City at World's End

Chapter 19 MIDDLETOWN DECIDES

With tightening nerves, Kenniston walked across the dust and desolation of the plain toward the bright dome of New Middletown. Arnol was with him, and big Gorr Holl. The cold wind was as he remembered it, and the red, lowering Sun with its crown of fire.

“Perfect!” whispered Arnol. “Perfect! Such a world as I have dreamed of for a test!”

“Here they come,” said Gorr Holl, and pointed to the portal.

The armed lookouts had recognized Kenniston and the big Capellan.

Word had gone around, and the folk of Middletown were pouring out through the portal to meet them.

Within seconds the crowd was around them, shouting, all but trampling them in its excitement. He recognized well-known faces—Bud Martin, John Borzak, Lauber—

McLain’s towering figure shouldered toward him. “What happened out there, Kenniston?”

“Yeah, what’s the verdict?” came a cry from beside him. “Are they going to let us be?”

He raised his voice to shout back to the wildly excited crowd.

“Everybody—go to the plaza! Pass the word around. I’ll tell you all about it, there.”

“The plaza! The plaza!”

Some of them began to run back toward the city, to cry the news through the streets. Others swarmed around Gorr Holl, glad to see him back. They stared curiously at Jon Arnol, demanding to know who he was, but Kenniston shook his head. The story would be hard enough to tell once. He was not going to do it twice.

He searched for Carol’s face in the crowd. He yearned to see her—and yet deep in his mind somewhere there was a strange reluctance to see her, to face her, and he did not know why this should be so. But she was not there, he should have known she would not have ventured into this excited crowd.

Mayor Garris bustled up to him at the portal, preceding Hubble and a few of the City Council.

“Did you fix things, Kenniston?” he cried. “Did you make them understand out there?”

Kenniston said, “I’d like to make my report in the plaza, where everyone can hear.”

The Mayor gave him a worried, half-frightened look, and fell back.

Kenniston reached out to take Hubble’s hand.

“I’ve got to talk to you, Hubble,” he said. “I’ve done something, and I don’t know…”

He talked in a rapid undertone to the older scientist as they made their way through the streets.

Hubble’s reaction was the same as Kenniston’s had been when the thing had been first broached to him. He recoiled from it.

“Good God, Ken! It’s mad—dangerous…”

But as he heard more, his alarm changed to grave attention, and then keenest interest.

“Yet it does sound logical, by every principle of our own physical science.” He looked at Jon Arnol. “If I could only talk clearly to him!”

“It wouldn’t do any good,” said Kenniston grimly. “That’s the awful part of it. His science is a million years beyond us.”

Hubble turned to Gorr Holl. He had worked beside the big furry Capellan. He knew and trusted his ability as an atomic technician. Haltingly, he asked, “Will Arnol’s process work?”

Gorr Holl answered simply, “I believe in it enough to risk my life helping to try it.”

Kenniston translated that. And Hubble seemed reassured. “It still seems a great gamble, Ken. But—I think it’s worth it.”

Soon Kenniston had mounted the steps of the building that was City Hall, and stood by the microphone. Before him were the gathered thousands of Middletowners—a kaleidoscope of eager faces, excited, waiting.

This was the moment he had dreaded—the moment he had thought he could not endure. And it was harder even than he had dreamed, to say the words he must say.

There was no use being gentle about it. He told them almost brutally,

“The decision is against us. They say we have to go.” He listened to the roar that broke out then, the angry cry of a people driven beyond their patience.

Mayor Garris voiced the passionate reaction of all Middletown.

“We won’t leave Earth! And if they want to push it to a fight, they can!”

Kenniston raised his hands, begging for quiet.

“Wait!” he shouted into the microphone. “Listen! You may not have to go, and you may not have to fight. There’s one chance…”

He told them, as simply and carefully as he could, of Jon Arnol’s great proposed experiment.

“Earth would be warm again—perhaps not quite as warm as before, but warm enough so that you could live here comfortably for all time to come.”

There was a long silence. He knew that the concept was too enormous for them to grasp at once. But they were trying to grasp it, trying to equate it with some familiar thing. The planetary scale of it, their minds could not hold onto. They struggled for a personal significance they could understand.

Finally John Borzak stepped forward, a rawboned, grizzled man who had spent a lifetime in the mills.

“Does it mean, Mr. Kenniston, that we could go back then to Middletown?”

He answered, “Yes.”

A cheer went up that shook the very walls of the buildings. “Back to Middletown! Did you hear that? We could go back to Middletown!”

Kenniston was touched beyond measure. To them, the shocking of a planet back to life meant primarily one thing—the ability to return to the drab little city beyond the hills, the city that was still home.

He motioned to them again for silence.

“I have to warn you. This experiment has never been tried on a world like Earth. It’s possible that it may fail. If it does, the surface of the Earth may be wrecked by quakes.”

That gave them pause. Kenniston saw the shadow of fear cross their faces, saw how they turned to one another and talked, and shook their heads, and looked anxiously back and forth.

Finally a voice cried, “What do you and Doctor Hubble think? You’re scientists. What’s your advice?”

Kenniston hesitated. Then he said slowly, “If I were alone on Earth, I would try it. But I cannot advise you. You must make your own decision.”

Hubble said into the microphone, “We can’t advise you, because we don’t know ourselves. We are dealing here with the science of this future age, which is far beyond us. We can only take what their scientists tell us on faith.

“They say that the theory is entirely workable. We have warned you of the possibility of failure. It’s up to you to decide how great the risk is, and how much you are willing to gamble.”

Kenniston turned and spoke to Mayor Garris. “Tell them to think it over carefully. Then call for a vote—those in favor of trying it to go to one side of the plaza, those against it to the other.” Aside, to Hubble, he said, “They should have months to decide a thing like this, instead of minutes!”

Hubble said, “It may be just as well. They won’t torture themselves with too much waiting and thinking.”

Mayor Garris talked to the crowd. There was a deepening, seething turmoil in the plaza then as people tried to reach others, to gather opinions from each other on what they ought to do. Scraps of heated conversations reached Kenniston’s ears:

“These guys from outside have done pretty well so far, getting this city going again. They know what they’re doing!”

“I don’t know. Suppose it does bring on terrible quakes?”

“Listen, these people know their stuff! They’d have to, to live out there in the stars the way they do!”

“Yeah. And I’d rather sit through an earthquake than go kiting off to the Milky Way!”

At last Mayor Garris asked, “Are you ready for the vote?”

They were, as ready as they would ever be.

Kenniston watched, his heart pounding. And beside him, Jon Arnol watched also. Kenniston had explained the procedure to him. He knew what Arnol must be going through as he waited while his life’s work was weighed in the balance.

For a time, the motion of the crowd was only a chaotic churning. Then, gradually, the separating motion came clear.

Those for the experiment, to the right side of the plaza…

Those against it, to the left…

The channel between the two factions widened. And Kenniston saw that on the left were a scant two hundred people.

The vote was carried. The experiment was approved.

Kenniston’s knees felt weak. He saw Arnol’s face, moved almost to tears with relief and joy. He himself was conscious of a wild excitement—and yet, even now, he could not stifle all his fear. They were committed, now, he and Arnol and the rest. For life or death, they were committed.

He spoke again into the microphone. “We must do this thing as soon as we can. We have very little time before ships of the Federation will arrive to stop us.

“You will please, all of you prepare to leave the city at a moment’s notice. As a precaution, no one is to remain under the dome when the energy bomb is detonated.

“Those of you who voted against the experiment will be given a chance to leave Earth before it takes place. The starcruiser can take only part of you, so it is suggested that you draw lots for space aboard her.”

He swung around to the Mayor. “Will you take over now? Start the work of organizing the departure—we’ll need every minute we’ve got!”

Hubble said, “I think we’d better let Jon Arnol see the shaft.” Arnol’s technical crew came in from the ship. They studied the great heat shaft, with Gorr Holl and Magro and Arnol himself, while Kenniston and Hubble stood by and watched.

Arnol finally said, “It’ll do. It goes right down to the core. But the similar shafts in the other domed cities here—they’ll have to be exploded and sealed, first.”

Kenniston was startled. He hadn’t though of that “But that’ll take time—”

“No, not so long. A few of my men can whip around to them in the cruiser and do it quickly. Of course I brought Earth maps—and there are only half a dozen of the domed cities.”

Kenniston asked him. “How long will it take to get things ready here?”

Arnol said, “If we perform a miracle, we can be ready by noon tomorrow.”

Kenniston nodded. “I’ll do my damnedest to help you, and so will everybody here. Just let me have ten minutes, first.”

Ten minutes wasn’t much. Not much, for a man who has just been halfway across a universe to spend with his girl. But time was what they didn’t have, an inexorable limit was closing down on them every second, and even this little time he took to go to Carol was time cheated and stolen from the common need.

Yet in the face of this terrible decision that had been taken, this thing that they were going to do to Earth, he had to see her, to quiet her fears and reassure her as best he could. He thought she would want to take frightened refuge on the cruiser, when the moment came, and he could only hope that he could get her on it.

Carol was waiting, as though she had known he would come. And to Kenniston’s amazement, there was no fear in her face—it was bright with eagerness and hope, her eyes lighted in a way he had not seen since the old time.

“Ken, can it really be done?” she cried. “Will it really work, make Earth warmer?”

“We’re so sure that we’re gambling everything it will,” he said. “Of course, there’s always a chance of failure—”

She didn’t even listen to that. Her hands clutched his arms, her face had a breathless excitement, as she explained, “But that doesn’t matter!

It’s worth running any chance, if it succeeds! If it lets us go back to Middletown—”

He saw the mist in her eyes, the hunger, the yearning, as she whispered, “Just to think of it—of going back to our own town, our own homes, our own people—”

Kenniston understood, now. Deep indeed was her homesickness for the old town, for the old way of life. So deep, that it had completely conquered the fear she might otherwise have felt

He took her in his arms and kissed her, and touched her hair, and he was thinking, She does love me—but only as part of a life that’s gone, not me alone, not just John Kenniston by himself, but the Kenniston of Middletown. And she’ll be happy with me again, if we can change our life back a little to what it was.

Why did that thought bring no joy? Why must he think of Varn Allan, tired and lonely, and yet courageously facing the wide universe, carrying a burden of duty too heavy for her?

Carol was asking him, “What was it like, Ken? Out there?”

He shook his head. “Strange—and hostile—and beautiful, in a terrible way.”

She said, “I think it changed you, a little. I think it would change anybody.”

And she shivered a little, as though even in the touch of him now was a freezing breath of alien deeps, a taint of unearthly worlds.

“No, Carol,” he said. “I’m not changed! But I can’t stay now. I have to get back—every minute is precious—”

As he hurried back to the others, Kenniston saw that New Middletown had become a rushing, surging swirl of excitement. Voices called to him, hands grabbed to delay him, men and women tried to reach him with questions. He was glad to rejoin the others around the lip of the great heat shaft.

Gorr Holl grinned his frightening grin at him. “Now, get ready to work!”

For what seemed an eternity, Kenniston worked. Machinists and sheet metal workers of Middletown were called in, every available man and piece of equipment. Great loads were brought in from the ship. Hammers rang with a deafening clamor, shaping metal on improvised forges.

Riveting machines gave out their staccato thunder.

And gradually, painfully, shaped out of the sweat and effort of their bodies, a scaffolding of steel girders rose above the mouth of the great shaft

Magro labored with the technicians over the complicated and delicate electrofuses, and the timing devices, and the radio control that from a distance would drop and detonate the charge.

Kenniston had little time to think of anything but the work. Yet his mind reverted strangely often to Varn Allan, locked in her cabin aboard the cruiser, and he wondered what her thoughts were.

Morning came. The city was to be cleared by noon, and the men and women of Middletown were gathering their children in readiness. They would not take much out of the city with them. They would not need much, either way.

The cryptic black ovoid was wheeled into position by the shaft. And with it were brought four small round objects of a different look.

“Capper bombs, that we made in the ship’s laboratory on the way here,” explained Arnol. “They will drop an instant after the energy bomb and will explode in the shaft just before it detonates below, sealing the shaft to prevent backlash.”

Kenniston watched while the technicians set the capper bombs in their racks, one above the other, inside the frame of girders. The racks would be tripped by electronic relay, from the remote control box.

Kenniston felt an increasing dread, as the fateful moment loomed close. His dread was for the trusting thousands of Middletown, who accepted the powers of scientists with the same unquestioning faith with which men had once accepted the powers of wizards.

He hoped that, if the experiment were a disastrous failure, he would not survive to know it.

A crane had been rigged to handle the energy bomb. The electronics crew were working desperately to finish the intricate wiring of the rack mechanisms, the split second timing of the relays. One of the cantilever support girders had flawed, and steel workers were sweating away to replace it.

A few more hours now, and the thing would be done. By noon, or a little after, they would know whether Earth was to live or die.

Then one of Arnol’s men came running. He had run all the way from the starcruiser. He was breathless, and his eyes were wild.

He cried out to Arnol, “A message on the televisor from a Control Squadron! They say they are approaching Earth, and order us to cease operations at once!”