City at World's End

Chapter 18 FATEFUL RETURN

Another night had come. Under the brilliant, unfamiliar stars, black mountain peaks looked broodingly at the scene of feverish activity on the little plateau.

Lights flared there, illumining the little group of long, low buildings, the supply yard with its crane, and the dim metal mass of a small starcruiser battered and tarnished by long use.

A wide hatch gaped in the side of the ship’s hull. And toward it Kenniston and his three companions were carefully rolling a massive, black ovoid thing that rested in a wheeled cradle.

“You needn’t worry—there’s no danger of detonating it, when it isn’t even electrofused,” Jon Arnol was saying reassuringly.

“Listen, if this energy bomb is able to change a whole plant, I’m treating it with respect!” rumbled Gorr Holl.

Kenniston felt the unreality of it. The whole scheme now seemed to him mad, harebrained. This big black mass his hand touched—how could it change the future of a world?

He tried to fight down these doubts. The scientists of this latter-day universe, masters of a knowledge far beyond his own, had affirmed the soundness of Arnold theory. That was what had nerved him to start this project, and he must cling to it. It was too late now for questions.

He was tired, dead tired. They had worked without respite all through the day, he and Gorr Holl and Magro, helping Arnol and his technical crew to load the masses of supplies and incomprehensible equipment necessary for the experiment.

The little starcruiser was Arnol’s workship. It had carried him on many research trips throughout the galaxy. And the eager young men of the crew who had worked and dreamed beside Arnol for so long had asked no questions. Whether or not they guessed what their mission was to be, Kenniston had no way of knowing.

The Chief pilot came up to Arnol as the four of them reached the hatchway with their cryptic burden.

“She’s all checked and ready for takeoff, whenever you are.”

Arnol nodded. The technical men were taking over the task of loading the energy bomb and making it fast in its shockproof well.

“As soon as they’re through,” said Arnol. He glanced at Kenniston and the others, with a weary, triumphant smile. “In about twenty minutes, we’ll be on our way.”

It was then that Kenniston saw the jet streams of a flier drawing a distant curve of flame across the sky, coming toward the plateau.

The others saw it, too. They waited, while the technical crew labored swiftly on, and Kenniston said, “It must be Lal’lor, with a message!”

“Yes,” said Arnol. “No one else could know we were here.”

Yet their uneasiness grew as they watched the flier sweep in to a landing. Kenniston thought desperately, “No one else could know! We wouldn’t have been followed!”

He found himself running with the others across the flat surface of the landing field.

He saw the figure that stepped out of the flier. It was not Lal’lor. It was a man he had never seen—a stocky man with clipped iron-grey hair and a look of authority on his square face.

Behind this stranger came Varn Allan, and with her, his face alight with triumph, was Norden Lund.

Kenniston stopped, his heart sinking in cold despair. The stocky newcomer stood, surveying with startled, unbelieving eyes, the bustle of activity around the cruiser.

“I wouldn’t have thought it possible!” he gasped. “Lund, you were right. They were going to do it without permission.”

Lund said happily, “Yes, sir. I suspected it That’s why I had them watched. You can see for yourself.” And to Kenniston and Arnol and the others he said, “Let me introduce you. This is Coordinator Mathis.”

Varn Allan was still standing and looking at them, her face shocked and incredulous in the white glare of the worklights. She looked as though she could not credit what she saw.

“I didn’t believe it,” she said, speaking to Kenniston slowly. “When the Coordinator informed me of what Lund had told him, what you were doing, I refused to believe it I came with him, to prove that he was wrong.”

She paused, her blue eyes growing hot, fixed on Kenniston. “But I was wrong. You are a complete barbarian, with no respect for law. I’m beginning to think your people should be quarantined!”

Mathis, the Coordinator, was looking grimly at Jon Arnol. “You’ve gone too far this time, Arnol. You know the penalty for breaking Federation law, even if this Kenniston hasn’t learned it yet.”

“Arrest,” said Lund softly. “Arrest and exile for all of them. I hope, sir, you will remember that it was I who exposed this criminal plot after my superior had shown open sympathy for the criminals.”

“I will remember it,” Mathis said crisply. “Now advise Vega Center of this situation at once.”

Lund turned to go back to the flier. Its radio-televisor, Kenniston knew, would put him into instant contact with the Government Center.

He sprang forward in running strides. He caught up to Lund, and with one hand on the man’s shoulder he spun him around. With the other, he smashed a driving blow at Lund’s jaw.

Mathis recoiled, horrified by the violence. Varn Allan ran toward Kenniston, as Lund struggled to get up.

“Get back, Kenniston!” she ordered him. “You’re not on your barbaric world now. You can’t…”

She had no chance to finish. Lund came up fast, drawing a small glass weapon from his pocket. He had foreseen Kenniston’s reactions sufficiently to come armed.

Gorr Holl’s great furry shape loomed up behind the Sub-Administrator. One huge paw caught the hand with the weapon, the other arm went around Lund’s body and lifted him in the air like a child. His powerful fingers tightened. Lund dropped the glass weapon.

“Let me go!” he gasped. “I order you…”

“You might have killed someone,” Gorr Holl rumbled, and shook Lund until his teeth rattled. “You have no orders for me, little man!”

He looked around, still holding Lund. “What now?” Mathis said, a little shakily, “I demand in the name of the Federation—” Nobody paid any attention to his demand, and he stopped.

Arnol had come up. There was an iron set to his jaw now. “We are already liable to penalties for what we have done. Arrest and exile. They can’t do much more to us if we go through with it. Are you still game?”

“Yes!” Kenniston looked at Varn Allan and Mathis. He said regretfully, “I’m sorry you two came. You’ll have to go with us now—you and Lund. We can’t leave you behind to spread an alarm.”

Her eyes met his coldly and steadily. “It will do you no good. Our disappearance, and yours, will be noticed very soon.”

She said nothing more. She glanced once at the flier, and then at the men around her, and at the fleet Magro. She did not try to escape. Arnol had turned to face his men. He told them, “You are not responsible for my plans, and you are not yet under any penalty. Therefore you are free to decide now whether or not you will go with me.”

The Chief Pilot stepped forward. He was a tall young man with a reckless grin and eyes that were not given to showing fear.

“I’ve sweated this tub across the galaxy too many times to quit now,” he said. “I don’t know about the other boys, but I’m going.”

The others, technicians and crewmen alike, shouted assent.

“We’ve worked too long and too hard to throw this chance away! We’re with you, Arnol!”

Arnol’s dark eyes suffused with a mist that was very like the tears of gratitude. But his voice rang out like a bugle, crying, “Then prepare for takeoff! The Government ships will be after us as soon as the Coordinator and Varn Allan and Lund are missed and traced!”

Men began to run toward the starcruiser. Kenniston went with them, holding tight to Varn Allan, with Gorr Holl coming after with the squirming, protesting Lund clutched in his great arms. Magro brought the pale-faced Mathis, who neither spoke nor resisted.

The hatches were shut. The airlock valves clanged into place. As he followed Arnol along a narrow passageway, Kenniston was aware of the swift, ordered confusion that seethed throughout the ship. Warning lights flashed on the bulkheads. Bells rang. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the cruiser, machinery jarred into life, settling to a steady humming.

Arnol thrust open two doors that faced each other across the passage.

Indicating one, he said, “I think this is the most comfortable, Administrator Allan. You’ll understand if we keep the door locked.”

She went inside without a word. Lund and Mathis were thrust into the opposite cabin, the former still snarling threats. Arnol glanced at the warning lights.

“All set,” he said. “Come on.”

In the cruiser, Kenniston sat dazedly through the last taut seconds of preparations, feeling all his weariness collapsing upon him. Then a bell rang, and the little ship went smoothly skyward. There was little sensation of the tremendous acceleration, any more than in the Thanis. He had learned by now of the elastic force-stasis that gripped everything in a starship to temper acceleration pressure.

As in a dream, Kenniston listened to the banshee scream of atmosphere past the outer hull. Then through the port he saw the great cloudy bulk of Vega Four falling away with slow majesty. And then the sky was gone, replaced by the depthless black vault of space that was hung thick with loops and chains and pendants of blazing Suns.

He became aware later of Gorr Holl’s big paws shaking him gently.

“Gome on, Kenniston. You’re nearly out. Time to sleep.”

The big Capellan bore him away bodily to a cabin, and rolled him into a bunk.

He woke hours later, feeling rusty and still tired from the strain of the past days. He looked out. The cruiser was in deep space now, droning steadily across the mighty gulf that separated it from Earth. Kenniston felt an involuntary thrill. This voyaging in the great interstellar deeps was getting into his blood.

He stuck his head in the bridge and found Magro there with the Chief Pilot.

“I’ve been listening with the Visor operator,” said the Spican. “There’s been no alarm yet, back there.”

“But there will be, when they find all of us gone.”

“Yes. And Control ships will be after us like hounds. We’re not going to have much time, on Earth.”

Kenniston was silent. Then he asked, “Where’s Arnol?”

“You’ll find him down in the bomb compartment.”

As Kenniston groped his way down a series of ladders, into the compartment where the great bomb brooded in its well, that troubling doubt rose again within him.

Until now, the swiftness of events had crowded it down. But now it seemed suddenly fantastic that he should pin the hopes of Earth’s last people to this black thing. It had only been tested once, and that test had ended disastrously…

But Jon Arnol sat there in the dim light and smiled, a happy, peaceful smile.

“I have been admiring my child, Kenniston. That seems silly, doesn’t it? But I’ve put most of my life into that thing. I’ve waited—how long I’ve waited! And now, in a little while…”

His gaze dwelt fondly again upon the black metallic ovoid in its cradled pit.

“It is a dream, and it is half a lifetime of toil, and it is a power that will revive a world.”

Kenniston cried, out of his haunting doubt, “Can this bomb really re-kindle Earth’s interior heat? How?”

Arnol said, a little helplessly, “I know the uncertainty that must oppress you. I’d like to explain my equations. But how can I, without first teaching you all that the ages have brought in new science?”

He went on, “But even though a primitive scientist, you are a scientist.

I will try to make you understand the principle, at least. You know that most suns derive their energy from a nuclear reaction that changes four hydrogen atoms into one helium atom, by a series of shifting transmutations involving carbon and nitrogen?”

Kenniston nodded quickly. “Yes, that carbon-nitrogen cycle was discovered in my time. Scientists called it the Solar Phoenix. The tiny fraction of atomic weight left over, after the cycle, was the source of solar radiation.”

“Exactly,” said Arnol. “What you wouldn’t know is that scientists in the ages since then have succeeded in triggering similar cyclical reactions in other, heavier elements. That is the key to my process.

“Most planets, like your Earth, have a central core of iron and nickel.

Now, a transformation of iron to nickel in cyclic reaction had been achieved in the laboratory, liberating the energy. I asked myself—instead of in a laboratory, why not start that reaction inside a planet?”

“Then it would reproduce the basic solar reaction inside such a planet?” Kenniston said incredulously.

“Not really, for the iron-nickel cycle does not yield such terrific radiation as your Solar Phoenix,” Arnol corrected. “It would, however, create a giant solar furnace inside a planet, and raise the surface temperature of that world by many degrees.”

Kenniston voiced his worry. “There wouldn’t be danger of the nuclear reaction bursting through to the surface?”

“It can’t burst through,” Arnol declared. “The cycle can only feed on nickel and iron, and the massive outer sphere of silicon and aluminum around the core would contain the reaction forever.”

He added, “That is why the energy-bomb that triggers the reaction must be detonated in the core. And that is why we can quickly start the process on your Earth—because the ancient heat shafts there provide access to the deep core without elaborate preliminary boring.”

Kenniston nodded. The theory seemed sound enough. And yet—

He said slowly, “But when you tested it before, the planet was nearly destroyed by quakes that the convulsion in the core started.”

“Planetoid” said Arnol wearily. “Not planet. Haven’t I explained that enough times? The mass was insufficient to sustain the blast.” He was suddenly angry. “Why was I ever fool enough to accept that impossible test? But I repeat, Kenniston, I know what I am doing. The entire College of Science has not been able to find flaws in my equations. You’ll have to be content with that.”

“Yes,” said Kenniston. “Yes, I’ll have to be.” But as he left Arnol, he could not entirely crush his apprehension. This man-made creation of a solar furnace in the heart of a planet was as monstrous to his mind as the making of fire must have been to the first man. What if, by his faith in Jon Arnol, he had doomed Earth instead of helping it?

One decision came clear in his mind. If there was a possibility that Earth’s surface might be ravaged by destructive quakes, no one should remain for the detonation of the bomb who did not do so of his own free will.

With a queer pang of guilt, he thought of Varn Allan. She and Lund and Mathis, prisoners against their will, would have to be let go before the great risk was taken. He would give her that reassurance, at least.

The door of her cabin had a simple combination lock, and the dial numbers had been given to all hands in case of necessity. Kenniston opened it, and went in.

She was sitting rather as he had sat that time aboard the Thanis, her shoulders bent, her gaze brooding on the immensity of space beyond the port. He thought she had not slept, from the lines of strain and weariness in her face.

She straightened up at once, and turned toward him defiantly. “Have you come to your senses and abandoned this criminal project?” she demanded.

The hard anger in her clear eyes awakened answering anger in Kenniston.

“We have not,” he said. “I came only to tell you that you and Lund and Mathis will be allowed to leave Earth before the thing is done.”

“Do you think I’m worried about my own safety?” cried Varn Allan.

“It’s the thousands of your people whom you’re endangering by this mad defiance of Federation law.”

“To the devil with Federation law,” he said roughly. Her eyes flashed hotly. “You’ll learn its power. Control ships will speed to Earth before you can even do this thing.”

Exasperated beyond measure, he grabbed her shoulders with a brutal impulse to shake her.

Then the totally unexpected happened. Varn Allan began to cry.

Kenniston’s anger melted into distress. She had always seemed so cool and self-contained that it was upsetting to see her in tears.

After a moment, he clumsily patted her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Varn. I know you were trying to help me there at Vega Center. And it must seem to you that I’m ungrateful. But I’m not! It’s just that I have to try this thing, or see Middletown’s people break their hearts trying to fight your Federation.”

She looked a him, wet-eyed, and murmured, “I’m behaving like an emotional fool.”

He looked down at her, his hands still on her shoulders. She pushed him back. She seemed to avoid his eyes as she said,

“I know you’re sincere, Kenniston. But I know too that this thing is wrong, that you can’t successfully defy the power of all the stars.”

He was strangely depressed when he left her. He tried not to think about it—tried not to remember the touch of her, tried not to recognize the choking emotion that had leaped in him for a moment.

“That’s just insane,” he muttered to himself. “And there’s Carol—”

He would not go to her again, in all the hours and days that the little starcruiser swept full speed across the galactic void. He was, somehow, afraid to see her once more.

A tension grew in Kenniston as the dim red spark of Sol largened to a sullen sphere. As the cruiser swept in at decelerating speed past the lifeless outer planets, he looked ahead.

“We must work fast, once we’re there,” Jon Arnol was saying tautly.

He, too, was showing the strain. “Already Federation ships must be on their way here to stop us.”

Kenniston made no answer. That cold, haunting doubt was a deeper shadow on him as he watched the gray blob of old Earth grow big ahead.

His people were there, waiting. What was he bringing to them and their dying planet? New life, or final, ultimate death?