City at World's End

Chapter 9 OUT OF THE SILENCE

No answer. Weeks had gone by, while Kenniston and Beitz 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.

And between calls, they had fumbled with the strange receivers that they did not know how to tune. And nothing at all had happened.

Kenniston came to dread the times when he must leave the building and walk through the little crowd of hopeful Middletowners who were 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 Kenniston 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 McLain and Crisci will find someone out there. They should be back soon.”

McLain 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 half-tracs had started out, and its return was due.

And as it searched the dusty wastes out there, as Kenniston and Beitz 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 to be got 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, thought 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.

Kenniston 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 electro-magnetic 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, McLain’s exploring expedition returned. Carol came running to Kenniston with the news. He went with her to the portal, where thousands of Middletowners were already anxiously gathering.

“They’ve had a hard time,” said Kenniston, as the jeeps and half-tracks rolled through the portal and came to a halt. McLain, Crisci and the others were unshaven, dust-smeared, exhausted-looking. Some of them sagged in their seats.

McLain’s voice boomed to the eager questioners. “Tell you all about it later! Right now, we’re pretty beat up.”

Crisci’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?”

Crisci answered softly, “No. There was nobody there. Not a soul. It was dead, and it had been dead a long time.”

McLain added, “It’s true. We saw no sign of life anywhere, except a few little animals on the plains.”

Carol turned a pale face toward Kenniston. “Then there’s no one else? Then we are the last?”

A sick silence had fallen on the crowd. They looked at each other numbly. And then Bertram Garris displayed unsuspected capacities of leadership. He got up on one of the half-tracks and spoke cheerfully.

“Now, folks, no use to let this news get you down! McLain’s party only covered a few hundred miles, and Earth is a mighty big place. Remember that Mr. Kenniston’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, Kenniston 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.”

Kenniston 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. There was a swing band on a platform, and a big space had been roped off for dancing. Kenniston threaded through the crowd with Carol, for Beitz 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 Garris blundered. He had been cheerily backslapping his way through the crowd all evening, admiring babies, exchanging familiar greetings, obviously enjoying this relapse in-to the arts of politicianship. 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. How about ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’?”

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. Kenniston 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 singers 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. Kenniston 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.

Kenniston 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 Beitz. 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. Kenniston!”

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. Kenniston, 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!”

Kenniston 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 longed 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.”

Kenniston 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. Kenniston, I’m not an hysterical woman. I saw something.”

It gave Kenniston 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.

He said abruptly, “We’ll get Hubble. But don’t say anything to anyone else. Stirring up false hopes now would be disastrous.”

Hubble was with McLain and Crisci 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 Kenniston.

“I saw nothing,” Kenniston 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 through 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.

Kenniston’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 Lyre. 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 McLain skeptic-ally. “We might as well…”

“Listen!” said Hubble sharply, holding up his hand. Kenniston 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,” Crisci 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!” McLain exclaimed.

It wasn’t, Kenniston knew. It was neither the staccato roar of combustion engines nor the scream of jets, but a deep bass humming that seemed to fill the sky. He was aware that his heart was pounding.

Crisci shouted and flung up his hand. They saw it almost at once, an elongated black mass cutting rapidly down across the stars.

Bud 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 thundercloud. They ran back toward the portal, their feet slipping on the loose sand.

“Look!” cried Crisci. “Look at it!”

They turned, there at the portal. And Kenniston 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 plain a half-mile from New Middletown. Sand spumed up wildly to veil the giant bulk, then fell away and disclosed it resting on the plain.

It was, Kenniston saw instantly, a ship. Bud 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 plain.

The deep bass thrumming had stopped. The thing lay there in the moonlight, big, dark, silent. They stared rigidly.

“A ship from another world?” Kenniston whispered. “A spaceship?”

“It must be. But there were no rocketjets. It uses some other kind of power.”

“Why don’t they come out of it, now they’ve landed?”

“What did they come here for? Who are they?”

The bulky enigma out there brooded, silent, unchanged. Then Kenniston 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 Garris’ pudgy figure ran toward them. “Have they really come? Have the other people come?”

Hubble’s voice crackled. “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 Kenniston’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?

Garris sounded a little scared. “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. “Get those people back! And get your guns!”

Presently the crowd had been forced back into the adjacent streets.

And a score of armed police and Guardsmen waited with Hubble and Kenniston 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.”

They waited, shivering in the cold wind, and as they waited, Kenniston’s mind rioted with speculation. This great vessel from outer space—whence had it come to dying Earth? From the farther stars? Why had it come? And what was going on inside it now? What eyes were watching them?

They waited. All New Middletown waited, and watched, as the Moon swung lordly across the zenith and the stars shifted and the cold deepened. And nothing happened. The monster metal bulk out there lay lightless and without sound.

The stars dimmed. Bleak gray light crept up the eastern sky. To Kenniston, chafing half-frozen hands, the mighty vessel out on the plain seemed unreal and dreamlike.

McLain swore. “If they’re not coming to see us, we might as well go out to see them.”

“Wait,” said Hubble.

“But we’ve waited for hours, and—”

“Wait,” said Hubble again. “They’re coming now.”

Kenniston saw. A dark opening had appeared, low in the side of the distant, looming hull. Figures that were vaguely unreal in the dawn light were emerging from that opening, and moving slowly toward New Middletown.