girls had crept up to ask Keniston questions. Behind them a short, thick middle-aged woman was stamping up and down along the walls, banging open the doors that pierced them. Where's the bathrooms? She was demanding belligerently. Keniston took Carol to the doorway and a little beyond it, where, if there was no more privacy, they were at least not besieged.  This bunking together, I mean.  I can fetch you anything you want from your house, your books and things, even furniture. She cut him short. No. I don't want anything touched there. I want to know it's all just as I left it, so I can at least think about it, and maybe...  Ken, old Mr. Peters from our street had another stroke when we got here. They took him away on a stretcher. He was dying and I saw his face. He was looking up at these awful buildings, so puzzled and afraid. He was trying to understand, and he couldn't. She shivered. Dying isn't good anywhere you do it, he said, but we're young and strong and we aren't going to die. He added, before he left her, there was a baby born on the march. Think of the baby, Carol, instead of the old man. He went away, depressed and worried. Carol seemed different and he didn't think it was just her tiredness. Perhaps she had roots too deep. Not just in Middletown, but in the pattern, the state of mind. Well, the pattern was smashed forever now and she and all of them had to adjust. Keniston had gone two of the long squares, sunk in his disturbed thoughts, before he realized that a change had come into the streets. He tried to think what it was. People were more in the buildings now and less in the cars, but that was not all of it. There was something. The streets had suddenly come alive. The children had done it. Overawed at first by the strangeness and the silence and the behavior of their elders, it had slowly dawned upon them that here was a whole great city lying ready to their hands, fabulous empty buildings full of mysteries and treasures, new streets, new narrow ways behind them, all virgin territory to be explored. By twos and threes the venturesome spirits had started out and taken others with them. And now the lofty hallways rang with shouts and running feet, small figures scutted to and fro across the pavement, the shadows teamed with motion, with screams and squeals and the voices of parental anger. One bold-lunged urchin had discovered that he could make echoes. Another, intoxicated by blank expanses of white, unsullied wall, stood with a stove of pencil in his hand writing in ever enlarging letters. Keniston thought, the irreverent little bastards. But his step quickened, and quite suddenly, he felt that it was going to work out after all. The human race was tough. He had further evidence of that in the next two days. The great waves of the migration poured down across the dusty ridge and in through the portal, the clamorous thousands of wheels and motors, the countless faces and peering eyes. And for those who came on the second day and on the third, it was not so bad as it had been for those who came first. The seventeen thousand pioneers had lifted the curse of the empty stillness. Community kitchens, working on oil and gasoline ranges, filled the air with the homely, cheering smell of coffee. There was hot food, and the excitement of searching out friends and comparing notes. The defatigable housewives busyed themselves with brooms and drove their husbands to cleaning windows and whacked their unruly children. And the cars piled up in lines along the streets and boulevards, the Plymouths and Nashas and Chevrolets and Fords, incongruous in this dream-like city of an elder earth.  They brought the prisoners from the jail and locked them away in another building. A great structure on the central plaza became the city hall. And by that third night not a soul was left in Middletown. All were here under the great dome of the alien city. We'll call this place New Middletown, Mayor Garrus had proclaimed, makes it seem more like home. Keniston walked with Carol that night down one of the dark main avenues of the Dome City. There was candlelight and lamp light from doorways and tall windows. A baby wailed from inside a dark doorway and was hastily soothed. Dogs barked, defiance to alien ghosts. A tinny phonograph sang somewhere, I can't give you anything but love, baby. Keniston thought that the streets of tall white buildings looked down with their windows as with eyes, amazed, bewildered. This city beneath the shimmering starlit dome had had silence for a long, long time. This and the slow swing of the cold red sun and the farther stars. Could a city remember, Keniston wondered? Did this one remember the old days of its builders, the lovers who had walked its ways and the children who had known its nooks and corners? Was it glad that men had come again, or did it regret the age-long silence and peace? Carol shivered a little and buttoned her topcoat. It's getting colder. Keniston nodded. But not bitterly so, only like an October night back in our own time. We can stand that.  But how will we live here, Ken? I mean, when the food from Middletown's warehouses run out. He and Hubble had known the question would come up and had the answer for it. Not a perfect answer, but the only one. There are big hydroponic tanks farther over in the city, Carol. The people here raise their food in them. We can do the same. There are plenty of seeds in Middletown. But water? Lots of it, he answered promptly. Big underground reservoirs that must tap deep water-bearing strata. Hubble had it tested, and it's perfectly safe. They walked on to the edge of the plaza. Now the moon was rising, that copper-colored, un-really big moon that was so much nearer Earth than in the old times. Its coppery light poured through the dome upon the city. The white towers dreamed, the chill deepened.  For this? Carol felt it, too, for she pressed closer to him. Are they all dead, Ken? All the human race, but ourselves? He and Hubble had the answer for that, too. The answer they would have to give to everyone. There's no reason to assume that. There may be other cities that are still inhabited. If so, we'll soon contact them. She shook her head. Words, Ken? You don't even believe them yourself? She drew away from him. We're alone, she said. Everything we had is gone. Our world, our whole life, and we're quite alone. He put his arms around her. He would have said something to comfort her, but she stood stiff and quivering, and suddenly she said, Ken, there are times when I can't help hating you. Utterly shocked and too bewildered to be angry yet, he let her go. She said, Carol, you're wrought up, hysterical. Her voice was low and harsh. The words came fast, as though they could no longer be held back. Am I? Maybe, but I can't help remembering that if you and men like you hadn't come to Middletown with that secret laboratory, fifty thousand people wouldn't have had to suffer for it. You brought this on us. He began to understand now all that had been behind Carol's taught manner and unfriendly silences, all the blind resentment that had focused upon himself. He was for the moment furiously indignant, the more so because what she had said stung him on a sensitive nerve. He stood almost glaring at her, and then his anger washed away and he took her by the shoulders and said, Carol, you're not making sense and you know it.  You can't. We need each other more than ever, and we're not going to lose each other. She stared at him rigidly, then started to sob and clung to him crying.  I'm so mixed up, I don't know my own mind any more. All of us feel like that, he said, but it'll come all right. Forget about it, Carol. And as he held her and soothed her and looked past her at the alien towers and the face of the alien moon, he knew that she could not completely forget, that that deep resentment would not die easily and that he would have to fight it. And it would be hard to fight. For there had been the sting of truth in her words, only a partial truth, but one he had not wanted ever to face. CHAPTER VIII of THE CITY AT WORLD'S END When Keniston awoke, he lay for some time in his blankets looking around the great room, with the same feeling of unreality that he felt now each morning. It was quite a large room, with graceful curving walls and sealing of soft-textured ivory plastic. But it was not as large as it looked, for the builders of the city had known how to use daringly jutting mezzanines to give two floor levels the spaciousness and loftiness of one. He looked up at the tall dusty windows and wondered what this room had once been. It was part of a big structure on the plaza, for Mayor Garrus had insisted that the whole lab staff be quartered near City Hall. It had obviously been a public building, but except for a few massive tables it had been quite empty, and there was no clue to its function. He looked around at the others on the row of mattresses. Hubble was still sleeping calmly, so was Bytes with the slight groaning stirrings of slumbering age. But Creechy lay wide awake and unmoving, looking up at the ceiling. Keniston remembered something with a sudden pang, something that he had completely forgotten in the rush of events. He went over to Creechy and whispered, I'm sorry, Louis, I never thought until now about your girl. Why would you think about that? Creechy's low voice was toneless. Why would you when all this has happened? He went on as tonelessly. Besides, it was all over a long time ago. For millions of years now she's been dead. Keniston lingered a moment, seeking something to say, remembering now Creechy's eager talk of the girl he was soon to marry, the girl who lived fifty miles away from Middletown. He could find nothing to say. Creechy's tragedy had been repeated many times among these people.  He felt again a great thankfulness that Carol had come through with him, and a renewed determination to hold her against anything. Keniston was lighting his morning cigarette when the others rose. He paused suddenly and said, I just thought... Hubble grinned at him. Yes, I know, you just thought about tobacco. You and a lot of people will soon have to do without. As they went out to get their breakfast at the nearest community kitchen, Hubble told him what was going forward. McClain's going back to Middletown to bring gasoline engines and pumps. We have to get water flowing in the city system at once, and it may be a long time before we can figure out its pumping power. They seem to be atomic engines of some sort, but I'm not sure. What about food rationing? Food and medicine will all go into guarded ware rooms. Ration tickets will be printed at once. Use of cars is forbidden, of course. Everybody is restricted to their own ward district temporarily to prevent accidents and exploration. We have already organized crews to explore the city. Keniston nodded. He drew the last rags of a cigarette, suddenly precious, before he spoke. That's all good, but the main problem will be morale, Hubble. He thought of Carol as he added, I don't believe these people can take it if they find out they're the last humans left. People looked worried. I know, but there must be people left somewhere. This city wasn't abandoned because of sudden disaster. They may just have gone to other, better cities. There wasn't a whisper on the radio from outside Middletown, Keniston reminded. No. But I believe they used something different from our radio system. That's what I went you for this morning, Ken. Bytes last night found a communication system in a building near here. It has big apparatus that he thinks was for televisor communication. That's more in your field than ours. Keniston felt a sharp interest, the interest of the technician that not even the world's in could completely kill. I'd like to see that. As they walked through the cold red morning, Keniston was surprised by the unexpectedly everyday appearance of this alien city beneath the dome. Families were trooping toward the community kitchens with the air of going on picnic.  A bald, red-faced man in undershirt and trousers smoked his pipe and looked down the mighty street with mild curiosity. Two plump women, one of whom was buttoning a reluctant small boy into his jacket, called to each other from neighboring doorways. And they say that Mrs. Bytes feeling better now, but her husband still poorly. Human beings, said Hubble, are adaptable. Thank God for that. But if they're the last, they won't be able to adapt to that. Hubble shook his head. No, I'm afraid not. After breakfast, Bytes led them to a big square building two blocks off the plaza. Inside was a large, shadowy hall in which bulked a row of tall, square blocks of apparatus. They were obviously televisor instruments. Each had a square screen, a microphone grating, and beneath that a panel of control switches, pointer dials, and other less identifiable instruments. Keniston found and opened a service panel in the back of one. Brief examination of the tangled apparatus inside discouraged him badly. They were televisor communication instruments, yes. But the principles on which they worked are baffling. They didn't even use vacuum tubes. They'd apparently got beyond the vacuum tube. Could you start one of them transmitting again? Keniston shook his head. The video system is absolutely beyond me. No resemblance at all to our primitive television apparatus. Hubble asked, would it be possible then to use just the audio system? Use one of them as a straight sound radio transmitter? Keniston hesitated. That might be done. It'd be mostly groping in the dark, but there are some familiar bits of design. He pondered, then said, the power leads come from outside. See anything around here that looks like a power station? Old bytes knotted. Only a bulk away, big shielded atomic turbines of some kind, coupled to generators. We might spent years trying to learn how to operate their atomic machinery, Keniston said. We could couple gasoline engines to those generators, Hubble suggested. It had furnished power enough to try one of these transmitters. Keniston looked at him. Yes, if there are any of them, they'd not hear our kind of radio calls. But this is their own communication setup. They'd hear it. Keniston said, finally, all right, give me power, and I'll try. In the next few days, Keniston was so immersed in the overmastering fascination of the technical problem set him, that he saw little of how Middletown's people were adapting to new Middletown. He could hear the trucks rumbling constantly under the dome, as McLean indefaginably pushed the work of bringing supplies from the deserted town beyond the ridge. They brought the gasoline engines needed, not only to pump water from the great reservoirs, but also to turn one of the generators in the power station. Once he had power, Keniston began to experiment, realizing the futility of trying to fathom the principles of the strange super-radio transmitters, he tried merely to deduce the ordinary method of operating them. The trucks brought other things, more food, clothing, furniture, hospital equipment, books. McLean began to talk of organizing a motor expedition to explore the surrounding country, and meanwhile the crews already organized to explore New Middletown itself were searching every block and building. Suddenly they had made two surprising discoveries. Hubble took Keniston away from his work to see one of these. He led down through a chain of corridors and catacombs underneath the city. "'You know that it's a few degrees warmer here in New Middletown than the sun's retained heat can account for,' Hubble said. "'We found big conduits that seemed to bring that slightly warmer air up into the city, so I had the men trace the conduits down to their source.' It felt sudden excitement. The source? A big artificial heating plant?' "'No, not that,' Hubble said. "'But here we are now. Have a look for yourself.' They had suddenly emerged onto a railed gallery in a vast underground chamber. The narrow gallery was the brink of an abysmal pit, a great circuit or shaft that dropped into unplumbed blackness. Keniston stared puzzledly. He saw that big conduits led upward out of the pit and then diverged in all directions. "'The slightly warmer air comes up from this shaft,' Hubble said, nodding toward the pit. He added, "'I know it sounds impossible to our engineering experience, but I believe this shaft goes downward many, many miles. I believe it goes down into Earth's core.' "'But Earth's core is incredibly hot,' Keniston objected. "'It was hot millions of years ago,' Hubble corrected. And as it grew cooler, as the surface grew cold, they built this dome city, and maybe others like it, and sank a great shaft downward to bring up heat from the core. But Earth's core is even cooler now, almost cold, and now there is only a trifle of heat from it to warm the city a little.' "'So that's why they couldn't live here anymore. It was the Earth heat they depended on and that ran out,' said Keniston a little hopelessly. His second discovery was made by Jennings, a young auto-salesman who headed one of the exploration crews. He brought news of it to the scientists, and Keniston went with Bytes and Creasy to see it. It was simply a big, semi-circuit or meeting-hall in one of the larger buildings, with tiers of several hundred seats. "'A council room, or lecture hall maybe?' said Bytes. "'But what's unusual about it?' "'Look at those seats in the second tier,' said Jennings. They saw then what he meant. The seats in that tier were not ordinary metal chairs like the others. They were different, different from the chairs, and different from each other. Some of them hardly looked like seats at all. One row of them were very wide and flat and low, with broad backs that flared in a little inward. Another row were very narrow seats that had no backs at all. Still others looked a little like curved lounging chairs, but the curve was an impossibly deep one. "'If there are seats,' said Jennings, they weren't intended for ordinary human people to sit in. Keniston and the others looked at each other startled. He had a sudden grotesque vision of this hall crowded with an audience, an audience partly human and partly what? Had humanity, in the last ages, shared the earth with other races that were not human?' "'We are all jumping to conclusions,' bites voice broke the spell. They may not be seats at all. But he added to Jennings as they left. Better not tell the people about this. It might upset them.' What the other exploration crews had found was summarized in a short speech by Hubble at the big-town meeting of Middletown's people held in the plaza on Sunday afternoon. There had been church services that morning, services without bells or organs or stained glass, but held in lofty, shadowy rooms of cathedral solemnity. The first-town meeting of New Middletown followed. Loudspeakers had been set up so that all in the big plaza might hear, and Mayor Garrus, an older-looking, humbled Mayor Garrus spoke to them. He was stumblingly encouraging. The ration system was working well, he told them. There was no danger of starvation, for hydroponic farming would soon be started. They could live in New Middletown indefinitely, if necessary. "'Dr. Hubble,' he added, will tell you of what was found in New Middletown by the exploring crews.' Hubble was concise. He emphasized first that the original inhabitants of New Middletown had apparently left it deliberately. They took their personal belongings, their books, their clothing, their smaller apparatus, instruments and furnishings. What they left were things too massive for easy transportation. That includes certain machinery, which we think was atomically powered, but which must be studied with great care before attempts at operation can be made. We feel sure that, in time, study will make it possible to use all such equipment. Mayor Garrus rose to add eagerly, and at least one piece of equipment is now ready to use. Here Keniston has got one of the radio transmitters here going, and will now start calling to contact the other people of Earth. A great cheering rose instantly from the gathered Middletowners. Keniston, after the gathering broke up, found himself besieged by excited questioners. Yes, they would start calling right away. He was worried when he got a moment alone with Hubble. Garrus shouldn't have announced that.  Hubble looked worried too. They're so sure there are other people that it's only a matter of contacting them. Keniston looked at him. Do you believe there are any others? I'm beginning to doubt it, Hubble. If they couldn't live in this city, they couldn't live anywhere. Perhaps, Hubble admitted uneasily, but we can't be sure of anything. We have to try, and keep trying. Keniston started the transmitter that night, using it for only ten minutes each hour to conserve gasoline as much as possible. Middletown calling, he spoke into the microphone, Middletown calling. No use of adding more, they could not yet operate a receiver to hear an answer. They could only call to make known their presence, and wait and hope that any others left on dying earth would hear and come. Crowds watched from outside the door as he called. They were there through the night, when bites took over and there again the next day and the next. They were quite silent, but the hope in their faces made Keniston sick. He felt, as another day and another past, the mockery of the words he kept repeating. Middletown calling. Calling to what?  To a cold and arid sphere that had done with humanity long ago. Yet he had to keep sending it out. The cry of man lost in the ages and seeking his kind. The cry that he felt there were no ears on earth to hear. Middletown calling. Calling. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9. Of the City at World's End by Edmund Hamilton. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. The City at World's End. Chapter 9. Out of the Silence. No answer. Weeks had gone by, while Keniston and bites called and called, and out of the silence of the dying earth had come no reply. Every hour they had spoken the words that had become meaningless. In between calls they had fumbled with the strange receivers that they did not know how to tune. And nothing at all had happened. Keniston had come to dread the times when he must leave the building and walk through the little crowd of hopeful Middletowners who are always gathered outside. No, not yet, he had to say, always trying to look confident. But maybe soon. And maybe never, Carol said to him hopelessly when they were alone, if anybody had heard they could have got here from any part of earth in these weeks you've been calling. Perhaps they don't have airplanes, he reminded her. If they had complicated radio receivers to hear our call they'd have planes too, wouldn't they? Her logic was unanswerable. For a moment Keniston was silent. Then, please don't say that to anyone else, Carol. All these people, it's what keeps them going, I think, their hope of finding other people. They wouldn't feel so lost, then. He sighed. We'll keep calling, it's all we can do. And maybe McLean and Creasy will find someone out there. They should be back soon. McLean had succeeded in organizing his motor expedition to explore the surrounding country. It had taken weeks of preparation of marshalling tank trucks from Middletown to use as gasoline caches at carefully selected points, of laying out tentative routes to follow. Two weeks before the little caravan of jeeps and halftracks had started out, and its return was due. And as it searched the dusty wastes out there, as Keniston and Bytes again and again voiced the unanswered call, work and life and death had marched forward in new Middletown. Hubble had helped lay out the schedule of necessary work. The hydroponic tanks had got to be ready. The whole city had to be cleaned of drifted dust. The supplies brought from Old Middletown had to be inventoried. A board of elected officials had assigned men to their work. Every man had his job, his schedule of hours, his pay in ration tickets. The schools had been set up again. Courts and law functioned once more, though all except serious offenders were liberated on probation. Babies were born in New Middletown each day, and the death toll was heavy at first, most of its victims among the old who could not stand the shock of uprooting. A space of land outside the dome had been carefully fenced in as a cemetery. But underneath all the bustle of new activities it was a waiting city. A city waiting with terrible eagerness for an answer to that call that went hourly out into the silence. Keniston felt his helplessness. He could not even understand completely the transmitters he used. He had in these weeks completely disassembled one of them without being able to puzzle out its circuits. He was sure that it employed radio frequencies far outside the electromagnetic spectrum of twentieth-century science. But parts of the design were baffling. The words stamped on the apparatus meant nothing. They were in the same completely unknown language as all the city's inscriptions. He could only keep sending out the same, questioning, hopeful message into the unknown. Middletown Calling Finally, McClain's exploring expedition returned. Carol came running to Keniston with the news. He went wither to the portal, where thousands of Middletowners were already anxiously gathering. They've had a hard time, said Keniston, as the jeeps and half-tracks rolled through the portal and came to a halt. McClain, Creasy, and the others were unshaven, dust-smeared, exhausted-looking. Some of them sagged in their seats. McClain's voice boomed to the eager questioners. Tell you all about it later. Right now we're pretty beat up. Creasy's tired voice cut in. Why not tell them now? They'll have to know. He faced the wondering crowd and said, We found something, yes. We found a city, two hundred miles west of here. A domed city, just like New Middletown. Bertram Garris asked the question that was in everyone's mind. Well, were there people in that other city? Creasy answered softly, No. There was nobody there. Not a soul. It was dead, and it had been dead a long time. McClain added, It's true. We saw no sign of life anywhere, Except a few little animals on the plains.  Then there's no one else. Then we are the last.  They looked at each other numbly. And then Bertram Garris displayed unsuspected capacities of leadership. He got up on one of the halftracks and spoke cheerfully. Now, folks, no use to let this news get you down.  Remember that Mr. Keniston's radio calls are going out every hour. He rattled on with loud heartiness. We've all been working hard, and we need some recreation. So tonight we're going to have a big get-together in the plaza, a town party. Tell everybody to come. The crowd of Middletowners brightened a little. But as they went away, Keniston saw that most of them still looked back soberly. He told Garris, That was a good idea to take their minds off things. The mayor looked pleased. Sure, they're just too impatient. They don't realize it may take the other people a good while to answer those calls of yours. Keniston realized that Garris' confidence had not been assumed. Despite the shattering new revelation, the mayor still had faith that there were other people. But Hubble was somber when he heard the news. Another dead city? Then there's no further doubt in my mind. Earth must be lifeless. Shall I keep sending out the radio call? Hubble hesitated. Yes, Ken, for a while. We don't want to spoil their party tonight. The town party in the plaza that night had the unusual luxury of electric lights powered by a portable generator.  Keniston threaded through the crowd with Carol, for bites had offered to stand his trick. Everyone knew him now and greeted him, but he noticed a significant difference in the greetings. They did not ask him now whether his calls had had an answer. They're giving up hope. He said to Carol, they're afraid there are no other people and they don't want to think about it. Yet the party went well until Mayor Garrus blundered. He had been cheerily back slapping his way through the crowd all evening, admiring babies, exchanging familiar greetings, obviously enjoying this relapse into the arts of politician ship. Flushed and happy, he got up on the band platform and called through the loudspeaker to the crowd. Come on, folks, how about a little community singing? I'll lead you with my famous tenor.  They laughed and sang as the band struck up the tune and the pudgy mayor cheerfully waved his hand like a conductor. The old songs not heard on earth for millions of years echoed off the tall white buildings and the great shimmering dome overhead. But as they sang, as they sang banks of the Wabash and old Kentucky home, voices and faces lost their brightness. Caniston saw the haunting yearning that came into the gathered thousands of faces and the mistiness in Carol's eyes. The swell of voices dropped a little. The singer seemed to hesitate and then, with an hysterical cry, a woman in the crowd sank sobbing to the ground. The singing and the music stopped and there was nothing but the racking sobs of the woman whom a man vainly tried to comfort. Caniston heard her crying out, "'It's all gone forever, our whole world and all its people, there's only us, alone on a dead world.'" Let's not get downhearted, folks, pleaded the mayor, but it was too late for that. The spell was broken. The people of Middletown were at last confronted with their awful aloneness. The party was over. The crowd silently dispersed, not speaking to each other, each man going back to his own home, his own thoughts. Caniston tried to find words of comfort for Carol when he left her, but he could not. There was no comfort for anyone, not now. They all had to face it, the certainty that they were the last on earth. He walked slowly back through the silent empty streets to relieve bites. The moon had risen now and through the great dome it poured coppery light upon the deserted plaza. Then suddenly he stopped and turned as he heard a voice and running feet pursuing him. Hey, hey, Mr. Caniston! He recognized Bud Martin, who had owned the garage in Old Middletown. Bud's lean young face was excited and the words came tumbling out of him so fast as to be almost incoherent. Mr. Caniston, I thought I just saw a plane going over the dome high up, only it looked more like a big submarine than a plane, but I saw it, I know I did. Caniston thought that he might have expected this. In their reaction of bitter disappointment, many of the Middletowners might be expected now to see the other people they so long to see. He said, I didn't hear anything, Bud. Neither did I. It went quiet and fast, high up there. I got just a glimpse of it. Caniston looked up with him. They stared for moments, but the moonlit sky was cold and empty. He lowered his gaze. It must have been a cloud shadow, Bud. There's nothing there. Bud Martin swore and then said earnestly, listen, Mr. Caniston, I'm not an hysterical woman. I saw something. It gave Caniston pause. For a moment his heart quickened. Was it possible? He stared again for long minutes. The sky remained empty, and yet his throb of excitement persisted.  Stirring up false hopes now would be disastrous. Hubble was with McLean and Creasy in a candlelit room, listening to their account of that other dead city they had found. He heard Bud Martin's eager tale and then looked at Caniston. I saw nothing, Caniston admitted, but through the dome, anything would be hard to see except when it was dead overhead. Hubble rose. Perhaps we'd better have a look from outside. Get your coats on. Heavily wrapped, the five of them went along the silent streets to the portal and threw it into the outer night. They walked a hundred yards out from the portal along the sand-drifted highway and then stopped and scanned the sky. The cold was intense. The big moon shone with a hard coppery brilliance that washed the looming dome of New Middletown with light. Keniston's gaze swept the blazing chains of stars. The old groups were much changed by the ages, but a few he could still vaguely recognize. The time distorted great bear warding the north, the warped and altered star pattern of the liar. And individual stars still burned in unmistakable splendor. The blue-white, flaring beacon of Vega, the somber, smoky red magnificence of Antares, the throbbing gold of Altair. People are going to be seeing plenty of things, said McClain skeptically. We might as well, listen, said Hubble sharply, holding up his hand. Keniston heard only the whisper of the bitter wind. Then, faintly, he caught a thrumming sound that rose and fell and rose again. It's from the north, Creasy said suddenly, and it's coming back around toward us. All five of them were suddenly rigid, held in the grip of an emotion too big for utterance, as they peered at the starry sky. The thrumming deepened. "'That's no plane, motor,' McClain exclaimed. "'It wasn't,' Keniston knew. "'It was neither the staccato roar "'of combustion engines nor the scream of jets, "'but a deep base humming that seemed to fill the sky. "'He was aware that his heart was pounding.' Creasy shouted and flung up his hand. They saw it almost at once, an elongated black mass cutting rapidly down across the stars. But Martin yelled, "'It's coming right down on us!' The thing, in a heartbeat, had become an enormous dark bulk rushing down upon them, looming like a thunder cloud. They ran back toward the portal, their feet slipping on the loose sand. "'Look!' cried Creasy. "'Look at it!' They turned there at the portal, and Keniston saw now that the downward rush of the black visitant upon them had been only an illusion born of its bigness. For the thing, whatever it was, humming like a million tops, was settling upon the plane a half mile from New Middletown. Sands spewmed up wildly to veil the giant bulk, then fell away and disclosed it resting on the plane. It was, Keniston saw instantly, a ship. But Martin's description had been accurate. The thing looked for all the world like a gigantic submarine without a conning tower that had come down out of the sky to land upon the plane. The deep base thrumming had stopped. The thing lay there in the moonlight, big, dark, silent. They stared rigidly. "'A ship from another world?' Keniston whispered. "'A spaceship?' "'It must be, but there were no rocket jets. "'It uses some other kind of power.' "'Why don't they come out of it now they've landed? "'What do they come here for? "'Who are they?'' The bulky enigma out there brooded, silent, unchanged. Then Keniston heard a calling of voices, a rising uproar in the city behind him. Others had seen and called the news. The uproar of voices and running feet increased. All the thousands in New Middletown were beginning to stream in wild excitement toward the portal. Mayor Garrus' pudgy figure ran toward them. "'Have they really come? Have the other people come?' Hubble's voice cracked. "'Keep the people back. "'They mustn't go outside yet. "'Something has come, we don't know what. "'Until we do know, we've got to be careful.' Into Keniston's mind suddenly flashed the remembrance of that big meeting-hall that Jennings had found, with its special section of queer seats that no ordinary human man or woman could have used. He felt a chill along his nerves. What manner of beings were in the looming, monstrous mass out there?'  Why, why I never thought that if people came they might be enemies. He started to shout to the police and National Guardsmen already on hand.  Presently the crowd had been forced back into the adjacent streets, and a score of armed police and guardsmen waited with Hubble and Keniston and the others just inside the portal. The mayor, his teeth chattering in the cold, said, "'Shall we go out to them?' Hubble shook his head. "'No, we're not sure of anything. We'll wait.'