New Year's Eve—2000 A.D.

George Carhew glanced at his watch. The time was 11:21. He looked around at the rest of the guests at the party and said, “Hey! Thirty-nine more minutes and we enter the Twenty-First Century!”

Abel Marsh squinted sourly at Carhew. “How many times do I have to tell you, George, that the new century won’t begin for another year? 2001 is the first year of the Twenty-First Century, not 2000. You’ll have to wait till next year to celebrate that.”

“Don’t be so damned picayune,” Carhew snapped. “In half an hour it’ll be the year 2000. Why shouldn’t it be a new century?”

“Because—”

“Oh, don’t fight over it, boys,” cooed Maritta Lewis, giggling happily. She was a tall brunette with wide eyes and full lips; she wore a clinging synthoplast off-the-bosom blouse and a sprayon skirt that molded her hips and long legs. “It’s whatever century you want it to be, tonight! Twentieth! Twenty-first! Don’t get an ulcer, dad. Live it up!”

She climbed out of the web-chair she had been decorating and crossed to the bar. “Come on, you two grouches. What kind of drinks can I get you?”

“Dial me a Four Planets,” Carhew said.

“Okay, spaceman. How about you, Abel?”

“Old-fashioned whiskey sour for me. None of these futuristic drinks.” He grinned. “I still believe its the twentieth century, you see.”

Maritta dialed the drinks and carried them back across the room to the two men, narrowly avoiding spilling them when a wildly dancing couple pranced past.

Carhew took his drink, observing the firm swell of the girl’s breasts before him. “Care to dance, Maritta?”

“Why, sure,” she said.

He sipped at the hopefully-named Four Planets, then put it on the low ebony table near him and stood. Maritta seemed to float into his arms. She wore some new scent, pungent and desirable.

Carhew drew her tightly to him, and the music billowed loudly around them. They danced silently for a while.

“You seem moody, George,” she said after a few moments. Something troubling you?”

“No,” he said, but from the tone of his voice it might as well have been Yes.

“You worry too much, you know? I’ve only known you for an evening, and I can see you’re a worrier. You and that man you came in with—that Abel. Both of you stiff and tense, and snapping at each other about nothing at all. Imagine, quarrelling over whether next year is the Twentieth or the Twenty-first Century!”

“Which reminds me—” Carhew glanced at his watch. “It’s 11:40. Twenty minutes to midnight.”

“You’re changing the subject. Why don’t you come down to Dr. Bellison’s when the holiday is over.”

Carhew stiffened suddenly. “Bellison! That quack? That mystic—!”

“You don’t understand,” she said softly. “You’re like all the rest. But you haven’t experienced Relativistic Release, that’s all. You ought to come down sometime. It’ll do you a world of good.”

Feeling chilled, Carhew stared at the girl in his arms. Heldwig Bellison’s Relativistic Release philosophy was something new, something that had come spiralling out of Central Europe via jetcopter in 1998 and was busily infecting all of America now.

He didn’t know too much about it. It was, he knew, a hedonistic cult, devoted sheerly to pleasure—to drug-taking and strange sexual orgies and things like that. It seemed to Carhew, in the room’s half-light, that the girl’s eyes were dilated from drugs, and that her face bore the signs of dissipation. He shuddered.

No wonder she was so gay, so buoyant! Suddenly he no longer felt like dancing with her. He moved mechanically until the dance was over, then left the floor and headed for his seat.

“You still haven’t answered me, George. Will you come down to the clinic when the holiday’s over?”

He sipped at his drink. “Don’t ask me now, Maritta. Wait till later—till I’m really drunk. Then ask me. After midnight. Maybe by then I’ll be anxious to see Dr. Bellison. Who knows?”

She giggled. “You’re funny, George. And Abel, too. What do you two do for a living?”

Carhew exchanged a glance with dour Abel Marsh. Marsh shook his head imperceptibly.

“We’re…designers,” he said. “Draftsmen. Sort of engineers.”

“Sounds frightfully dull.”

Carhew was glad she didn’t intend to pursue the line of questioning too much further. “It is,” he said.

He raised the Four Planets to his lips and drained it.

“Be a good girl, will you, and get me another drink?”

“Sure. One Four Planets, coming up.”

“No,” he said. “This time I’ll have a screwdriver—with lots of vodka.”

“Switching drinks in midstream, eh? Okay, if you want to live dangerously!”

Carhew studied the girl’s trim form as she crossed the room to the bar. She was a lovely, langorous creature; it was a pity she belonged to that horrid cult. Carhew wondered how many men she had had already. He and Marsh had had time for very few dates in the past three years; he knew little about women. Tonight was their first really free night since 1998.

And even tonight, tension hung over them. An unanswered question remained to be answered.

Carhew glanced at his watch. “Eleven forty-nine,” he said. “Eleven more minutes.”

“Eleven minutes to A.D. 2000,” Marsh said.

“Eleven minutes to the Twenty-First Century.”

“Twentieth.”

“Twenty-first!”

“Twentieth!”

Maritta reappeared with the drinks.

“Are you two still bickering over that silly business?” she asked. “You’re like a couple of babies. Here’s your drink, George.”

Carhew took the drink from her and gulped at it, almost greedily. The vodka affected him rapidly; he felt his head starting to spin.

“Well,” he said “Twentieth or Twenty-first….doesn’t matter much….anyone got the time?”

“Eleven fifty-one,” Marsh said.

“That means—nine more minutes.” Carhew finished his drink. “I think I’ll have another one,” he said.

This time he weaved his way across the room to the bar and dialed his own—a martini, this time.

He sensed warmth behind him, and turned to see Maritta pressing gently against him. “You’ll get sick if you keep switching drinks,” she said.

“Maybe I want to get sick,” he said. “Maybe I see this whole sick crazy drug-ridden world and I want to get just as sick as it is.” I’m getting sober, he thought. Don’t want to do that.

He made out the time dimly. Eleven fifty-five. Five more minutes. Five minutes to the Year 2000. Dull tension started to mount inside him.

“You look awfully worried,” Maritta said. “I really think you should see Doctor—”

“Told you not to ask me that until after midnight. Wait till I’m good’n drunk. Maybe I’ll say yes then.”

He finished his cocktail, laughed crazily, and let the glass fall to the floor. It crashed against the leg of an iron table, and shattered, tinkling. “Too bad,” he said. “Guess I broke the glass. Guess so.”

“You’re drunk,” she said.

“Good. But not drunk enough.”

The room was starting to blur around him now; couples whirled by in a wild dance, and he could hardly see. From somewhere, the music began again.

“Let’s dance,” he suggested, and staggered forward into the girl’s arms.

They danced. While they spun around the room, someone turned on a radio. The announcer’s voice said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the time is now Eleven Fifty-Nine. In just one minute, the world will welcome a new year—and a new century, some claim, though purists insist that—”

Yeah, he thought. Purists like Marsh.

Somewhere inside his mind he was conscious that he ought to be at the window, looking out, when midnight came. He had one minute. Less than that, now. Fifty seconds. Forty-five. Forty.

Maritta’s lips touched his in a lingering kiss. He felt her body straining against his, while somewhere within him his mind went on counting. Thirty-five. Thirty. Twenty-five.

Twenty.

“Excuse me,” he said thickly. “Gotta go look out the window.”

Fifteen.

He sensed Abel Marsh standing next to him, pressing the button that would clear the opaqued window and make it possible for them to look out.

Ten. Nine. Eight.

The window cleared. Outside the night was black except for a few billion city lights and the round silver dollar up above that was the moon.

Seven. Six.

A current of excitement started to build up in Carhew. He saw the girl clinging to his arm. The three of them stared outward at the silent skies.

Five. Four. Three. Two.

ONE!

“It’s twelve midnight,” the announcer said. “We enter the Year 2000!”

Suddenly a bolt of light split the sky—a shaft of white flame that leaped up from the Earth and sprang through the heavens, lighting up the entire city and probably half the continent. A burning, searing bolt of light.

Carhew felt suddenly sober. He looked at Marsh.

Behind them, the radio blared: “We bring you now a special announcement relayed from White Sands Rocket Base. One minute ago, at the stroke of midnight, the Rocket Ship Moonflight made a successful blastoff. It was the first time in the history of humanity that man has broken forth from the bonds of Earth in a manned spaceship. We expect to bring you further bulletins throughout the night. Landing on the moon itself is scheduled for eight A.M. on New Year’s Day.”

Carhew was smiling. He looked at Abel Marsh, his fellow engineer on the project. “Well, we made it,” he said hoarsely. “The ship took off.”

“Happy New Year!” someone yelled. “Happy New Century!”

It didn’t matter much now, Carhew thought, which century this was. Not now. Twentieth or twenty-first, it made no difference.

All that counted was that this was the Age of Space.