Nightfall (novel)

18

“You’d better be careful,” Beenay said. He was beginning to feel tense. Evening was coming on—the evening of the eclipse, so long awaited by him with fear and trembling. “Athor’s furious with you, Theremon. I can’t believe you came here now. You know you’re not supposed to be anywhere on the premises. Especially not this evening, of all times to show up. You ought to be able to understand that, when you consider the sort of things you’ve been writing about him lately—”

The journalist chuckled. “I told you. I can calm him down.”

“Don’t be too sure of that, Theremon. You basically called him a superannuated crackbrain in your column, remember? The old man’s calm and steely most of the time, but when he’s pushed too far he’s got an amazing temper.”

Theremon said, with a shrug, “Look, Beenay, before I was a big-shot columnist I was a kid reporter who specialized in doing all sorts of impossible interviews, and I mean impossible. I’d come home every evening with bruises, black eyes, sometimes a broken bone or two, but I always got my story. You develop a certain degree of confidence in yourself after you’ve spent a few years routinely driving people out of their minds for the sake of getting a story. I’ll be able to take care of Athor.”

“Driving people out of their minds?” Beenay said. He glanced meaningfully toward the calendar-plate high in the wall of the corridor. In gleaming green letters it announced the date: 19 THEPTAR. The day of days, the one that had been blazing in everyone’s mind, here at the Observatory, month after month. The last day of sanity that many, perhaps most, of the people of Kalgash would ever know. “Not the best choice of words this evening, wouldn’t you say?”

Theremon smiled. “Maybe you’re right. We’ll see.” He pointed toward the closed door of Athor’s office. “Who’s in there right now?”

“Athor, of course. And Thilanda—she’s one of the astronomers. Davnit, Simbron, Hikkinan, all Observatory staffers. That’s about it.”

“What about Siferra? She said she’d be here.”

“Well, she isn’t, not yet.”

A look of surprise appeared on Theremon’s face. “Really? When I asked her the other day if she would opt for the Sanctuary she practically laughed in my face. She was dead set on watching the eclipse from here. I can’t believe she’s changed her mind. That woman isn’t afraid of anything, Beenay. Well, maybe she’s tidying up a few last-minute things over at her office.”

“Very likely.”

“And our chubby friend Sheerin? He’s not here either?”

“No, not Sheerin. He’s in the Sanctuary.”

“Not the bravest of men, is he, our Sheerin?”

“At least he’s got the good sense to admit it. Raissta’s at the Sanctuary too, and Athor’s wife Nyilda, and just about everybody else I know, except us few Observatory people. If you were smart you’d be there yourself, Theremon. When the Darkness gets here this evening you’ll wish that you were.”

“The Apostle Folimun 66 said more or less the same thing to me over a year ago, only it was his Sanctuary he was inviting me into, not yours. But I’m fully prepared to face the worst terrors the gods can throw at me, my friend. There’s a story to cover this evening, and I won’t be able to cover it if I’m holed up in some snug little underground hideout, will I?”

“There won’t be any newspaper tomorrow for you to write that story for, Theremon.”

“You think so?” Theremon caught Beenay by the arm and drew close to him, almost nose to nose. In a low, intense tone he said, “Tell me this, Beenay. Just between friends. Do you actually and truly think that any such incredible thing as Nightfall is going to happen this evening?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Gods! Are you serious, man?”

“As serious as I’ve ever been in my life, Theremon.”

“I can’t believe it. You seem so steady, Beenay. So solid, so responsible. And yet you’ve taken a bunch of admittedly speculative astronomical calculations, and some bits of charcoal dug up in a desert thousands of miles from here, and some wild frothings out of the mouths of a crew of wild-eyed cultists, and rolled them up together into the craziest damned mess of apocalyptic nonsense I ever—”

“It isn’t crazy,” Beenay insisted quietly. “It isn’t nonsense.”

“So the world is really coming to an end this evening.”

“The world we know and love, yes.”

Theremon released his grip on Beenay’s arm and threw his hands up in exasperation. “Gods! Even you! By Darkness, Beenay, I’ve been trying for better than a year to put some faith in all this stuff, and I can’t, I absolutely can’t. No matter what you say, or Athor, or Siferra, or Folimun 66, or Mondior, or—”

“Just wait,” Beenay said. “Only another few hours.”

“You really are sincere!” Theremon said wonderingly. “By all the gods, you’re as big a crackpot as Mondior himself. Bah! That’s what I say, Beenay. Bab!—Take me in to see Athor, will you?”

“I warn you, he doesn’t want to see you.”

“You said that already. Take me in there anyway.”

19

Theremon had never really expected to find himself taking a stance hostile to the Observatory scientists. Things had simply worked out that way, very gradually, in the months leading up to the nineteenth of Theptar.

It was basically a matter of journalistic integrity, he told himself. Beenay was his longtime friend, yes; Dr. Athor was unquestionably a great astronomer, Sheerin was genial and straightforward and likable; and Siferra was—well, an attractive and interesting woman and an important archaeologist. He had no desire at all to position himself as an enemy of such people.

But he had to write what he believed. And what he believed, to the depths of his soul, was that the Observatory group was every bit as loopy as the Apostles of Flame, and just as dangerous to the stability of society.

There was no way he could make himself take what they said seriously. The more time he spent around the Observatory, the nuttier it all seemed to him.

An invisible and apparently undetectable planet soaring through the sky on an orbit that brought it close to Kalgash every few decades? A combination of solar positions that would leave only Dovim overhead when the invisible planet arrived this time? Dovim’s light thereby blotted out, throwing the world into Darkness? And everyone going insane as a result? No, no, he couldn’t buy it.

To Theremon, all of it seemed just as wild as the stuff the Apostles of Flame had been peddling for so many years. The only extra thing that the Apostles threw in was the mysterious advent of the phenomenon known as Stars. Even the Observatory people had the good grace to admit that they couldn’t imagine what Stars were. Some other sort of invisible heavenly bodies, apparently, which suddenly came into view when the Year of Godliness ended and the wrath of the gods descended on Kalgash—so the Apostles indicated.

“It can’t be,” Beenay had told him, one evening at the Six Suns Club. It was still six months before the date of the eclipse. “The eclipse and the Darkness, yes. The Stars, no. There’s nothing in the universe except our world and the six suns and some insignificant asteroids—and Kalgash Two. If there are Stars also, why can’t we measure their presence? Why can’t we detect them by orbital perturbations, the way we’ve detected Kalgash Two? No, Theremon, if there are Stars out there, then something’s got to be wrong with the Theory of Universal Gravitation. And we know the theory’s all right.”

“We know the theory’s all right,” that was what Beenay had said. But wasn’t that just like Folimun saying, “We know that the Book of Revelations is a book of truth”?

In the beginning, when Beenay and Sheerin first told him of their emerging awareness that there was going to be a devastating period of Darkness upon all the world, Theremon, half skeptical and half awed and impressed by their apocalyptic visions, had indeed done his best to be helpful. “Athor wants to meet with Folimun,” Beenay said. “He’s trying to find out if the Apostles have any sort of ancient astronomical records that might confirm what we’ve found. Can you do anything to arrange it?”

“A funny notion,” Theremon said. “The irascible old man of science asking to see the spokesman of the forces of anti-science, of non-science. But I’ll see what I can do.”

That meeting had turned out to be surprisingly easy to arrange. Theremon had been intending to interview Folimun again anyway. The sharp-faced Apostle granted Theremon an audience for the following day.

“Athor?” Folimun said, when the newspaperman had passed Beenay’s message along. “Why would he want to see me?”

“Perhaps he’s planning to become an Apostle,” Theremon suggested playfully.

Folimun laughed. “Not very likely. From what I know of him, he’d sooner paint himself purple and go for a stroll in the nude down Saro Boulevard.”

“Well, maybe he’s undergone a conversion,” said Theremon. Cautiously he added, after a tantalizing pause, “I know for a fact that he and his staff have turned up some data that might just tend to support your belief that Darkness is going to sweep over the world on the nineteenth of Theptar next.”

Folimun allowed himself the smallest sort of carefully controlled display of interest, an almost imperceptible raising of one eyebrow. “How fascinating, if it’s true,” he said calmly.

“You’ll have to see him yourself to find that out.”

“I may just do that,” the Apostle said.

And indeed he did. Exactly what the nature of the meeting between Folimun and Athor was, Theremon never succeeded in finding out, despite all his best efforts. Athor and Folimun were the only ones present, and neither of them said a thing to anyone else about it afterward, so far as Theremon could discover. Beenay, Theremon’s chief link to the Observatory, was able to offer only vague guesses.

“It had something to do with the ancient astronomical records that the Chief believes are in the Apostles’ possession, that’s all I can tell you,” Beenay reported. “Athor suspects that they’ve been handing things down over the centuries, maybe even since before the last eclipse. Some of the passages in the Book of Revelations are in an old forgotten language, you know.”

“Old forgotten gibberish, you mean. Nobody’s ever been able to make any sense out of that stuff.”

“Well, I certainly can’t,” said Beenay. “But it’s the opinion of some quite respectable philologists that those passages may be actual prehistoric texts. What if the Apostles actually have a way of deciphering that language? But they keep it to themselves, thus concealing whatever astronomical data may be recorded in the Book of Revelations. That may be the key Athor’s after.”

Theremon was astonished. “You mean to say that the preeminent astronomer of our time, perhaps of all time, feels the need to consult a pack of hysterical cultists on a scientific issue?”

With a shrug, Beenay said, “All I know is that Athor doesn’t like the Apostles and their teachings any more than you do, but he thought there was something important to gain by meeting with your friend Folimun.”

“No friend of mine! He’s strictly a professional acquaintance.”

Beenay said, “Well, whatever you want to call—”

Theremon cut him off. Real wrath was rising in him now, a little to his own surprise. “And it’s not going to sit very well with me, let me tell you, if it turns out that you people and the Apostles have cut some sort of deal. So far as I’m concerned, the Apostles represent Darkness itself—the blackest, most hateful sort of reactionary ideas. Give them their way and they’ll have us all living medieval lives of fasting and chastity and flagellation again. It’s bad enough we have psychotics like them spewing forth demented delirious prophecies to disturb the tranquillity of everyday life, but if a man of Athor’s prestige is going to dignify those ludicrous creeps by incorporating some of their babble into his own findings, I’m going to be very, very suspicious, my friend, of anything at all that emanates from your Observatory from this point onward.”

Dismay was evident on Beenay’s face.

“If you only knew, Theremon, how scornfully Athor speaks of the Apostles, how little regard he has for anything they’ve ever advocated—”

“Then why is he deigning to speak with them?”

“You’ve talked with Folimun yourself!”

“That’s different. Like it or not, Folimun’s helping to make news these days. It’s my job to find out what’s going on in his mind.”

“Well,” Beenay said hotly, “maybe Athor takes the same view.”

That was the point where they had let the discussion drop. It was beginning to change from a discussion into a quarrel, and neither one of them wanted that. Since Beenay really had no idea what kind of understanding, if any, Athor and Folimun might have worked out with each other, Theremon saw there wasn’t much sense in belaboring him about it.

But, Theremon realized afterward, that conversation with Beenay was exactly when his attitude toward Beenay and Sheerin and the rest of the Observatory people had begun to shift—when he had started to move from sympathetic and curious onlooker to jeering, scornful critic. Even though he himself had been instrumental in bringing it about, the meeting between the Observatory director and the Apostle now seemed to Theremon to be a sellout of the most disastrous kind, a naive capitulation on Athor’s part to the forces of reaction and blind ignorance.

Although he had never really been able to make himself believe the theories of the scientists—despite all the so-called “evidence” they had allowed him to inspect—Theremon had taken a generally neutral position in his column when the first news stories about the impending eclipse began to appear in the Chronicle.

“A startling announcement,” he had called it, “and very frightening—if true. As Athor 77 quite rightly says, any prolonged period of sudden worldwide Darkness would be a calamity such as the world has never known. But from the other side of the world comes a dissenting view this morning. ‘With all due respect to the great Athor 77,’ declares Heranian 1104, Astronomer Royal of the Imperial Observatory of Kanipilitiniuk, ‘there is still no firm evidence that the so-called Kalgash Two satellite exists at all, let alone that it is capable of causing such an eclipse as the Saro group predicts. We must bear in mind that suns—even a small sun such as Dovim—are immensely larger than any wandering space satellite could possibly be, and it strikes us as highly unlikely that such a satellite would be able to enter precisely the position in the heavens necessary to intercept all solar illumination that might reach the surface of our world—’ ”

But then came Mondior 71’s speech of Umilithar thirteenth, in which the High Apostle proudly declared that the world’s greatest man of science had given his support to the word of the Book of Revelations. “The voice of science is now one with the voice of heaven,” Mondior cried. “I urge you now: put no further hope in miracles and dreams. What must come must come. Nothing can save the world from the wrath of the gods, nothing except a willingness to abandon sin, to give up evil, to devote oneself to the path of virtue and righteousness.”

Mondior’s booming pronouncement had pushed Theremon out of his neutrality. In loyalty to Beenay’s friendship he had allowed himself to take the eclipse hypothesis more or less seriously, for a while. But now he began to see it as pure sillyseason stuff—a bunch of earnest, self-deluding scientists, swept away by their own enthusiasm for a lot of circumstantial evidence and reasoning from mere coincidence, willing to kid themselves into a belief in the century’s most nonsensical bit of insanity.

The next day Theremon’s column asked, “Are you wondering how the Apostles of Flame ever managed to gain Athor 77 as a convert? Of all people, the grand old man of astronomy seems about the least likely to line up in support of those robed and hooded purveyors of claptrap and abracadabra. Did some silver-tongued Apostle charm the great scientist out of his wits? Or is it simply the case, as we’ve heard whispered behind the ivy-covered walls of Saro University, that the mandatory faculty retirement age has been pegged a few years too high?”

And that was only the beginning.

Theremon saw what role he had to play now. If people started taking this eclipse thing seriously, there would be mental breakdowns on all sides, even without the coming of general Darkness to start the trouble off.

Let everyone actually begin believing that doom would arrive on the evening of Theptar nineteenth, and there would be panic in the streets long before that, universal hysteria, a collapse of law and order, a prolonged period of general instability and troublesome apprehension—followed by the gods only knew what sort of emotional upheavals when the dreaded day came and went harmlessly. It would have to be his task to deflate the fear of Nightfall, of Darkness, of Doomsday, by poking it with the sharp spear of laughter.

So when Mondior thundered ferociously that the vengeance of the gods was on the way, Theremon 762 replied with lighthearted sketches of what the world would be like if the Apostles succeeded in “reforming” society as they wanted to—people going to the beach bundled up in ankle-length swimsuits, long sessions of prayer between each bit of action at sports events, all the great books and classic plays and shows rewritten to eliminate the slightest hint of impiety.

And when Athor and his group released diagrams showing the movements of the unseen and apparently unseeable Kalgash Two across the sky on its shadowy rendezvous with the pallid red light of Dovim, Theremon made amiable remarks about dragons, invisible giants, and other mythological monsters cavorting through the heavens.

When Mondior waved the scientific authority of Athor 77 around as an argument demonstrating secular support of the Apostles’ teachings, Theremon responded by asking how seriously anyone could take Athor 77’s scientific authority, now that he was obviously just as deranged as Mondior himself.

When Athor called for a crash program to store food supplies, scientific and technical information, and everything else that would be needed by mankind after the general insanity broke loose, Theremon suggested that in some quarters the general insanity had already broken loose, and provided his own list of essential items to put away in your basement (“can openers, thumbtacks, copies of the multiplication table, playing cards.…Don’t forget to write your name on a tag and tie it around your right wrist, in case you don’t remember it after the Darkness comes.…Put a tag on your left wrist that says, To find out your name, see tag on other wrist.…”)

By the time Theremon had finished working the story over, it was hard for his readers to decide which group was more absurd—the ripsnorting doomsayers of the Apostles of Flame, or the pathetic, gullible skywatchers of the Saro University Observatory. But one thing was certain: thanks to Theremon, hardly any member of the general public believed that anything out of the ordinary was going to take place on the evening of Theptar nineteenth.

20

Athor thrust out a belligerent lower lip and glared in rage at the man from the Chronicle. He was able to restrain himself only by a supreme effort.

“You here? Despite everything I said? Of all the audacity!”

Theremon’s hand was outstretched in greeting as though he really had expected Athor to accept it. But after a moment he lowered it, and stood regarding the Observatory director with astonishing insouciance.

In a voice trembling with barely controlled emotion Athor said, “You display an infernal gall, sir, in coming here this evening. It astounds me that you’d dare to show your face among us.”

From a corner of the room, Beenay, running the tip of his tongue nervously across his lips, interposed nervously, “Now, sir, after all—”

“Did you invite him to be here? When you knew I had expressly forbidden—”

“Sir, I—”

“It was Dr. Siferra,” Theremon said. “She urged me very vigorously to come. I’m here at her invitation.”

“Siferra? Siferra? I doubt that very much. She told me only a few weeks ago that she thinks you’re an irresponsible fool. She spoke of you in the harshest possible manner.” Athor looked around. “Where is she, by the way? She was supposed to be here, wasn’t she?” No answer came. Turning to Beenay, Athor said, “You’re the one who brought this newspaperman in, Beenay. I’m utterly amazed that you’d do such a thing. This isn’t the moment for insubordination. The Observatory is closed to journalists this evening. And it’s been closed to this particular journalist for a long time now. Show him out at once.”

“Director Athor,” Theremon said, “if you’ll only let me explain what my reason for—”

“I don’t believe, young man, that anything you could say now would do much to outweigh your insufferable daily columns of these last two months. You have led a vast newspaper campaign against the efforts of my colleagues and myself to organize the world against the menace that is about to overwhelm us. You have done your best with your highly personal attacks to make the staff of this Observatory objects of ridicule.”

He lifted the copy of the Saro City Chronicle on the table and shook it at Theremon furiously. “Even a person of your well-known impudence should have hesitated before coming to me with a request that he be allowed to cover today’s events for this paper. Of all newsmen—you!”

Athor dashed the newspaper to the floor, strode to the window, and clasped his arms behind his back.

“You are to leave immediately,” he snapped over his shoulder. “Beenay, get him out of here.”

Athor’s head was throbbing. It was important, he knew, to get his anger under control. He could not afford to allow anything to distract him from the vast and cataclysmic event that was about to occur.

Moodily he stared out at the Saro City skyline and forced himself back toward calmness, as much calmness as he was likely to be able to attain this evening.

Onos was beginning now to sink toward the horizon. In a little while it would fade and vanish into the distant mists. Athor watched it as it descended.

He knew he would never see it again as a sane man.

The cold white gleam of Sitha also was visible, low in the sky, far across the city at the other end of the horizon. Sitha’s twin, Tano, was nowhere to be seen—already set, gliding now through the skies of the opposite hemisphere, which soon would be enjoying the extraordinary phenomenon of a five-sun day—and Sitha itself was also swiftly vanishing from view. In another moment it too would disappear.

Behind him he heard Beenay and Theremon whispering.

“Is that man still here?” Athor asked ominously.

Beenay said, “Sir, I think you ought to listen to what he has to tell you.”

“You do? You think I ought to listen to him?” Athor whirled, his eyes gleaming fiercely. “Oh, no, Beenay. No, he’ll be the one to listen to me!” He beckoned peremptorily to the newspaperman, who had made no motion at all to leave. “Come here, young man! I’ll give you your story.”

Theremon walked slowly toward him.

Athor gestured outward. “Sitha is about to set—no, it already has. Onos will be gone also, in another moment or two. Of all the six suns, only Dovim will be left in the sky. Do you see it?”

The question was scarcely necessary to ask. The red dwarf sun looked even smaller than usual this evening, smaller than it had appeared in decades. But it was almost at zenith, and its ruddy light streamed down awesomely, flooding the landscape with an extraordinary blood-red illumination as the brilliant rays of setting Onos died.

Athor’s upturned face flushed redly in the Dovim-light. “In just under four hours,” he said, “civilization, as we have known it, will come to an end. It will do so because, as you see, Dovim will be the only sun in the sky.” He narrowed his eyes, stared toward the horizon. The last yellow blink of Onos now was gone. “There. Dovim is alone! We have four hours, now, until the finish of everything. Print that! But there’ll be no one to read it.”

“But if it turns out that four hours pass—and another four—and nothing happens?” asked Theremon softly.

“Don’t let that worry you. Plenty will happen, I assure you.”

“Perhaps. But if it doesn’t?”

Athor fought against his rising rage. “If you don’t leave, sir, and Beenay refuses to conduct you out, then I’ll call the university guards, and—No. On civilization’s last evening, I’ll allow no discourtesies here. You have five minutes, young man, to say what you have come here to say. At the end of that time, I will either agree to allow you to stay to view the eclipse, or you will leave of your own accord. Is that understood?”

Theremon hesitated only a moment. “Fair enough.”

Athor took out his pocket watch. “Five minutes, then.”

“Good! All right, first thing: what difference would it make if you allowed me to take down an eyewitness account of what’s to come? If your prediction comes true, my presence won’t matter at all—the world will end, there’ll be no newspaper tomorrow, I won’t be able to hurt you in any way. On the other hand, what if there isn’t any eclipse? You people will be the subject of such ridicule as the world has never known. Don’t you think it would be wise to leave that ridicule to friendly hands?”

Athor snorted. “Do you mean your hands?”

“Certainly!” Theremon flung himself down casually in the most comfortable chair in the room and crossed his legs. “My columns may have been a little rough at times, agreed, but I let you people have the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. Beenay’s a friend of mine, after all. He’s the one who first gave me an inkling of what was going on here, and you may recall that at the beginning I was quite sympathetic to your research. But—I ask you, Dr. Athor—how can you, one of the greatest of all scientists in all of history, turn your back on the awareness that the present century is a time of the triumph of reason over superstition, of fact over fantasy, of knowledge over blind fear? The Apostles of Flame are an absurd anachronism. The Book of Revelations is a muddled mass of foolishness. Everyone intelligent, everyone modern, knows that. And so people are annoyed, even angered, to have scientists turn about face and tell us that these cultists are preaching the truth. They—”

“No such thing, young man,” interrupted Athor. “While some of our data has been supplied us by the Apostles, our results contain none of the Apostles’ mysticism. Facts are facts, and there’s no denying that the Apostles’ so-called ‘foolishness’ does have certain facts behind it. We discovered that to our own chagrin, let me assure you. But we’ve scorned their mythologizing and done whatever we could to separate their quite genuine warnings of impending disaster from their quite preposterous and untenable program for transforming and ‘reforming’ society. I assure you that the Apostles hate us now even more than you do.”

“I don’t hate you. I’m just trying to tell you that the public is in an ugly humor. They’re angry.”

Athor twisted his mouth in derision. “Let them be angry!”

“Yes, but what about tomorrow?”

“There’ll be no tomorrow!”

“But if there is. Say that there is—just for the sake of argument. That anger might take shape as something serious. After all, you know, the whole financial world’s been in a nose-dive the last few months. The stock market has crashed three separate times, or haven’t you noticed? Sensible investors don’t really believe the world is coming to an end, but they think other investors might start to think so, and so the smart ones sell out before the panic begins—thus touching off the panic themselves. And then they buy back afterward, and sell again as soon as the market rallies, and begin the whole downward cycle all over again. And what do you think has happened to business? Johnny Public doesn’t believe you either, but there’s no sense buying new porch furniture just now, is there? Better to hang on to your money, just in case, or put it into canned goods and ammunition, and let the furniture wait.

“You see the point, Dr. Athor. Just as soon as this is all over, the business interests will be after your hide. They’ll say that if crackpots—begging your pardon—crackpots in the guise of serious scientists can upset the world’s entire economy any time they want simply by making some cockeyed prediction, then it’s up to the world to keep such things from happening. The sparks will fly, Doctor.”

Athor regarded the columnist indifferently. The five minutes were almost up.

“And just what were you proposing to do to help the situation?”

“Well,” Theremon said, grinning, “what I have in mind is this: starting tomorrow, I’ll serve as your unofficial public-relations representative. By which I mean that I can try to quell the anger you’re going to face, the same way that I’ve been trying to ease the tension the nation has been feeling—through humor, through ridicule, if necessary. I know—I know—it would be hard to stand, I admit, because I’d have to make you all out to be a bunch of gibbering idiots. But if I can get people laughing at you, they might just forget to be angry. In return for that, all I ask is the exclusive right to cover the scene at the Observatory this evening.”

Athor was silent. Beenay burst out, “Sir, it’s worth considering. I know that we’ve examined every possibility, but there’s always a million-to-one chance, a billion-to-one chance, that there’s an error somewhere in our theory or in our calculations. And if there is—”

The others in the room were murmuring now, and it sounded to Athor like murmurs of agreement. By the gods, was the whole department turning against him? Athor’s expression became that of one who found his mouth full of something bitter and couldn’t get rid of it.

“Let you remain with us so that you’ll be better able to ridicule us tomorrow? You must think I’m far gone in senility, young man!”

Theremon said, “But I’ve explained that my being here won’t make any difference. If there is an eclipse, if Darkness does come, you can expect nothing but the most reverent treatment from me, and all the help I can give in any crisis that might follow. And if nothing unusual happens after all, I’m willing to offer my services in the hope of protecting you, Dr. Athor, against the wrath of the angry citizens who—”

“Please,” a new voice said. “Let him stay, Dr. Athor.”

Athor looked around. Siferra had come in, unnoticed by him.

“I’m sorry I’m late. We had a little last-minute problem at the Archaeology office that upset things a little, and—” She and Theremon exchanged glances. To Athor she said, “Please don’t be offended. I know how cruelly he’s mocked us. But I asked him to come here this evening, so that he could find out at first hand that we really were right. He’s—my guest, Doctor.”

Athor closed his eyes a moment. Siferra’s guest! It was too much. Why not invite Folimun too? Why not invite Mondior!

But he had lost his appetite for further dispute. Time was running short. And obviously none of the others minded having Theremon here during the eclipse.

What did it matter?

What did anything matter now?

Resignedly Athor said, “All right. Stay, if that’s what you want. But you will kindly refrain from hampering us in our duties in any fashion. Understood? You’ll keep out of the way as much as possible. You will also remember that I am in charge of all activities here, and in spite of your opinions as expressed in your columns, I will expect full cooperation and full respect—”

21

Siferra crossed the room to Theremon’s side and said quietly, “I didn’t seriously expect you to come here this evening.”

“Why not? The invitation was serious, wasn’t it?”

“Of course. But you were so savage in your mockery, in all those columns you wrote about us—so cruel—”

“ ‘Irresponsible’ is the word you used,” Theremon said.

She reddened. “That too. I didn’t imagine you’d be able to look Athor in the eye after all those horrid things you said about him.”

“I’ll do more than look him in the eye, if it turns out that his dire predictions were on the mark. I’ll go down on both knees before him and humbly beg his pardon.”

“And if his predictions turn out not to have been on the mark?”

“Then he’ll need me.” Theremon said. “You all will. This is the right place for me to be, this evening.”

Siferra gave the newspaperman a startled glance. He was always saying the unexpected thing. She hadn’t managed to figure him out yet. She disliked him, of course—that went without saying. Everything about him—his profession, his manner of speaking, the flashy clothes he usually wore—struck her as tawdry and commonplace. His entire persona was a symbol, to her, of the crude, crass, dreary, ordinary, repellent world beyond the university walls that she had always detested.

And yet, and yet, and yet—

There were aspects of this Theremon that had managed to win her grudging admiration, despite everything. He was tough, for one thing, absolutely unswervable in his pursuit of whatever he might be after. She could appreciate that. He was straightforward, even blunt: quite a contrast to the slippery, manipulative, power-chasing academic types who swarmed all around her on the campus. He was intelligent, too, no question about that, even though he had chosen to devote his particular brand of sinewy, probing intelligence to a trivial, meaningless field like newspaper journalism. And she respected his robust physical vigor: he was tall and sturdy-looking and in obvious good health. Siferra had never had much esteem for weaklings. She had taken good care not to be one herself.

In truth she realized—improbable as it was, uncomfortable as it made her feel—that in some way she was attracted to him. An attraction of opposites? she thought. Yes, yes, that was an accurate way of putting it. But not entirely. Beneath the surface dissimilarities, Siferra knew, she had more in common with Theremon than she was willing to admit.

She looked uneasily toward the window. “Getting dark out there,” she said. “Darker than I’ve ever seen it before.”

“Frightened?” Theremon asked.

“Of the Darkness? No, not really. But I’m frightened of what’s going to come after it. You should be too.”

“What’s going to come after it,” he said, “is Onos-rise, and I suppose some of the other suns will be shining too, and everything’s going to be as it was before.”

“You sound very confident of that.”

Theremon laughed. “Onos has risen every morning of my life. Why shouldn’t I be confident it’ll rise tomorrow?”

Siferra shook her head. He was beginning to annoy her again with his pigheadedness. Hard to believe that she had been telling herself only moments before that she found him attractive.

She said coolly, “Onos will rise tomorrow. And will look down on such a scene of devastation as a person of your limited imagination is evidently incapable of anticipating.”

“Everything on fire, you mean? And everyone walking around drooling and gibbering while the city burns?”

“The archaeological evidence indicates—”

“Fires, yes. Repeated holocausts. But only in one small site, thousands of miles from here and thousands of years ago.” Theremon’s eyes flashed with sudden vitality. “And where’s your archaeological evidence for outbreaks of mass insanity? Are you extrapolating from all those fires? How can you be sure that those weren’t purely ritual fires, lit by perfectly sane men and women in the hope that they would bring back the suns and banish the Darkness? Fire which got out of hand each time and caused widespread damage, sure, but which were in no way related to any mental impairment on the part of the population?”

She gazed at him levelly. “There’s archaeological evidence of that too. The widespread mental impairment, I mean.”

“There is?”

“The tablet texts. Which only this morning we just finished keying in against the philological data provided by the Apostles of Flame—”

Theremon guffawed. “The Apostles of Flame! Wonderful! So you’re an Apostle too! What a shame, Siferra. A woman with a figure like yours, and from now on you’ll have to muffle yourself up in one of those terrible shapeless bulky robes of theirs—”

“Oh!” she cried, stifling a red burst of anger and loathing. “You don’t know how to do anything but mock, do you? You’re so convinced of your own righteousness that even when you’re staring right at the truth all you can do is make some pitiful joke! Oh—you—you impossible man—”

She swung around and headed swiftly across the room.

“Siferra—Siferra, wait—”

She ignored him. Her heart was pounding in rage. She saw now that it had been a terrible mistake to invite someone like Theremon to be here on the evening of the eclipse. A mistake, in fact, ever to have had anything to do with him.

It was Beenay’s fault, she thought. Everything was Beenay’s fault.

It was Beenay, after all, who had introduced her to Theremon, one day at the Faculty Club many months before. Apparently the newspaperman and the young astronomer had known each other a long time and Theremon regularly consulted Beenay on scientific matters that were making news.

What was making news just then was the prediction of Mondior 71 that the world would end on Theptar nineteenth—which at that time was something close to a year in the future. Of course nobody at the university held Mondior and his Apostles in any sort of regard, but it was just about at the same moment that Beenay had come up with his observations of the apparent irregularities in Kalgash’s orbit, and Siferra had reported her findings of fires at two-thousand-year intervals at the Hill of Thombo. Both of which discoveries, of course, had the dismaying quality of reinforcing the plausibility of the Apostles’ beliefs.

Theremon had seemed to know all about Siferra’s work at Thombo. When the newspaperman entered the Faculty Club—Siferra and Beenay were already there, though not by any prearranged appointment—Beenay merely had to say, “Theremon, this is my friend Dr. Siferra of the Archaeology Department.” And Theremon replied instantly, “Oh, yes. The burned villages piled up on that ancient hill.”

Siferra smiled coolly. “You’ve heard of that, have you?”

Beenay said quickly, “I told him. I know I promised not to say a word about it to him, but after you revealed everything to Athor and Sheerin and the rest, I figured that it wouldn’t matter any more if I let him know—so long as I swore him to secrecy—I mean, Siferra, I trust this man, I really do, and I was absolutely confident that—”

“It’s all right, Beenay,” Siferra said, making an effort not to seem as annoyed as in fact she was. “You really shouldn’t have said anything. But I forgive you.”

Theremon said, “No harm’s been done. Beenay swore me to a terrible oath that I wouldn’t print anything about it. But it’s fascinating. Absolutely fascinating! How old is the one at the bottom, would you say? Fifty thousand years, is it?”

“More like fourteen or sixteen,” Siferra said. “Which is quite immensely old enough, when you consider that Beklimot—you know of Beklimot, don’t you?—is only about twenty centuries old, and we used to think that was the earliest settlement on Kalgash.—You aren’t planning to write a story about my discoveries, are you?”

“I wasn’t, actually. I told you, I gave Beenay my word. Besides, it seemed a little abstract for the Chronicle’s readers, a little remote from their daily concerns. But I think now there’s a real story there. If you’d be willing to meet with me and give me the details—”

“I’d rather not,” Siferra said quickly.

“Which? Meet with me? Or give me the details?”

His quick flip reply suddenly cast the entire conversation in a new light for her. She saw, to her mild annoyance and slight surprise, that the newspaperman was in fact attracted to her. She realized now, thinking back over the past few minutes, that Theremon must have been wondering, all the while, whether there might be something romantic going on between her and Beenay, since he had found them sitting here in the club together. And had decided at last that there wasn’t, and so had chosen to offer that first lightly flirtatious line.

Well, that was his problem, Siferra thought.

She said in a deliberately neutral way, “I haven’t published my Thombo work in the scientific journals yet. It would be best if nothing about it gets into the public press until I have.”

“I quite understand that. But if I promise that I’ll abide by your release date, would you be willing to go over your material with me ahead of time?”

“Well—”

She looked at Beenay. What was a newspaperman’s promise worth, anyway?

Beenay said, “You can trust Theremon. I’ve told you already: he’s as honorable as they get, in his line of work.”

“Which isn’t saying much,” Theremon put in, laughing. “But I know better than to break my word on an issue of scientific publication priority. If I jumped the gun on your story, Beenay here would see that my name was mud all over the university. And I depend on my university contacts for some of my most interesting stories.—So can I count on an interview with you? Say, the day after next?”

And that was how it began.

Theremon was very persuasive. She agreed finally to have lunch with him, and slowly, cunningly, he pried the details of the Thombo dig out of her. Afterward she regretted it—she expected to see a stupid, sensational piece in the Chronicle the very next day—but Theremon kept his word and published nothing about her. He did ask to see her laboratory, though. Again she yielded, and he inspected the charts, the photographs, the ash samples. He asked some intelligent questions.

“You aren’t going to write me up, are you?” she asked nervously. “Now that you’ve seen all this?”

“I promised that I wouldn’t. I meant it. Although the moment you tell me that you’ve arranged to publish your findings in one of the scientific journals, I’ll regard myself as free to tell the whole thing. What would you say to dinner at the Six Suns Club tomorrow evening?”

“Well—”

“Or the evening after that?”

Siferra rarely went to places like the Six Suns. She hated to give anyone the false impression that she was interested in getting into social entanglements.

But Theremon wasn’t easy to turn down. Gently, cheerfully, skillfully, he maneuvered her into a position where she couldn’t avoid a date with him—for ten days hence. Well, what of it? she thought. He was personable enough. She could use a change of pace from the steady grind of her work. She met him at the Six Suns, where everyone seemed to know him. They had drinks, dinner, a fine wine from Thamian Province. He moved the conversation this way and that, very adroitly: a little bit about her life, her fascination with archaeology, her excavations at Beklimot. He found out that she’d never been married and had never been interested in marrying. He spoke of the Apostles with her, their wild prophecies, the surprising relationship of her Thombo finds to Mondior’s claims. Everything he said was tactful, perceptive, interesting. He was very charming—and also very manipulative, she thought.

At the end of the evening he asked her—gently, cheerfully, skillfully—if he could accompany her home. But she drew the line at that.

He didn’t seem troubled. He simply asked her out again.

They had gone out two or three more times altogether after that, over a period of perhaps two months. The format was the same each time: dinner at some elegant place, well-managed conversation, ultimately a delicately constructed invitation for her to spend the sleep-period with him. Siferra deflected him just as delicately each time. It was becoming a pleasant game, this lighthearted pursuit. She wondered how long it would go on. She still had no particular wish to go to bed with him, but the odd thing was that she had no particular wish any longer not to go to bed with him, either. It was a long time since she had felt that way about any man.

Then came the first of the series of columns in which he denounced the Observatory theories, questioned Athor’s sanity, compared the scientists’ prediction of the eclipse to the mad ravings of the Apostles of Flame.

Siferra didn’t believe it, at first. Was this some sort of joke? Beenay’s friend—her friend now, for that matter—attacking them so viciously?

A couple of months went by. The attacks continued. She didn’t hear from Theremon.

Finally she couldn’t remain silent any longer.

She called him at the newspaper office.

“Siferra! What a delight! Believe it or not, I was going to call you later this afternoon, to ask if you’d be interested in going to—”

“I wouldn’t,” she said. “Theremon, what are you doing?”

“Doing?”

“These columns about Athor and the Observatory.”

There was silence at the other end of the line for a long while.

Then he said, “Ah. You’re upset.”

“Upset? I’m livid!”

“You think I’ve been a little too harsh. Look, Siferra, when you write for a large audience of ordinary folks, some of them very ordinary, you’ve got to put things in black and white terms or run the risk of being misunderstood. I can’t simply say that I think Athor and Beenay are wrong. I’ve got to say that they’re nuts. Do you follow me?”

“Since when do you think they’re wrong? Does Beenay know how you feel?”

“Well—”

“You’ve been covering the story for months. Now you’ve turned around a hundred eighty degrees. To listen to you, one would think that everyone at the campus is a disciple of Mondior and that we’re all out of our minds besides. If you needed to find somebody to be the butt of your jokes, couldn’t you have looked somewhere else than the university?”

“These aren’t just jokes, Siferra,” Theremon said quietly.

“You believe what you’re writing?”

“I do. I honestly do. There isn’t going to be any cataclysm, that’s what I think. And here’s Athor pulling on the fire alarm in a crowded theater. By my jokes, my poking a little good-natured fun here and there, I’m trying to tell people that they don’t necessarily have to take him seriously—not to panic, not to get into an uproar—”

“What?” she cried. “But there is going to be a fire, Theremon! mon! And you’re playing a dangerous game with everyone’s welfare by your mockery. Listen to me: I’ve seen the ashes of past fires, fires thousands of years old. I know what’s going to happen. The Flames will come. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. You’ve seen the evidence too. And for you to take the position you’re taking now is the most destructive imaginable thing you could do, Theremon. It’s cruel and foolish and hateful. And utterly irresponsible.”

“Siferra—”

“I thought you were an intelligent man. I see now that you’re exactly like all the rest of them out there.”

“Sifer—”

She broke the contact.

And kept it broken, refusing to return any of his calls, until just a few weeks before the fateful day itself.

Early in the month of Theptar, Theremon called once more, and Siferra found herself on the line with him before she knew who it was.

“Don’t hang up,” he said quickly. “Just give me a minute.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Listen, Siferra. You can hate me all you like, but I want you to know this: I’m not cruel and I’m not foolish.”

“Whoever said you were?”

“You did, months ago, the last time we spoke. But it isn’t so. Everything I’ve written in my column about the eclipse has been there because I believe it.”

“Then you are foolish. Or stupid, at any rate. Which may be slightly different, but not any better.”

“I’ve looked at the evidence. I think you people have all been jumping to conclusions.”

She said coldly, “Well, we’ll all know whether that’s so on the nineteenth, won’t we?”

“I wish I could believe you, because you and Beenay and the rest of you are all such fine people, so obviously dedicated and brilliant and all. But I can’t. I’m a skeptic by nature. I have been all my life. I can’t accept any kind of dogma that other people want to sell me. It’s a serious flaw in my character, I suppose—it makes me seem frivolous. Maybe I am frivolous. But at least I’m honest. I simply don’t think there’ll be an eclipse, or madness, or fires.”

“It’s no dogma, Theremon. It’s a hypothesis.”

“That’s playing with words. I’m sorry if what I’ve written has offended you, but I can’t help it, Siferra.”

She was quiet a moment. Something in his voice had oddly moved her. She said at last, “Dogma, hypothesis, whatever it is, it’s going to be tested in a few weeks. I’ll be at the Observatory on the evening of the nineteenth. You come there too, and we’ll see which one of us is right.”

“But hasn’t Beenay told you? Athor’s declared me persona non grata at the Observatory!”

“Has that ever stopped you?”

“He refuses even to talk to me. You know, I have a proposal for him, something that could be of great help to him after the nineteenth when all this tremendous buildup misfires into whopping anticlimax and the world comes yelling for his skin, but Beenay says there’s no chance he’ll talk to me at all, let alone allow me to come in that evening.”

“Come as my guest. My date,” she said acidly. “Athor’ll be too busy to care. I want you to be in the room when the sky turns black and the fires start. I want to see the look on your face. I want to see if you’re as experienced at apologizing as you are at seduction, Theremon.”

22

That had been three weeks ago. Fleeing angrily from Theremon now, Siferra rushed to the far side of the room and caught sight of Athor, standing by himself, looking through a set of computer printouts. He was sadly turning the pages over and over and over as though he hoped to find a reprieve for the world buried somewhere in the dense columns. Then he looked up and saw her.

Color came to her face.

“Dr. Athor, I feel I ought to ask your pardon for inviting that man to be here this evening, after all he’s said about us, about you, about—” She shook her head. “I genuinely thought it would be instructive for him to be among us when—when—Well, I was wrong. He’s even more shallow and foolish than I imagined. I should never have told him to come.”

Wanly Athor said, “It scarcely is of any importance now, is it? So long as he keeps out of my way, I hardly care whether he’s here or not. A few more hours and then nothing will make any difference.” He pointed through the window, toward the sky. “So dark! So very dark! And yet not nearly as dark as it will be.—I wonder where Faro and Yimot are. You haven’t seen them, have you? No?—When you came in, Dr. Siferra, you said there’d been a last-minute problem at your office. Not a serious one, I hope.”

“The Thombo tablets have disappeared,” she said.

“Disappeared?”

“They were in the artifact safe, of course. Just before I left to come over here, Dr. Mudrin came to see me. He was on his way to the Sanctuary, but he wanted to check one last thing in his translation, one new notion he’d had. So we opened the safe, and—nothing. Gone, all six of them. We have copies, naturally. But still—the originals, the authentic ancient objects—”

“How can this have happened?” Athor asked.

Bitterly Siferra said, “Isn’t it obvious? The Apostles have stolen them. Probably to use as some kind of holy talismans, after the—the Darkness has come and done its work.”

“Are there any clues?”

“I’m no detective, Dr. Athor. There’s no evidence that would mean anything to me. But it had to be the Apostles. They’ve wanted them ever since they knew I had them. Oh, I wish I’d never said a word to them about them! I wish I’d never mentioned those tablets to anyone!”

Athor took her by the hands. “You mustn’t get so upset, my girl.”

My girl! She glared at him, astonished. No one had called her that in twenty-five years! But she choked back her anger. He was old, after all. And only trying to be kind.

He said, “Let them have them, Siferra. It makes no difference now. Thanks to that man over there, nothing makes any difference, does it?”

She shrugged. “I still hate the thought that some thief in an Apostle’s robe was sniffing around in my office—jimmying my safe—taking things that I had uncovered with my own hands. It’s like a violation of my body, almost. Can you understand that, Dr. Athor? To have been robbed of those tablets—it’s almost like a rape.”

“I know how upset you are,” Athor said, in a tone that indicated he didn’t really understand at all. “Look—look there. How bright Dovim is this evening! And in just a little while how dark everything will be.”

She managed a vague smile and turned away from him.

All about her, people were buzzing to and fro, checking this, discussing that, running to the window, pointing, murmuring. Now and then someone would come rushing in with some new data from the telescope dome. She felt like a complete outsider among these astronomers. And altogether bleak, altogether hopeless. Some of Athor’s fatalism must have rubbed off on me, she thought. He seemed so depressed, so lost. It wasn’t at all like him to be that way.

She wanted to remind him that it wasn’t the world that would end this evening, it was just the present cycle of civilization. They would rebuild. Those who had gone into hiding would come forth and start everything over, as had happened a dozen times before—or twenty, or a hundred—since the beginning of civilization on Kalgash.

But for her to tell Athor that would probably do no more good than for him to have told her not to worry about the loss of the tablets. He had hoped all the world would prepare itself against the catastrophe. And instead only a small fraction had paid any heed to the warning. Just those few who had gone to the university Sanctuary, and whatever other sanctuaries might have been set up elsewhere—

Beenay came over to her. “What’s this I hear from Athor? The tablets are gone?”

“Gone, yes. Stolen. I knew I never should have allowed myself to have any sort of contact with the Apostles.”

Beenay said, “You think they stole them?”

“I’m sure of it,” she said bitterly. “They sent word to me, after the existence of the Thombo tablets first became a matter of public knowledge, that they had information that would be of use to me. Didn’t I tell you? I guess not. What they wanted was a deal similar to the one Athor worked out with that high priest, or whatever he is: Folimun 66. ‘We have maintained a knowledge of the old language,’ Folimun said, ‘the language spoken in the previous Year of Godliness.’ And so they had, apparently—texts of some sort, dictionaries, alphabets of the old script, perhaps a lot more.”

“Which Athor was able to obtain from them?”

“Some of it. Enough, at any rate, to determine that the Apostles did have genuine astronomical records of the previous eclipse—enough, Athor said, to prove that the world had been through such a cataclysm at least once before.”

Athor, she went on to tell Beenay, had given her copies of the few astronomical text fragments he had received from Folimun, and she had shown them to Mudrin. Who indeed had found them valuable in his own translation of the tablets. But Siferra had balked at sharing her tablets with the Apostles, at least not on their terms. The Apostles claimed to be in possession of a key to the early clay-tablet script, and perhaps they were. Folimun had insisted, though, that she give him the actual tablets to be copied and translated, rather than his giving her the decoding material that he had. He wouldn’t settle for copies of the tablet texts. It had to be the original artifacts, or else no deal.

“But you drew the line at that,” Beenay said.

“Absolutely. The tablets mustn’t leave the university. ‘Give us the textual key,’ I said to Folimun, ‘and we’ll provide you with copies of the tablet texts. Then we can each attempt a translation.’ ”

But Folimun had refused. Copies of the texts were of no use to him, since they could all too easily be dismissed as forgeries. As for giving her his own documents, no, absolutely not. What he had, he said, was sacred material, which could only be made available to Apostles. Give him the tablets and he would provide translations of them for her. But no outsider was going to get a look at the texts already in his possession.

“I was actually tempted to join the Apostles for a moment,” Siferra said, “just for the sake of getting access to the key.”

“You? An Apostle?”

“Only to get their textual material. But the idea repelled me. I turned Folimun down.” And Mudrin had had to toil on at his translations without the help of whatever material the Apostles might have. It became apparent that the tablets did indeed seem to talk about some fiery doom that the gods had sent upon the world—but Mudrin’s translations were sketchy, hesitant, sparse.

Well, now the Apostles had the tablets anyway, more likely than not. That was hard to take. In the chaos ahead, they’d be waving those tablets around—her tablets—as still more evidence of their own wisdom and holiness.

“I’m sorry that your tablets are gone, Siferra,” Beenay said.

“But maybe there’s still a chance the Apostles didn’t steal them. That they’ll turn up somewhere.”

“I’m not counting on that,” said Siferra. And she smiled ruefully and turned away to stare at the darkening sky.

The best she could do by way of comfort was take Athor’s line: that the world was ending in a little while anyway, and nothing mattered very much. But that was cold comfort indeed. She fought inwardly against any such counsel of despair. The important thing was to keep on thinking of the day after tomorrow—of survival, of rebuilding, of the struggle and its fulfillment. It was no good to fall into despondency like Athor, to accept the downfall of humanity, to shrug and give up all hope.

A high tenor voice cut suddenly across her gloomy meditations.

“Hello, everybody! Hello, hello, hello!”

“Sheerin!” Beenay cried. “What are you doing here?”

The plump cheeks of the newcomer expanded in a pleased smile. “What’s this morgue-like atmosphere in here? No one’s losing their nerve, I hope.”

Athor started in consternation and said peevishly, “Yes, what are you doing here, Sheerin? I thought you were going to stay behind in the Sanctuary.”

Sheerin laughed and dropped his tubby figure into a chair. “Sanctuary be damned! The place bored me. I wanted to be here, where things are getting hot. Don’t you suppose I have my share of curiosity? I rode in the Tunnel of Mystery, after all. I can survive another dose of Darkness. And I want to see these Stars that the Apostles have been spouting about.” He rubbed his hands and added in a soberer tone, “It’s freezing outside. The wind’s enough to hang icicles on your nose. Dovim doesn’t seem to give any heat at all, at the distance it is this evening.”

The white-haired director ground his teeth in sudden exasperation. “Why do you go out of your way to do a crazy thing like this, Sheerin? What kind of good can you be around here?”

“What kind of good am I around there?” Sheerin spread his palms in comical resignation. “A psychologist isn’t worth a damn in the Sanctuary. Not now. Not a thing I could do for them. They’re all snug and safe, laced in underground, nothing to worry about.”

“And if a mob should break in during the Darkness?”

Sheerin laughed. “I very much doubt that anyone who didn’t know where the entrance was would be able to find the Sanctuary in broad daylight, let alone once the suns have gone out. But if they do, well, they’d need men of action to defend them. Me? I’m a hundred pounds too heavy for that. So why should I huddle in down there with them? I’d rather be here.”

Siferra felt her own spirits rise as she heard Sheerin’s words. She too had chosen to spend the evening of Darkness at the Observatory, rather than in the Sanctuary. Perhaps it was mere wild bravado, perhaps it was idiotic overconfidence, but she was sure that she could last out the hours of the eclipse—and even the coming of the Stars, if there was anything to that part of the myth—and retain her sanity. And so she had decided not to pass up the experience.

Now it appeared that Sheerin, no model of bravery, had taken the same approach. Which might mean that he had decided the impact of Darkness would not be so overwhelming after all, despite the grim predictions he had been making for months. She had heard his tales of the Tunnel of Mystery and the havoc it had wreaked, even on Sheerin himself. Yet here he was. He must have come to believe that people, some at least, would turn out ultimately to be more resilient than he had expected earlier.

Or else he was simply being reckless. Perhaps he preferred to lose his mind in one quick burst this evening, Siferra thought, rather than stay sane and have to cope with the innumerable and perhaps insuperable problems of the hard times ahead—

No. No. She was falling into morbid pessimism again.

She brushed the thought away.

“Sheerin!” It was Theremon, coming across the room to greet the psychologist. “You remember me? Theremon 762?”

“Of course I do, Theremon,” Sheerin said. He offered his hand. “Gods, fellow, you’ve been rough on us lately, haven’t you! But bygones may as well be bygones this evening.”

“I wish he was a bygone,” Siferra muttered under her breath. She scowled in distaste and stepped back a few paces.

Theremon shook Sheerin’s hand. “What’s this Sanctuary you’re supposed to have been in? I’ve heard a little about it here this evening, but I don’t have any real idea of what it is.”

“Well,” said Sheerin, “we have managed to convince a few people, at least, of the validity of our prophecy of—er—doom, to be spectacular about it, and those few have taken proper measures. They consist mainly of the immediate members of the families of the Observatory staff, certain of the faculty of Saro University, and a few outsiders. My companion Liliath 221 is there at this very moment, as a matter of fact, and I suppose I should be too, but for my infernal curiosity. There are about three hundred people all told.”

“I see. They’re supposed to hide where the Darkness and the—er—Stars can’t get at them, and then hold out when the rest of the world goes poof.”

“Exactly. The Apostles have some sort of hideout of their own also, you know. We aren’t sure how many people are in it—just a few, if we’re lucky, but more likely they’ve got thousands stashed away who will come forth and inherit the world after the Darkness.”

“So the university group,” Theremon said, “is intended as a counterforce to that?”

Sheerin nodded. “If possible. It won’t be easy. With almost all of mankind insane, with the great cities going up in flames, with perhaps a big horde of Apostles imposing their kind of order on what’s left of the world—no, it’ll be tough for them to survive. But at least they have food, water, shelter, weapons—”

“They’ve got more,” said Athor. “They’ve got all our records, except for what we will collect today. Those records will mean everything to the next cycle, and that’s what must survive. The rest can go hang.”

Theremon whistled a long, low whistle.

“You people are completely certain, then, that everything you’ve predicted is going to come about just as you say!”

“What other position could we possibly take?” Siferra asked harshly. “Once we saw that disaster would inevitably come—”

“Yes,” the newspaperman said. “You had to make preparations for it. Because you were in possession of the Truth. Just as the Apostles of Flame are in possession of the Truth. I wish I could be half so certain about anything as all you Truth-possessors are about this evening.”

She glowered at him. “I wish you could be out there this evening, wandering through the burning streets! But no—no, you’ll be safe in here! It’s more than you deserve!”

“Easy,” Sheerin said. He took Theremon by the arm. Quietly he said, “No sense provoking people now, friend. Let’s go somewhere where we won’t bother people, and we can talk.”

“Good idea,” Theremon said.

But he made no motion toward leaving the room. A game of stochastic chess had begun around the table, and Theremon stood watching for a moment or two in obvious incomprehension as moves were made rapidly and in silence. He seemed amazed by the ability of the players to concentrate on a game, when they all must believe that the end of the world was just hours away.

“Come,” Sheerin said again.

“Yes. Yes,” said Theremon.

He and Sheerin went out into the hall, followed, an instant later, by Beenay.

What an infuriating man, Siferra thought.

She stared at the bright orb of Dovim, burning fiercely in the sky. Had the sky grown even darker in the past few minutes? No, no, she told herself, that was impossible. Dovim was still there. It was just imagination. The sky looked strange, now that Dovim was the only sun aloft. She had never seen it like that before, such a deep purple hue. But it was far from dark out there: somber, yes, but there was light enough, and everything was still easily visible outside despite the relative dimness of the one small sun.

She thought about her lost tablets again. Then she banished them from her mind.

The chess players had the right idea, she told herself. Sit down and relax. If you can.

23

Sheerin led the way to the next room. There were softer chairs in there. And thick red curtains on the windows, and a maroon carpet on the floor. With the strange brick-toned light of Dovim pouring in, the general effect was one of dried blood everywhere.

He had been surprised to see Theremon at the Observatory this evening, after the horrendous columns he had written, after all he had done to pour cold water on Athor’s campaign for national preparedness. In recent weeks Athor had gone almost berserk with rage every time. Theremon’s name was mentioned; yet somehow he had relented and permitted him to be here for the eclipse.

That was odd and a little troublesome. It might mean that the stern fabric of the old astronomer’s personality had begun to break down—that not only his anger but also his whole inner structure of character was giving way in the face of the oncoming catastrophe.

For that matter Sheerin was more than slightly surprised to find himself at the Observatory too. It had been a last-minute decision, a pure impulse of the kind he rarely experienced. Liliath had been horrified. He was pretty horrified himself. He had not forgotten the terrors that his few minutes in the Tunnel of Mystery had evoked in him.

But he had realized, in the end, that he had to be here, just as he had had to take that ride in the Tunnel. To everyone else, he might be nothing more than an easygoing overweight academic hack; but to himself he was still a scientist beneath all the blubber. The study of Darkness had concerned him through all his professional career. How, then, could he ever live with himself afterward, knowing that during the most celebrated episode of Darkness in more than two thousand years he had chosen to hide himself away in the cozy safety of an underground chamber?

No, he had to be here. Witnessing the eclipse. Feeling the Darkness take possession of the world.

Theremon said with unexpected frankness, as they entered the adjoining room, “I’m starting to wonder whether I was right to have been such a skeptic, Sheerin.”

“You ought to wonder about it.”

“Well, I am. Seeing just Dovim up there like that. That weird red color spreading over everything. You know, I’d give ten credits for a decent dose of white light right now. A good stiff Tano Special. For that matter, I’d like to see Tano and Sitha in the sky too. Or, even better, Onos.”

“Onos will be there in the morning,” put in Beenay, who had just entered the room.

“Yes, but will we?” asked Sheerin. And grinned immediately to take the sting from his words. To Beenay he said, “Our journalistic friend is eager for a little nip of alcohol.”

“Athor will have a fit. He’s given orders for everybody to be sober here this evening.”

Sheerin said, “So there’s nothing but water to be had?”

“Well—”

“Come on, Beenay. Athor won’t come in here.”

“I suppose.”

Tiptoeing to the nearest window, Beenay squatted, and from the low window box beneath it withdrew a bottle of red liquid that gurgled suggestively when he shook it.

“I thought Athor didn’t know about this,” he remarked, as he trotted back to the table. “Here! We’ve only got one glass, so as the guest you can have it, Theremon. Sheerin and I can drink from the bottle.” And he filled the tiny cup with judicious care.

Laughing, Theremon said, “You never touched alcohol at all when we first met, Beenay.”

“That was then. This is now. Tense times, Theremon. I’m learning. A good drink can be very relaxing at times like these.”

“So I’ve heard,” Theremon said lightly. He took a sip. It was some sort of red wine, rough and raw, probably cheap jug wine from one of the southern provinces. Just the sort of thing that a lifelong abstainer like Beenay would tend to buy, not knowing any better. But it was better than nothing.

Beenay helped himself to a hearty gulp and passed the bottle to Sheerin. The psychologist up-ended it and held it to his lips for a long slow drink. Then, putting it down with a satisfied grunt and a smack of his lips, he said to Beenay, “Athor seems strange this evening. I mean, even allowing for the special circumstances. What’s wrong?”

“Worrying about Faro and Yimot, I suppose.”

“Who?”

“A couple of young graduate students. They were due several hours ago and haven’t shown up yet. Athor’s terrifically shorthanded, of course, because all but the really essential people have gone to the Sanctuary.”

Theremon said, “You don’t think they deserted, do you?”

“Who? Faro and Yimot? Of course not. They’re not the type. They’d give everything to be here this evening taking measurements when the eclipse happens. But what if there’s some kind of riot going on in Saro City and they’ve been caught in it?” Beenay shrugged. “Well, they’ll show up sooner or later, I imagine. But if they’re not here as we approach the critical phase, things could get a little sticky when the work piles up. That must be what Athor’s worrying about.”

Sheerin said, “I’m not so sure. Two missing men would be on his mind, yes. But there’s something else. He looks so old, suddenly. Weary. Defeated, even. The last time I saw him he was full of fight, full of talk about the reconstruction of society after the eclipse—the real Athor, the iron man. Now all I see is a sad, tired, pathetic old wreck who’s simply waiting for the end to come. The fact that he didn’t even bother to throw Theremon out—”

“He tried,” Theremon said. “Beenay talked him out of it. And Siferra.”

“There you are. Beenay, did you ever know anyone who was able to talk Athor out of anything?—Here, pass me the wine.”

“It may be my fault,” Theremon said. “Everything that I wrote, attacking his plan to set up Sanctuary-type shelters all across the country. If he genuinely believes that there’s going to be a worldwide Darkness in a few hours and that all mankind will go violently insane—”

“Which he does,” said Beenay. “As do all of us.”

“Then the failure of the government to take Athor’s predictions seriously must be an overwhelming, crushing defeat for him. And I’m responsible as much as anyone. If it turns out that you people were right, I’ll never forgive myself.”

Sheerin said, “Don’t flatter yourself, Theremon. Even if you had written five columns a day calling for a colossal preparedness movement, the government still wouldn’t have done anything. It might have taken Athor’s warnings even less seriously than it did if that’s possible, with a popular crusading journalist like you on Athor’s side.”

“Thanks,” Theremon said. “I really appreciate that.—Is there any wine left?” He looked toward Beenay. “And of course I’m in trouble with Siferra too. She thinks I’m too contemptible for words.”

“There was a time when she seemed really interested in you,” Beenay said. “I was wondering about it for a while, as a matter of fact. Whether you and she were—ah—”

“No,” Theremon said, grinning. “Not quite. And we never will, now. But we were very good friends for a while. A fascinating, fascinating woman.—What about this cyclic theory of prehistory of hers? Is there anything to it?”

“Not if you listen to some of the other people in her department,” Sheerin said. “They’re really scornful of it. Of course, they’ve all got a vested interest in the established archaeological framework, which says that Beklimot was the first urban center and that if you go back more than a couple of thousand years you can’t find any civilization at all, just primitive shaggy jungle-dwelling folk.”

“But how can they argue away these recurrent catastrophes at the Hill of Thombo?” Theremon asked.

“Scientists who think they know the real story can argue away anything that threatens their beliefs,” Sheerin said. “You scratch an entrenched academic and you’ll find he’s pretty similar in some ways to an Apostle of Flame, underneath. It’s just a different kind of robe they wear.” He took the bottle, which Theremon had been idly holding, and helped himself again. “The deuce with them. Even a layman like me can see that Siferra’s discoveries at Thombo turn our picture of prehistory inside out. The question isn’t whether there were recurrent fires over a period of all those thousands of years. It’s why.”

Theremon said, “I’ve seen plenty of explanations lately, all of them more or less fantastic. Someone from Kitro University was arguing that there are periodic rains of fire every few thousand years. And we got a letter at the newspaper from someone who claims to be a free-lance astronomer and says he’s ‘proved’ that Kalgash passes through one of the suns every so often. I think there were even wilder things proposed.”

“There’s only one idea that makes any sense,” Beenay said quietly. “Remember the concept of the Sword of Thargola. You have to dispense with the hypotheses that require extra bells and whistles in order to make sense. There’s no reason why a rain of fire should fall on us every now and then, and it’s obvious nonsense to talk about passing through suns. But the eclipse theory is accounted for perfectly by mathematical consideration of the orbit of Kalgash as it’s affected by Universal Gravitation.”

“The eclipse theory may stand up, yes. No doubt it does. We’ll find out pretty soon, eh?” Theremon said. “But apply Thargola’s Sword yourself to what you’ve just said. There’s nothing in the eclipse theory that tells us that there’ll necessarily be tremendous fires immediately afterward.”

“No,” Sheerin said. “There’s nothing about that in the theory. But common sense indicates it. The eclipse will bring Darkness. Darkness will bring madness. And madness will bring the Flames. Which wrecks another couple of millenniums of painful struggle. It all comes to nothing tomorrow. Tomorrow there won’t be a city standing unharmed in all Kalgash.”

“You sound just like the Apostles,” Theremon said angrily. “I heard pretty much the same stuff from Folimun 66 months ago. And told you two about it, I recall, at the Six Suns Club.”

He gazed out the window, past the wooded slopes of Observatory Mount to where the spires of Saro City gleamed bloodily on the horizon. The newsman felt the tension of uncertainty grow within him as he cast a quick glance at Dovim. It glowered redly at zenith, dwarfed and evil.

Doggedly Theremon went on, “I can’t buy your chain of reasoning. Why should I go nuts just because there isn’t a sun in the sky? And even if I do—yes, I haven’t forgotten those poor bastards in the Tunnel of Mystery—even if I do, and everyone else does, how does that harm the cities? Are we going to blow them down?”

“I said the same thing at first,” Beenay put in. “Before I stopped to think things through. If you were in Darkness, what would you want more than anything else—what would it be that every instinct would call for?”

“Why, light, I suppose.”

“Yes!” Sheerin cried, shouting now. “Light, yes! Light!”

“So?”

“And how would you get light?”

Theremon pointed to the switch on the wall. “I’d turn it on.”

“Right,” said Sheerin mockingly. “And the gods in their infinite kindness would provide enough current to give you what you wanted. Because the power company certainly wouldn’t be able to. Not with all the generators grinding to a halt, and the people who operate them stumbling around babbling in the dark, and the same with the transmission-line controllers. You follow me?”

Theremon nodded numbly.

Sheerin said, “Where will light come from, when the generators stop? The godlights, I suppose. They’ve all got batteries. But you may not have a godlight handy. You’ll be out there on the street in the Darkness, and your godlight will be sitting at home, right next to your bed. And you want light. So you burn something, eh, Mr. Theremon? Ever see a forest fire? Ever go camping and cook a stew over a wood fire? Heat isn’t the only thing burning wood gives off, you know. It gives off light, and people are very well aware of that. And when it’s dark they want light, and they’re going to get it.”

“So they’ll burn logs,” Theremon said without much conviction.

“They’ll burn whatever they can get. They’ve got to have light. They’ve got to burn something, and wood won’t be handy, not on city streets. So they’ll burn whatever is nearest. A pile of newspapers? Why not? The Saro City Chronicle will give a little brightness for a while. What about the newsstands that the papers on sale are stacked up in? Burn them too! Burn clothing. Burn books. Burn roof-shingles. Burn anything. The people will have their light—and every center of habitation goes up in flames! There are your fires, Mr. Newspaperman. There is the end of the world you used to live in.”

“If the eclipse comes,” said Theremon, an undertone of stubbornness in his voice.

“If, yes,” said Sheerin. “I’m no astronomer. And no Apostle, either. But my money’s on the eclipse.”

He looked straight at Theremon. Eyes held each other as though the whole matter were a personal affair of respective will powers, and then Theremon broke away, wordlessly. His breathing was harsh and ragged. He put his hands to his forehead and pressed hard.

Then came a sudden hubbub from the adjoining room.

Beenay said, “I think I heard Yimot’s voice. He and Faro must have showed up, finally. Let’s go in and see what kept them.”

“Might as well!” muttered Theremon. He drew a long breath and seemed to shake himself. The tension was broken—for the moment.

24

The main room was in an uproar. Everyone clustered around Faro and Yimot, who were trying to parry a burst of eager questions while they removed their outer garments.

Athor bustles through the crowd and faced the newcomers angrily. “Do you realize that it’s practically E-hour? Where have you two been?”

Faro 24 seated himself and rubbed his hands. His round, fleshy cheeks were red with the outdoor chill. He was smirking strangely. And he seemed curiously calm, almost as if he had been drugged.

“I’ve never seen him like that before,” Beenay whispered to Sheerin. “He’s always been very obsequious, very much the humble junior astronomer deferring to the great people around him. Even to me. But now—”

“Shh. Listen,” Sheerin said.

Faro said, “Yimot and I have just finished carrying through a little crazy experiment of our own. We’ve been trying to see if we couldn’t construct an arrangement by which we could simulate the appearance of Darkness and Stars so as to get an advance notion as to how it looked.”

There was a confused murmur from the listeners.

“Stars?” Theremon said. “You know what Stars are? How did you find out?”

Smirking again, Faro said, “By reading the Book of Revelations. It seems pretty clear that Stars are something very bright, like suns but smaller, that appear in the sky when Kalgash enters the Cave of Darkness.”

“Absurd!” someone said.

“Impossible!”

“The Book of Revelations! That’s where they did their research! Can you imagine—”

“Quiet,” Athor said. There was a sudden look of interest in his eyes, a touch of his old vigor. “Go on, Faro. What was this ‘arrangement’ of yours? How did you go about it?”

“Well,” said Faro, “the idea came to Yimot and me a couple of months ago, and we’ve been working it out in our spare time. Yimot knew of a low one-story house down in the city with a domed roof—some kind of warehouse, I think. Anyway, we bought it—”

“With what?” interrupted Athor peremptorily. “Where did you get the money?”

“Our bank accounts,” grunted the lanky, pipestem-limbed Yimot 70. “It cost us two thousand credits.” Then, defensively, “Well, what of it? Tomorrow two thousand credits will be two thousand pieces of paper and nothing else.”

“Sure,” Faro said. “So we bought the place and rigged it up with black velvet from top to bottom so as to get as perfect a Darkness as possible. Then we punched tiny holes in the ceiling and through the roof and covered them with little metal caps, all of which could be shoved aside simultaneously at the close of a switch. At least, we didn’t do that part ourselves; we got a carpenter and an electrician and some others—money didn’t count. The point was that we could get the light to shine through those holes in the roof, so that we could get a Starlike effect.”

“What we imagined a Starlike effect would be,” Yimot amended.

Not a breath was drawn during the pause that followed. Athor said stiffly:

“You had no right to make a private—”

Faro seemed abashed. “I know, sir—but, frankly, Yimot and I thought the experiment was a little dangerous. If the effect really worked, we half expected to go mad—from what Dr. Sheerin says about all this, we thought that would be rather likely. We felt that we alone should take the risk. Of course, if we found that we could retain our sanity, it occurred to us that we might be able to develop immunity to the real thing, and then expose the rest of you to what we had experienced. But things didn’t work out at all—”

“Why? What happened?”

It was Yimot who answered. “We shut ourselves in and allowed our eyes to get accustomed to the dark. It’s an extremely creepy feeling because the total Darkness makes you feel as if the walls and ceiling are crashing in on you. But we got over that and pulled the switch. The caps fell away and the roof glittered all over with little dots of light.”

“And?”

“And—nothing. That was the wacky part of it. So far as we understood the Book of Revelations, we were experiencing the effect of seeing Stars against a background of Darkness. But nothing happened. It was just a roof with holes in it, and bright points of light coming through, and that’s just what it looked like. We tried it over and over again—that’s what kept us so late—but there just wasn’t any effect at all.”

There was a shocked silence. All eyes turned to Sheerin, who stood motionless, mouth open.

Theremon was the first to speak. “You know what this does to the whole theory you’ve built up, Sheerin, don’t you?” He was grinning with relief.

But Sheerin raised his hand. “Not so fast, Theremon. Just let me think this through. These so-called ‘Stars’ that the boys constructed—the total time of their exposure to Darkness—” He fell silent. Everyone watched him. And then he snapped his fingers, and when he lifted his head there was neither surprise nor uncertainty in his eyes. “Of course—”

He never finished. Thilanda, who had been up in the Observatory dome exposing photographic plates of the sky at tensecond intervals as the time of eclipse drew near, came rushing in, waving her arms in wild circles that would have been worthy of Yimot at his most excited.

“Dr. Athor! Dr. Athor!”

Athor turned. “What is it?”

“We just found—he came walking right into the dome—you won’t believe this, Dr. Athor—”

“Slow down, child. What happened? Who came walking in?”

There were the sounds of a scuffle in the hall, and a sharp clang. Beenay, starting to his feet, rushed out the door and came to a sudden halt, crying, “What the deuce!”

Davnit and Hikkinan, who should have been up in the dome with Thilanda, were out there. The two astronomers were struggling with a third figure, a lithe, athletic-looking man in his late thirties, with strange curling red hair, a thin sharpfeatured face, icy blue eyes. They dragged him into the room and stood holding him with his arms gripped tightly behind his back.

The stranger wore the dark robe of the Apostles of Flame.

“Folimun 66!” Athor cried.

And in the same breath, from Theremon: “Folimun! What in the name of Darkness are you doing here?”

Quietly, in a cold, commanding tone, the Apostle said, “It’s not in the name of Darkness that I’ve come to you this evening but in the name of light.”

Athor stared at Thilanda. “Where did you find this man?”

“I told you, Dr. Athor. We were busy with the plates, and then we heard him. He had come right in and was standing behind us. ‘Where is Athor,’ he said. ‘I must see Athor.’ ”

“Call the security guards,” Athor said, his face darkening with rage. “The Observatory is supposed to be sealed this evening. I want to know how this man succeeded in getting past the guards.”

“Obviously you’ve got an Apostle or two on the payroll,” Theremon said pleasantly. “Naturally they’d have been only too obliging when the Apostle Folimun showed up and asked them to unlock the gate.”

Athor shot him a blistering glance. But the look on his face indicated that the old astronomer realized the probable accuracy of Theremon’s guess.

Everyone in the room had formed a ring around Folimun now. They were all staring at him in astonishment—Siferra, Theremon, Beenay, Athor, and the rest.

Calmly Folimun said, “I am Folimun 66, special adjutant to His Serenity Mondior 71. I have come this evening not as a criminal, as you seem to think, but as an envoy from His Serenity. Do you think you could persuade these two zealots of yours to release me, Athor?”

Athor gestured irritatedly. “Let him go.”

“Thank you,” Folimun said. He rubbed his arms and adjusted the set of his robe. Then he bowed in gratitude—or was it only mock gratitude?—to Athor. The air around the Apostle seemed to tingle with some special electricity.

“Now then,” Athor said. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

“Nothing, I suspect, that you would give me of your own free will.”

“You’re probably right about that.”

Folimun said, “When you and I met some months ago, Athor, it was, I would say, a very tense meeting, a meeting of two men who might well have looked upon themselves as princes of hostile realms. To you, I was a dangerous fanatic. To me, you were the leader of a band of godless sinners. And yet we were able to come to a certain area of agreement, which was, you recall, that on the evening of Theptar nineteenth, Darkness would fall upon Kalgash and would remain for many hours.”

Athor scowled. “Come to the point, if there is one, Folimun. Darkness is about to fall, and we don’t have a lot more time.”

Folimun replied, “To me, the coming Darkness was being sent upon us by the will of the gods. To you, it represented nothing more than the soulless movement of astronomical bodies. Very well: we agreed to disagree. I provided you with certain data that had been in the possession of the Apostles since the previous Year of Godliness, certain tables of the movements of the suns in the sky, and other even more abstruse data. In return, you promised to prove the essential truth of the creed of our faith and to make that proof known to the people of Kalgash.”

Looking at his watch, Athor said, “And I did exactly that. What does your master want of me now? I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain.”

Folimun smiled faintly, but said nothing.

There was an uneasy stir in the room.

“I asked him for astronomical data, yes,” Athor said, looking around. “Data that only the Apostles had. And it was given to me. For that, thank you. In return I did agree, in a manner of speaking, to make public my mathematical confirmation of the Apostles’ basic tenet that Darkness would descend on Theptar nineteenth.”

“There was no real need for us to give you anything,” was the proud retort. “Our basic tenet, as you call it, was not in need of proof. It stands proven by the Book of Revelations.”

“For the handful that constitute your cult, yes,” Athor snapped. “Don’t pretend to mistake my meaning. I offered to present scientific background for your beliefs. And I did!”

The cultist’s eyes narrowed bitterly. “Yes, you did—with a fox’s subtlety, for your pretended explanation backed our beliefs and at the same time removed all necessity for them. You made of the Darkness and of the Stars a natural phenomenon and removed all their real significance. That was blasphemy.”

“If so, the fault isn’t mine. The facts exist. What can I do but state them?”

“Your ‘facts’ are a fraud and a delusion.”

Athor’s face grew mottled with rage. “How do you know?”

And the answer came with the certainty of absolute faith: “I know.”

The director purpled even more. Beenay started to go to his side, but Athor waved him away.

“And what does Mondior 71 want us to do? He still thinks, I suppose, that in trying to warn the world to take measures against the menace of madness we are somehow interfering with his attempt to seize power after the eclipse. Well, we aren’t succeeding. I hope that makes him happy.”

“The attempt itself has done harm enough. And what you are trying to achieve here this evening will make things worse.”

“What do you know of what we’re trying to achieve here this evening?” Athor demanded.

Smoothly Folimun said, “We know that you’ve never abandoned your hope of influencing the populace. Having failed to do it before the Darkness and the Flames, you intend to come forth afterward, equipped with photographs of the trnnsition from daylight to Darkness. You mean to offer a rational explanation to the survivors of what happened—and to put aside in a safe place your supposed evidence of your beliefs, so that at the end of the next Year of Godliness your successors in the realm of science will be able to step forward and guide humanity in such a way that the Darkness can be resisted.”

“Someone’s been saying things,” Beenay whispered.

Folimun went on, “All this works against the interests of Mondior 71, obviously. And it is Mondior 71 who is the appointed prophet of the gods, the one who is intended to lead mankind through the period ahead.”

“It’s high time you came to the point,” Athor said in a frigid tone.

Folimun nodded. “The point is simply this. Your ill-advised and blasphemous attempt to gain information by means of your devilish instruments must be stopped. I only regret that I could not have destroyed your infernal devices with my own hands.”

“Is that what you had in mind? It wouldn’t have done you much good. All our data, except for the direct evidence we intend collecting right now, is already safely cached and well beyond the possibility of harm.”

“Bring it forth. Destroy it.”

“What?”

“Destroy all your work. Destroy your instruments. In return for which, I will see to it that you and all your people are protected against the chaos that is certain to break loose when Nightfall comes.”

Now there was laughter in the room.

“Crazy,” someone said. “Absolutely nuts.”

“Not at all,” Folimun said. “Devout, yes. Dedicated to a cause beyond your comprehension, yes. But not crazy. I’m quite sane, I assure you. I think this man here”—he indicated Theremon—“would testify to that, and he’s not known for his gullibility. But I place my cause above all other things. This night is crucial in the history of the world, and when tomorrow dawns, Godliness must triumph. I offer you an ultimatum. You people are to end your blasphemous attempt to provide rational explanations for the coming of Darkness this evening and accept His Serenity Mondior 71 as the true voice of the gods’ will. When morning comes, you will go forth to do Mondior’s work among mankind, and no more will be heard of eclipses, or orbits, or the Law or Universal Gravitation, or the rest of your foolishness.”

“And if we refuse?” said Athor, looking almost amused by Folimun’s presumptuousness.

“Then,” said Folimun coolly, “a band of angry people led by the Apostles of Flame will ascend this hill and destroy your Observatory and everything within it.”

“Enough,” Athor said. “Call Security. Have this man thrown out of here.”

“You have exactly one hour,” Folimun said, unperturbed. “And then the Army of Holiness will attack.”

“He’s bluffing,” Sheerin said suddenly.

Athor, as though he hadn’t heard, said again, “Call Security. I want him out of here!”

“Damn it, Athor, what’s wrong with you?” Sheerin cried. “If you turn him loose, he’ll get out there to fan the flames. Don’t you see, chaos is what all these Apostles have been living for? And this man’s a master at creating it.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Lock him up,” Sheerin said. “Stash him away in a closet and slap a padlock on him, and keep him there for the duration of the time of Darkness. It’s the worst possible thing we could do to him. If he’s locked away like that, he won’t see the Darkness, and he won’t see the Stars. It doesn’t take much of a knowledge of the fundamental creed of the Apostles to realize that for him to be hidden from the Stars when they appear will mean the loss of his immortal soul. Lock him up, Athor. It’s not only what’s safest for us, it’s what he deserves.”

“And afterward,” breathed Folimun fiercely, “when you have all lost your minds, there’ll be no one to let me out. This is a sentence of death. I know as well as you do what the coming of the Stars will mean—I know it far better than you. With your minds gone, you won’t give any thought to freeing me. Suffocation or slow starvation, is it? About what I might have expected from a group of—of scientists.” He made the word sound obscene. “But it won’t work. I’ve taken the precaution of letting my followers know that they are to attack the Observatory precisely an hour from now, unless I appear and order them not to. Locking me away, then, will achieve nothing useful to you. Within an hour it’ll bring your own destruction upon you, that’s all. And then my people will free me, and together—joyously, ecstatically—we will watch the coming of the Stars.” A vein throbbed in Folimun’s temple. “Then, tomorrow, when you all are babbling madmen, damned forever by your deeds, we will set about the creation of a wondrous new world.”

Sheerin glanced doubtfully at Athor. But Athor looked hesitant too.

Beenay, standing next to Theremon, murmured, “What do you think? Is he bluffing?”

But the newspaperman didn’t reply. He had gone pale to the lips. “Look at that!” The finger he pointed toward the window was shaking, and his voice was dry and cracked.

There was a simultaneous gasp as every eye followed the pointing finger and, for one moment, stared frozenly.

Dovim was chipped on one side!

25

The tiny bit of encroaching blackness was perhaps the width of a fingernail, but to the staring watchers it magnified itself into the crack of doom.

For Theremon the sight of that small arc of darkness struck with terrible force. He winced and put his hand to his forehead and turned away from the window. He was shaken to the roots of his soul by that little chip in Dovim’s side. Theremon the skeptic—Theremon the mocker—Theremon the tough-minded analyst of other people’s folly—

Gods! How wrong I was!

As he turned, his eyes met Siferra’s. She was at the other side of the room, looking at him. There was contempt in her eyes—or was it pity? He forced himself to meet her gaze and shook his head sadly, as though to tell her with all the humility there was in him, I fouled things up and I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

It seemed to him that she smiled. Maybe she had understood what he was trying to say.

Then the room dissolved in shrieking confusion for a moment, as everyone began to rush frenziedly around; and a moment after that, the confusion gave way to an orderly scurry of activity as the astronomers leaped to their assigned tasks, some running upstairs to the Observatory dome to watch the eclipse through the telescopes, some going to the computers, some using hand-held instruments to record the changes in Dovim’s disk. At this crucial moment there was no time for emotion. They were merely scientists with work to do. Theremon, alone in the midst of it all, looked about for Beenay and found him, finally, sitting at a keyboard, madly working out some sort of problem. Of Athor there was no sign at all.

Sheerin appeared at Theremon’s side and said prosaically, “First contact must have been made five or ten minutes ago. A little early, but I suppose there were plenty of uncertainties involved in the calculations despite all the effort that went into them.” He smiled.—“You ought to get away from that window, man.”

“Why is that?” said Theremon, who had swung around again to stare at Dovim.

“Athor is furious,” the psychologist whispered. “He missed first contact on account of this fuss with Folimun. You’re in a vulnerable position, standing where you are. If Athor comes by this way he’s likely to try to throw you out the window.”

Theremon nodded shortly and sat down. Sheerin looked at him, eyes wide with surprise.

“The devil, man! You’re shaking.”

“Eh?” Theremon licked dry lips and then tried to smile. “I don’t feel very well, and that’s a fact.”

The psychologist’s eyes hardened. “You’re not losing your nerve, are you?”

“No!” cried Theremon in a flash of indignation. “Give me a chance, will you? You know, Sheerin, I wanted to believe all this eclipse rigmarole, but I couldn’t, I honestly couldn’t, it all seemed like the sheerest woolly fantasy to me. I wanted to believe it for Beenay’s sake, for Siferra’s sake—even for Athor’s sake, in a strange way. But I couldn’t. Not until just this minute. Give me a chance to get used to the idea, all right? You’ve had months. It’s all hitting me at once.”

“I see what you mean,” Sheerin said thoughtfully. “Listen. Have you got a family—parents, wife, children?”

Theremon shook his head. “No. Nobody I need to worry about. Well, I have a sister, but she’s two thousand miles away. I haven’t even spoken with her in a couple of years.”

“Well then, what about yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“You could try to get to our Sanctuary. They’d have room for you there. There’s probably still time—I could call them and say that you’re on the way, and they’d unlock the gate for you—”

“So you think I’m scared stiff, do you?”

“You said yourself you didn’t feel so good.”

“Maybe I don’t. But I’m here to cover the story. That’s what I intend to do.”

There was a faint smile on the psychologist’s face. “I see. Professional honor, is that it?”

“You might call it that.” Wearily Theremon said, “Besides, I helped in a big way to undermine Athor’s preparedness program, or have you forgotten? Do you really think I’d have the gall now to go running for shelter into the very Sanctuary I was poking fun at, Sheerin?”

“I hadn’t seen it that way.”

“I wonder if there’s any more of that miserable wine hidden around here somewhere. If ever there was a time when a fellow needed a drink—”

“Shh!” Sheerin said. He nudged Theremon violently. “Do you hear that? Listen!”

Theremon glanced in the direction Sheerin was indicating. Folimun 66 stood by the window, a look of wild elation on his face. The Apostle was droning something to himself in a low singsong tone. It made the newspaperman’s skin crawl.

“What’s he saying?” he whispered. “Can you make it out?”

“He’s quoting the Book of Revelations, fifth chapter,” replied Sheerin. Then, urgently, “Keep quiet and listen, will you?”

The Apostle’s voice rose suddenly in an increase of fervor:

“ ‘And it came to pass in those days that the sun, Dovim, held lone vigil in the sky for ever longer periods as the revolutions passed; until such time as for full half a revolution, it alone, shrunken and cold, shone down upon Kalgash.

“ ‘And men did assemble in the public squares and in the highways, there to debate and to marvel at the sight, for a strange fear and misery had seized their spirits. Their minds were troubled and their speech confused, for the souls of men awaited the coming of the Stars.

“ ‘And in the city of Trigon, at high noon, Vendret 2 came forth and said unto the men of Trigon, “Lo, ye sinners! Though ye scorn the ways of righteousness, yet will the time of reckoning come. Even now the Cave approaches to swallow Kalgash; yea, and all it contains.”

“ ‘And in that moment as he spoke the lip of the Cave of Darkness passed the edge of Dovim so that to all Kalgash it was bidden from sight. Loud were the cries and lamentations of men as it vanished, and great the fear of soul with which they were afflicted.

“ ‘And then it came to pass that the Darkness of the Cave fell full upon Kalgash in all its terrible weight, so that there was no light to be seen anywhere on all the surface of the world. Men were even as blinded, nor could one see his neighbor, though he felt his breath upon his face.

“ ‘And in this blackness there appeared the Stars in countless number, and their brightness was as the brightness of all the gods in concourse assembled. And with the coming of the Stars there came also a music, which had a beauty so wondrous that the very leaves of the trees turned to tongues that cried out in wonder.

“ ‘And in that moment the souls of men departed from them and fled upward to the Stars, and their abandoned bodies became even as beasts; yea, even as dull brutes of the wild; so that through the darkened streets of the cities of Kalgash they prowled with wild cries, like the cries of beasts.

“ ‘From the Stars then there reached down the Heavenly Flames, that was the bearer of the will of the gods; and where the Flames touched, the cities of Kalgash were consumed even to utter destruction, so that of man and of the works of man, nothing whatever remained.

“ ‘Even then—’ ”

There was a subtle change in Folimun’s tone. His eyes had not shifted, but somehow it seemed that he had become aware of the absorbed attention of the other two. Easily, without pausing for breath, he altered the timbre of his voice, so that it rose in pitch and the syllables became more liquid.

Theremon, caught by surprise, frowned. The words seemed to be on the border of familiarity. There had been nothing more than an elusive shift in the accent, a tiny change in the vowel stress—yet Theremon no longer had the slightest idea of what Folimun was saying.

“Maybe Siferra would be able to understand him now,” Sheerin said. “He’s probably speaking the liturgical tongue now, the old language of the previous Year of Godliness that the Book of Revelations was supposedly translated from.”

Theremon gave the psychologist a peculiar look. “You know a lot about this, don’t you? What’s he saying, then?”

“You think I can tell you? I’ve done a little studying lately, yes. But not that much. I’m just guessing at what he’s talking about.—Weren’t we going to lock him in a closet?”

“Let him be,” Theremon said. “What difference does it make now? It’s his big moment. Let him enjoy it.” He shoved his chair back and ran his fingers through his hair. His hands weren’t shaking any longer. “Funny thing,” he said. “Now that it’s all actually begun, I don’t feel jittery any more.”

“No?”

“Why should I?” Theremon said. A note of hectic gaiety had crept into his voice. “There’s nothing I can do to stop what’s going to happen, is there? So I’ll just try to ride it out.—Do you think the Stars are really going to appear?”

“Not a clue,” Sheerin said. “Maybe Beenay would know.”

“Or Athor.”

“Leave Athor alone,” said the psychologist, laughing. “He just passed through the room and gave you a look that should have killed you.”

Theremon made a wry face. “I’ll have plenty of crow to eat when all this is over, I know. What do you think, Sheerin? Is it safe to watch the show outside?”

“When the Darkness is total—”

“I don’t mean the Darkness. I can handle Darkness, I think. I mean the Stars.”

“The Stars?” Sheerin repeated impatiently. “I told you, I don’t know anything about them.”

“They’re probably not as terrifying as the Book of Revelations would want us to think. If that pinpoint-in-the-ceiling experiment of those two students means anything—” He turned his hands palms upward, as though they might hold the answer. “Tell me, Sheerin, what do you think? Won’t some people be immune to the effects of the Darkness and the Stars?”

Sheerin shrugged. He pointed to the floor in front of them. Dovim was past its zenith now, and the square of bloody sunlight that outlined the window upon the floor had moved a few feet toward the center of the room, where it lay like the terrible stain of some ghastly crime. Theremon stared at its dusky color thoughtfully. Then he swung around and squinted once more into the sun itself.

The chip in its side had grown to a black encroachment that covered a third of its visible disk. Theremon shuddered. Once, jokingly, he had talked with Beenay of dragons in the sky. Now it seemed to him that the dragon had come, that it had swallowed five of the suns already, that it was nibbling enthusiastically at the only one that remained.

Sheerin said, “There are probably two million people in Saro City who are all trying to join the Apostles at once. They’ll be holding one giant revival meeting down at Mondior’s headquarters, I’ll bet.—Do I think there’s immunity to the Darkness effects? Well, we’re about to discover if there is, aren’t we?”

“There must be. How else would the Apostles keep the Book of Revelations going from cycle to cycle, and how on Kalgash did it get written in the first place? There must have been some sort of immunity. If everyone had gone mad, who would have been left to write the book?”

“Very likely the members of the secret cult hid themselves away in sanctuaries until it was over, just as some of us are doing tonight,” Sheerin said.

“Not good enough. The Book of Revelations is set up as an eyewitness account. That seems to indicate they had firsthand experience of the madness—and survived it.”

“Well,” said the psychologist, “there are three kinds of people who might remain relatively unaffected. First, the very few who don’t get to see the Stars at all—the blind, let’s say, or those who drink themselves into a stupor at the beginning of the eclipse and stay that way to the end.”

“They don’t count. They’re not really witnesses.”

“I suppose not. The second group, though—young children, to whom the world as a whole is too new and strange for anything to seem more unusual than anything else. They wouldn’t be frightened by the Darkness or even the Stars, I suspect. Those would just be two more curious events in an endlessly surprising world. You see that, don’t you?”

Theremon nodded doubtfully. “I suppose so.”

“Lastly, there are those whose minds are too coarse-grained to be entirely toppled. The very insensitive might scarcely be affected—the real clods. They’d just shrug and wait for Onos to rise, I suppose.”

“So the Book of Revelations was written by insensitive clods?” Theremon asked, grinning.

“Hardly. It would have been written by some of the keenest minds of the new cycle—and it would have been based on the fugitive memories of the children, combined with the confused, incoherent babblings of the half-mad morons, and, yes, perhaps some of the tales that the clods told.”

“You’d better not let Folimun hear that.”

“Of course, the text would have been extensively edited and re-edited over the years. And even passed on, perhaps, from cycle to cycle, the way Athor and his people hope to pass along the secret of gravitation. But my essential point is this: that it can’t help but be a mass of distortion, even if it is based on fact. For instance, consider that experiment with the holes in the roof that Faro and Yimot were telling us about—the one that didn’t work.”

“What of it?”

“Well, the reason why it didn’t w—” Sheerin stopped and rose in alarm. “Uh-oh.”

“Something wrong?” Theremon asked.

“Athor’s coming this way. Just look at his face!”

Theremon turned. The old astronomer was moving toward them like some vengeful spirit out of a medieval myth. His skin was paper-white, his eyes were blazing, his features were a twisted mask of consternation. He shot a venomous glance toward Folimun, who still stood by himself in the corner on the far side of the window, and another at Theremon.

To Sheerin he said, “I’ve been on the communicator for the past fifteen minutes. I talked to the Sanctuary, and to the Security people, and to downtown Saro City.”

“And?”

“The newspaperman here will be very pleased with his work. The city’s a shambles, I hear. Rioters everywhere, looters, panicky mobs—”

“What about the Sanctuary?” Sheerin asked anxiously.

“Safe. They’re sealed off according to plan, and they’re going to stay hidden until daybreak, at the earliest. They’ll be all right. But the city, Sheerin—you have no idea—” He was having difficulty in speaking.

Theremon said, “Sir, if you would only believe me when I tell you how deeply I regret—”

“There’s no time for that now,” snapped Sheerin impatiently. He put his hand on Athor’s arm. “What about you? Are you all right, Dr. Athor?”

“Does it matter?” Athor leaned toward the window, as if trying to see the riots from there. In a dull voice he said, “The moment the eclipse began, everyone out there realized that all the rest of it was going to happen just as we had said—we, and the Apostles. And hysteria set in. The fires will be starting soon. And I suppose Folimun’s mob will be here too. What are we to do, Sheerin? Give me some suggestion!”

Sheerin’s head bent, and he stared in long abstraction at his toes. He tapped his chin with one knuckle for a time. Then he looked up and said crisply, “Do? What is there to do? Lock the gates, hope for the best.”

“What if we were to tell them that we’d kill Folimun if they tried to break in?”

“And would you?” Sheerin asked.

Athor’s eyes sparked in surprise. “Why—I suppose—”

“No,” Sheerin said. “You wouldn’t.”

“But if we threatened to—”

“No. No. They’re fanatics, Athor. They already know we’re holding him hostage. They probably expect us to kill him the moment they storm the Observatory, and that doesn’t faze them at all. And you know you wouldn’t do it anyway.”

“Of course not.”

“So, then. How long is it until totality?”

“Not quite an hour.”

“We’ll have to take our chances. It’ll take time for the Apostles to get their mob together—it’s not going to be a bunch of Apostles, I’ll bet on that, it’s going to be a huge mass of ordinary townspeople stirred up to panic by a handful of Apostles, who’ll promise them immediate entrance into grace, promise them salvation, promise them anything—and it’ll take more time to get them out here. Observatory Mount is a good five miles from the city—”

Sheerin glared out the window. Theremon, beside him, looked also, staring down the slopes. Below, the farmed patches gave way to clumps of white houses in the suburbs. The metropolis beyond was a blur in the distance—a mist in the waning blaze of Dovim. Eerie nightmare light bathed the landscape.

Without turning, Sheerin said, “Yes, it’ll take time for them to get here. Keep the doors locked, keep on working, pray that totality comes first. Once the Stars are shining I think not even the Apostles will be able to keep that mob’s mind on the job of breaking in here.”

Dovim was cut in half. The line of division was pushing a slight concavity across the middle into the still bright portion of the red sun. It was like a gigantic eyelid inexorably dropping down over the light of a world.

Theremon stood frozen, staring. The faint clatter of the room behind him faded into oblivion, and he sensed only the thick silence of the fields outside. The very insects seemed frightened mute. And things were dimmer and dimmer. That weird blood-hue stained everything.

“Don’t look so long at a time,” Sheerin murmured in his ear.

“At the sun, you mean?”

“At the city. At the sky. I’m not worried about you hurting your eyes. It’s your mind, Theremon.”

“My mind’s all right.”

“You want it to stay that way. How are you feeling?”

“Why—” Theremon narrowed his eyes. His throat was a little dry. He ran his finger along the inside of his collar. Tight. Tight. A hand beginning to close around his throat, was that how it felt? He twisted his neck back and forth but found no relief. “A little trouble breathing, maybe.”

“Difficulty in breathing is one of the first symptoms of a claustrophobic attack,” Sheerin said. “When you feel your chest tightening, you’d be wise to turn away from the window.”

“I want to see what’s happening.”

“Fine. Fine. Whatever you like, then.”

Theremon opened his eyes wide and drew two or three long breaths. “You don’t think I can take it, do you?”

Wearily Sheerin said, “I don’t know anything about anything, Theremon. Things are changing from moment to moment, aren’t they?—Hello, here’s Beenay.”

26

The astronomer had interposed himself between the light and the pair in the corner. Sheerin squinted up at him uneasily. “Hello, Beenay.”

“Mind if I join you?” he asked. “My reckonings are set, and there’s nothing for me to do till totality.” Beenay paused and eyed the Apostle, who was poring intently through a small leather-bound book that he had drawn from the sleeve of his robe. “Say, weren’t we going to put him away?”

“We decided not to,” Theremon said. “Do you know where Siferra is, Beenay? I saw her a little while ago, but she doesn’t seem to be here now.”

“Upstairs, in the dome. She wanted to get a view through the big telescope. Not that there’s anything much to see that we can’t see with our naked eyes.”

“What about Kalgash Two?” Theremon asked.

“What’s there to see? Darkness in Darkness. We can see the effect of its presence as it moves in front of Dovim. Kalgash Two itself, though—it’s just a chunk of night against the night sky.”

“Night,” Sheerin mused. “What a strange word that is.”

“Not any more,” said Theremon. “So you don’t actually see the wandering satellite at all, even with the big telescope?”

Beenay looked abashed. “Our telescopes really aren’t very good, you know. They do fine for solar observations, but let it get just a little dark, and—” He shook his head. His shoulders were thrown back and he seemed to be working hard to pull air into his lungs. “But Kalgash Two is real, all right. The strange zone of Darkness that’s passing between us and Dovim—that’s Kalgash Two.”

Sheerin said, “Have you been having trouble breathing, Beenay?”

“A little.” He sniffled. “A cold, I guess.”

“A touch of claustrophobia, more likely.”

“You think?”

“I’m pretty sure. Anything else feel strange?”

“Well,” Beenay said, “I get the impression that my eyes are going back on me. Things seem to blur, and—well, nothing is as clear as it ought to be. And I’m cold, too.”

“Oh, that’s no illusion. It’s cold, all right,” Theremon said, grimacing. “My toes feel as if I’ve been shipping them cross country in a refrigeration car.”

“What we need right now,” Sheerin said intensely, “is to distract ourselves from the effects we’re feeling. Keep our minds busy, that’s the thing. I was telling you a moment ago, Theremon, why Faro’s experiments with the holes in the roof came to nothing.”

“You were just beginning,” Theremon replied, playing along. He huddled down, encircling a knee with both arms and nuzzling his chin against it. What I ought to do, he thought, is excuse myself and go upstairs to find Siferra, now that the time before totality is running out. But he found himself curiously passive, unwilling to move. Or, he wondered, am I just afraid to face her?

Sheerin said, “What I was about to propose was that they were misled by taking the Book of Revelations literally. There probably wasn’t any sense in attaching any physical significance to the concept of Stars. It might be, you know, that in the presence of total and sustained Darkness the mind finds it absolutely necessary to create light. This illusion of light might be all that the Stars really are.”

“In other words,” Theremon said, starting to get caught up in it now, “you mean the Stars are the results of the madness and not one of the causes? Then what good will the photographs that the astronomers are taking this evening be?”

“To prove that the Stars are an illusion, maybe. Or to prove the opposite, for all I know. Then again—”

Beenay had drawn his chair closer, and there was an expression of sudden enthusiasm on his face. “As long as you’re on the subject of Stars—” he began. “I’ve been thinking about them myself, and I’ve come up with a really interesting notion. Of course, it’s just a wild speculation, and I’m not trying to put it forth in any serious way. But it’s worth thinking about. Do you want to hear it?”

“Why not?” Sheerin said, leaning back.

Beenay looked a little reluctant. He smiled shyly and said, “Well then, supposing there were other suns in the universe.”

Theremon repressed a laugh. “You said this was really wild, but I didn’t imagine—”

“No, it isn’t as crazy as that. I don’t mean other suns right close at hand that we somehow mysteriously aren’t able to see. I’m talking about suns that are so far away that their light isn’t bright enough for us to make them out. If they were nearby, they’d be as bright as Onos, maybe, or Tano and Sitha. But as it is, the light they give off seems to us like nothing more than a little point of illumination, and it’s drowned out by the constant glare from our six suns.”

Sheerin said, “But what about the Law of Universal Gravitation? Aren’t you overlooking that? If these other suns are there, wouldn’t they be disturbing our world’s orbit the way Kalgash Two does, and why, then, haven’t you observed it?”

“Good point,” said Beenay. “But these suns, let’s say, are really far off—maybe as much as four light-years away, or even more.”

“How many years is a light-year?” Theremon asked.

“Not how many. How far. A light-year is a measure of distance—the distance light travels in a year. Which is an immense number of miles, because light is so fast. We’ve measured it at something like 185,000 miles per second, and my suspicion is that that isn’t a really precise figure, that if we had better instruments we’d find out that the speed of light is even a little faster than that. But even figuring at 185,000 miles per second, we can calculate that Onos is about ten light-minutes from here, and Tano and Sitha about eleven times as far as that, and so on. So a sun that’s a few light-years away, why, that would be really distant. We’d never be able to detect any perturbations they might be causing in Kalgash’s orbit, because they’d be so minor. All right: let’s say that there are a lot of suns out there, everywhere around us in the heavens, at a distance of four to eight light-years—say, a dozen or two such suns, maybe.”

Theremon whistled. “What an idea for a great Weekend Supplement piece! Two dozen suns in a universe eight light-years across! Gods! That would shrink our universe into insignificance! Imagine it—Kalgash and its suns just a little trivial suburb of the real universe, and here we’ve been thinking that we’re the whole thing, just us and our six suns, all alone in the cosmos!”

“It’s only a wild notion,” said Beenay with a grin, “but you see where I’m heading, I hope. During eclipse, these dozen suns would suddenly become visible, because for a little while there’d be no real sunlight to drown them out. Since they’re so far off, they’d appear small, like so many little marbles. But there you’d have it: the Stars. The suddenly emerging points of light that the Apostles have been promising us.”

“The Apostles talk of ‘countless numbers’ of Stars,” Sheerin said. “That doesn’t seem like a dozen or two to me. More like a few million, wouldn’t you think?”

“Poetic exaggeration,” said Beenay. “There just isn’t room enough in the universe for a million suns—not even if they were jammed right up against each other so that they touched.”

“Besides,” Theremon offered, “once we get up to a dozen or two, can we really grasp distinctions of numbers? Two dozen Stars would seem like a ‘countless’ number, I bet—especially if there happens to be an eclipse going on and everybody is wacky already from staring at Darkness. You know, there are tribes in the backwoods that have only three numbers in their language—‘one,’ ‘two,’ ‘many,’ We’re a little more sophisticated than that, maybe. So for us one to two dozen are comprehensible, and then it just feels like ‘countless’ to us.” He shivered with excitement. “A dozen suns, suddenly! Imagine it!”

Beenay said, “There’s more. Another cute little notion. Have you ever thought what a simple problem gravitation would be if only you had a sufficiently simple system? Supposing you had a universe in which there was a planet with only one sun. The planet would travel in a perfect ellipse and the exact nature of the gravitational force would be so evident it could be accepted as an axiom. Astronomers on such a world would start off with gravity probably before they even invent the telescope. Naked-eye observation would be enough to let them figure things out.”

Sheerin looked doubtful. “But would such a system be dynamically stable?” he asked.

“Sure! They call it the ‘one-and-one’ case. It’s been worked out mathematically, but it’s the philosophical implications that interest me.”

“It’s nice to think about,” admitted Sheerin, “as a pretty abstraction—like a perfect gas or absolute zero.”

“Of course,” continued Beenay, “there’s the catch that life would be impossible on such a planet. It wouldn’t get enough heat and light, and if it rotated there would be total Darkness half of each day. That was the planet you once asked me to imagine, remember, Sheerin? Where the native inhabitants would be fully adapted to alternating daylight and night? But I’ve been thinking about that. There wouldn’t be any native inhabitants. You couldn’t expect life—which is fundamentally dependent upon light—to develop under such extreme conditions of light-deprivation. Half of every axial rotation spent in Darkness! No, nothing could exist under conditions like that. But to continue—just speaking hypothetically, the ‘one-and-one’ system would—”

“Wait a minute,” Sheerin said. “That’s pretty glib of you, saying life wouldn’t have developed there. How do you know? What’s so fundamentally impossible about life evolving in a place that has Darkness half the time?”

“I told you, Sheerin, life is fundamentally dependent upon light. And therefore in a world where—”

“Life here is fundamentally dependent on light. But what does that have to do with a planet that—”

“It stands to reason, Sheerin!”

“It stands to circular reason!” Sheerin retorted. “You define life as such-and-such a kind of phenomenon that occurs on Kalgash, and then you try to claim that on a world that’s totally unlike Kalgash life would be—”

Theremon burst suddenly into harsh gusts of laughter.

Sheerin and Beenay looked at him indignantly.

“What’s so funny?” Beenay demanded.

“You are. The two of you. An astronomer and a psychologist having a furious argument about biology. This must be the celebrated interdisciplinary dialogue that I’ve heard so much about, the great intellectual ferment for which this university is famous.” The newspaperman stood up. He was growing restless anyway, and Beenay’s long disquisition on abstract matters was making him even edgier. “Excuse me, will you? I need to stretch my legs.”

“Totality’s almost here,” Beenay pointed out. “You may not want to be off by yourself when that happens.”

“Just a little stroll, and then I’ll be back,” said Theremon.

Before he had taken five steps, Beenay and Sheerin had resumed their argument. Theremon smiled. It was a way of easing the tension, he told himself. Everybody was under tremendous pressure. After all, each tick of the clock was bringing the world closer to full Darkness—closer to—

To the Stars?

To madness?

To the Time of the Heavenly Flames?

Theremon shrugged. He had gone through a hundred gyrations of mood in the past few hours, but now he felt oddly calm, almost fatalistic. He had always believed that he was the master of his own destiny, that he was able to shape the course of his life: that was how he had succeeded in getting himself into places where other newspapermen hadn’t remotely had a chance. But now everything was beyond his control, and he knew it. Come Darkness, come Stars, come Flame, it would all happen without a by-your-leave from him. No sense consuming himself in jittery anticipation, then. Just relax, sit back, wait, watch it all happen.

And then, he told himself—then make sure that you survive whatever turmoil follows.

“Going up to the dome?” a voice asked.

He blinked in the half-darkness. It was the chubby little graduate-student astronomer—Faro, was that his name?

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Theremon said, though in truth he had had no particular destination in mind.

“So am I. Come on: I’ll take you there.”

A spiral metal staircase wound upward into the high-vaulted top story of the huge building. Faro went chugging up the stairs in a thudding short-legged gait, and Theremon loped along behind him. He had been in the Observatory dome once before, years ago, when Beenay wanted to show him something. But he remembered very little about the place.

Faro pulled back a heavy sliding door, and they went in.

“Come for a close look at the Stars?” Siferra asked.

The tall archaeologist was standing just inside the doorway, watching the astronomers at their work. Theremon reddened. Siferra wasn’t what he wanted to run into just now. Too late he recalled that this was where Beenay had said she had gone. Despite the ambiguous smile she had seemed to cast his way at the moment of the eclipse’s beginning, he still feared the sting of her scorn for him, her anger over what she saw as his betrayal of the Observatory group.

But she showed no sign now of hard feelings. Perhaps, now that the world was plunging headlong into the Cave of Darkness, she felt that anything that had happened before the eclipse was irrelevant, that the coming catastrophe canceled out all errors, all quarrels, all sins.

“Quite a place!” Theremon said.

“Isn’t it amazing? Not that I really know much of what’s going on here. They’ve got the big solarscope trained on Dovim—it’s really a camera more than it is a spyglass, they told me; you can’t just squint through it and see the heavens—and then these smaller telescopes are focused deeper out, watching for some sign that the Stars are appearing—”

“Have they spotted them yet?”

“Not so far as anyone’s told me,” Siferra said.

Theremon nodded. He looked around. This was the heart of the Observatory, the room where the actual scanning of the skies took place. It was the darkest room he had ever been in—not truly dark, of course; there were bronze sconces arrayed in a double row around the curving wall, but the glow that came from the lamps they held was faint and perfunctory. In the dimness he saw a great metal tube going upward and disappearing through an open panel in the roof of the building. He was able to glimpse the sky through the panel also. It had a terrifying dense purple hue now. The diminishing orb of Dovim was still visible, but the little sun seemed to have retreated to an enormous distance.

“How strange it all looks,” he murmured. “The sky has a texture I’ve never seen before. It’s thick—it’s like some sort of blanket, almost.”

“A blanket that will smother us all.”

“Frightened?” he asked.

“Of course. Aren’t you?”

“Yes and no,” Theremon said. “I mean, I’m not trying to sound particularly heroic, believe me. But I’m not nearly as edgy as I was an hour or two ago. Numb, more than anything.”

“I think I know what you mean.”

“Athor says there’s already been some rioting in the city.”

“It’s only the beginning,” Siferra replied. “Theremon, I can’t get those ashes out of my mind. The ashes of the Hill of Thombo. Those big blocks of stone, the foundations of the cyclopean city—and ashes everywhere at their base.”

“With older ashes below, down and down and down.”

“Yes,” she said.

He realized that she had moved a little closer to him. He realized also that the animosity she had felt toward him over the past few months seemed to be completely gone, and—could it be?—she appeared to be responding to some ghost of the attraction that he had once had for her. He knew the symptoms. He was much too experienced a man not to know them.

Fine, Theremon thought. The world is coming to an end, and now, suddenly, Siferra is finally willing to put aside her Ice Queen costume.

A weird, gawky figure, immensely tall, came slithering by them in a clumsy jerky way. He offered them a giggly greeting.

“No sign of the Stars yet,” he said. It was Yimot, the other young graduate student. “Maybe we won’t get to see them at all. It’ll all turn out to be a fizzle, like the experiment Faro and I rigged up in that dark building.”

“Plenty of Dovim’s still visible,” Theremon pointed out. “We’re nowhere near total Darkness.”

“You sound almost eager for it,” said Siferra.

He turned to her. “I’d like to get the waiting over with.”

“Hey!” someone yelled. “My computer’s down!”

“The lights—!” came another voice.

“What’s happening?” Siferra asked.

“Power failure,” Theremon said. “Just as Sheerin predicted. The generating station must be in trouble. The first wave of madmen, running amok in the city.”

Indeed the dim lights in the sconces appeared to be on the verge of going out. First they grew very much brighter, as if a quick final surge of power had gone rushing through them; then they dimmed; then they brightened again, but not as much as a moment before; and then they dropped to just a fraction of their normal light output. Theremon felt Siferra’s hand gripping his forearm tightly.

“They’re out,” someone said.

“And so are the computers—cut in the backup power, somebody! Hey! Backup power!”

“Fast! The solarscope isn’t tracking! The camera shutter won’t work!”

Theremon said, “Why didn’t they prepare for something like this?”

But apparently they had. There came a thrumming from somewhere in the depths of the building; and then the screens of the computers scattered around the room winked back to life. The lamps in their sconces did not, though. Evidently they were on another circuit, and the emergency generator in the basement would not restore them to functioning.

The Observatory was practically in full Darkness.

Siferra’s hand still rested on Theremon’s wrist. He debated slipping a comforting arm around her shoulders.

Then Athor’s voice could be heard. “All right, give me a hand here! We’ll be okay in a minute!”

“What’s he got?” Theremon asked.

“Athor’s brought out the lights,” came the voice of Yimot.

Theremon turned to stare. It wasn’t easy to see anything, in such a low light level, but in another moment his eyes grew somewhat accustomed to it. There were half a dozen foot-long inch-thick rods cradled in Athor’s arms. He glared over them at the staff members.

“Faro! Yimot! Come here and help me.”

The young men trotted to the Observatory director’s side and took the rods from him. One by one, Yimot held them up, while Faro, in utter silence, scraped a large clumsy match into spluttering life with the air of one performing the most sacred rite of a religious ritual. As he touched the flame to the upper end of each of the rods, the little blaze hesitated a moment, playing futilely about the tip, until a sudden crackling flare cast Athor’s lined face into yellow highlights. A spontaneous cheer ran through the great room.

The rod was tipped by six inches of wavering flame!

“Fire?” Theremon wondered. “In here? Why not use godlights, or something?”

“We discussed it,” said Siferra. “But godlights are too faint. They’re all right for a small bedroom, just a little cozy presence to get you through the sleeping-period, but for a place this size—”

“And downstairs? Are they lighting torches there too?”

“I think so.”

Theremon shook his head. “No wonder the city’s going to burn this evening. If even you people are resorting to something as primitive as fire to hold back the Darkness—”

The light was dim, dimmer even than the most tenuous sunlight. The flames reeled crazily, giving birth to drunken, swaying shadows. The torches smoked devilishly and smelled like a bad day in the kitchen. But they emitted yellow light.

There was something joyous about yellow light, Theremon thought. Especially after nearly four hours of somber, dwindling Dovim.

Siferra warmed her hands at the nearest, regardless of the soot that gathered upon them in a fine, gray powder, and muttered ecstatically to herself. “Beautiful! Beautiful! I never realized before what a wonderful color yellow is.”

But Theremon continued to regard the torches suspiciously. He wrinkled his nose at the rancid odor and said, “What are those things made out of?”

“Wood,” she replied.

“Oh, no, they’re not. They aren’t burning. The top inch is charred and the flame just keeps shooting up out of nothing.”

“That’s the beauty of it. This is a really efficient artificiallight mechanism. We made a few hundred of them, but most went to the Sanctuary, of course. You see”—she turned and dusted off her blackened hands—“you take the pithy core of coarse water reeds, dry them thoroughly, and soak them in animal grease. Then you set fire to it and the grease burns, little by little. These torches will burn for almost half an hour without stopping. Ingenious, isn’t it?”

“Wonderful,” Theremon said dourly. “Very modern. Very impressive.”

But he couldn’t remain in this room any longer. The same restlessness that had led him to come up here now afflicted him again. The reek of the torches was bad enough; but also there was the cold blast of air coming in through the open panel in the dome, a harsh wintry flow, the icy finger of night. He shivered. He wished that he and Sheerin and Beenay hadn’t finished off that whole bottle of miserable wine so quickly.

“I’m going to go back below,” he said to Siferra. “There’s nothing to see here if you aren’t an astronomer.”

“All right. I’ll go with you.”

In the flickering yellow light he saw a smile appear on her face, unmistakable this time, unambiguous.

27

They made their way down the clattering spiral staircase to the lower room. Not much had changed down there. The people on the lower level had lit torches there too. Beenay was busy at three computers at once, processing data from the telescopes upstairs. Other astronomers were doing other things, all of them incomprehensible to Theremon. Sheerin was wandering around by himself, a lost soul. Folimun had carried his chair directly beneath a torch and continued reading, lips moving in the monotonous recital of invocations to the Stars.

Through Theremon’s mind ran phrases of description, bits and pieces of the article he had planned to write for tomorrow’s Saro City Chronicle. Several times earlier in the evening the writing machine in his brain had clicked on the same way—a perfectly methodical, perfectly conscientious, and, as he was only too well aware, perfectly meaningless procedure. It was wholly preposterous to imagine that there was going to be an issue of the Chronicle tomorrow.

He exchanged glances with Siferra.

“The sky,” she murmured.

“I see it, yes.”

It had changed tone again. Now it was darker still, a horrible deep purple-red, a monstrous color, as though some enormous wound in the fabric of the heavens were gushing fountains of blood.

The air had grown, somehow, denser. Dusk, like a palpable entity, entered the room, and the dancing circle of yellow light about the torches etched itself into ever sharper distinction against the gathering grayness beyond. The odor of smoke here was just as cloying as it had been upstairs. Theremon found himself bothered even by the little chuckling sounds that the torches made as they burned, and by the soft pad of Sheerin’s footsteps as the heavyset psychologist circled round and round the table in the middle of the room.

It was getting harder to see, torches or no.

So now it begins, Theremon thought. The time of total Darkness—and the coming of the Stars.

For an instant he thought it might be wisest to look for some cozy closet to lock himself into until it was all over. Stay out of the way, avoid the sight of the Stars, hunker down and wait for things to become normal again. But a moment’s contemplation told him what a bad idea that was. A closet—any sort of enclosed place—would be dark too. Instead of being a safe snug harbor, it might become a chamber of terrors far more frightening than the rooms of the Observatory.

And then too, if something big was going to happen, something that would reshape the history of the world, Theremon didn’t want to be tucked away with his head under his arm while it was going on. That would be cowardly and foolish; and it might be something he would regret all the rest of his life. He had never been the sort of man to hide from danger, if he thought there might be a story in it. Besides, he was just selfconfident enough to believe that he would be able to withstand whatever was about to occur—and there was just enough skepticism left in him so that at least part of him wondered whether anything significant was going to happen at all.

He stood still, listening to Siferra’s occasional indrawn breaths, the quick little respirations of someone trying to retain composure in a world that was all too swiftly retreating into the shadow.

Then came another sound, a new one, a vague, unorganized impression of sound that might well have gone unnoticed but for the dead silence that prevailed in the room and for Theremon’s unnatural focus of attention as the moment of totality grew near.

The newspaperman stood tensely listening, holding his breath. After a moment he carefully moved toward the window and peered out.

The silence ripped to fragments at his startled shout:

“Sheerin!”

There was an uproar in the room. They were all looking at him, pointing, questioning. The psychologist was at his side in a moment. Siferra followed. Even Beenay, crouched in front of his computers, swung around to look.

Outside, Dovim was a mere smoldering splinter, taking one last desperate look at Kalgash. The eastern horizon, in the direction of the city, was lost in Darkness, and the road from Saro City to the Observatory was a dull red line. The trees of the wooded tracts that bordered the highway on both sides had lost all individuality and merged into a continuous shadowy mass.

But it was the highway itself that held attention, for along it there surged another, and infinitely menacing, shadowy mass, surging like a strange shambling beast up the slopes of Observatory Mount.

“Look,” Theremon cried hoarsely. “Someone tell Athor! The madmen from the city! Folimun’s people! They’re coming!”

“How long to totality?” Sheerin asked.

“Fifteen minutes,” Beenay rasped. “But they’ll be here in five.”

“Never mind, keep everyone working,” Sheerin said. His voice was steady, controlled, unexpectedly commanding, as though he had managed to tap into some deep reservoir of inner strength in this climactic moment. “We’ll hold them off. This place is built like a fortress. You, Siferra, go upstairs and let Athor know what’s happening. You, Beenay, keep an eye on Folimun. Knock him down and sit on him if you have to, but don’t let him out of your sight. Theremon, come with me.”

Sheerin was out the door, and Theremon followed at his heels. The stairs stretched below them in tight, circular sweeps around the central shaft, fading into a dank and dreary grayness.

The first momentum of their rush had carried them fifty feet down, so that the dim, flickering yellow from the open door of the room behind them had disappeared, and both up above and down the same dusky shadow crushed in upon them.

Sheerin paused, and his pudgy hand clutched at his chest. His eyes bulged and his voice was a dry cough. His whole body was quivering in fear. Whatever the final source of resolve he had found a moment ago now seemed exhausted.

“I can’t … breathe … go down … yourself. Make sure all doors are closed—”

Theremon took a few downward steps. Then he turned. “Wait! Can you hold out a minute?” He was panting himself. The air passed in and out of his lungs like so much molasses, and there was a little germ of screeching panic in his mind at the thought of making his way farther below by himself.

What if the guards had left the main door open, somehow?

It wasn’t the mob he was afraid of. It was—

Darkness.

Theremon realized that he was, after all, afraid of the Dark!

“Stay here,” he said unnecessarily to Sheerin, who was huddled dismally on the staircase where Theremon had left him. “I’ll be back in a second.”

He dashed upward two steps at a time, heart pounding—not altogether from the exertion—tumbled into the main room, and snatched a torch from its holder. Siferra stared at him, eyes wide with bewilderment.

“Shall I come with you?” she asked.

“Yes. No. No!”

He ran out again. The torch was foul-smelling, and the smoke smarted his eyes almost blind, but he clutched that torch as if he wanted to kiss it for joy. Its flame streamed backward as he hurtled down the stairs again.

Sheerin hadn’t budged. He opened his eyes and moaned as Theremon bent over him. The newspaperman shook him roughly. “All right, get hold of yourself. We’ve got light.”

He held the torch at tiptoe height, and, propping the tottering psychologist by an elbow, made his way downward again, protected now by the sputtering circle of illumination.

On the ground floor everything was black. Theremon felt the horror rising within him again. But the torch sliced a way through the Darkness for him.

“The Security men—” Sheerin said.

Where were they? Had they fled? It looked that way. No, there were a couple of the guards Athor had posted, jammed up against the corner of the hallway, trembling like jelly. Their eyes were blank, their tongues were lolling. Of the others there was no sign.

“Here,” Theremon said brusquely, and passed the torch to Sheerin. “You can hear them outside.”

And they could. Little scraps of hoarse, wordless shouts.

But Sheerin had been right: the Observatory was built like a fortress. Erected in the last century, when the neo-Gavottian style of architecture was at its ugly height, it had been designed for stability and durability, rather than for beauty.

The windows were protected by the grillwork of inch-thick iron bars sunk deep into the concrete sills. The walls were solid masonry that an earthquake couldn’t have touched, and the main door was a huge oaken slab reinforced with iron at the strategic points. Theremon checked the bolts. They were still in place.

“At least they can’t just walk right in the way Folimun did,” he said, panting. “But listen to them! They’re right outside!”

“We have to do something.”

“Damned right,” Theremon said. “Don’t just stand there! Help me drag these display cases up against the doors—and keep that torch out of my eyes. The smoke’s killing me.”

The cases were full of books, scientific instruments, all sorts of things, a whole museum of astronomy. The gods only knew what the display cases weighed, but some supernal force had taken possession of Theremon in this moment of crisis, and he heaved and pulled them into place—aided, more or less, by Sheerin—as though they were pillows. The little telescopes and other gadgets within them went tumbling over as he jockeyed the heavy cases into position. There was the sound of breaking glass.

Beenay will kill me, Theremon thought. He worships all that stuff.

But this was no moment for being delicate. He slammed one case after another up against the door, and in a few minutes had built a barricade that might, he hoped, serve to hold back the mob if it succeeded in breaking through the gate.

Somewhere, dimly, far off, he could hear the battering of bare fists against the door. Screams—yells—

It was all like a ghastly dream.

The mob had set out from Saro City driven by the hunger for salvation, the salvation held forth by the Apostles of Flame, which could be attained now, they had been told, only by the destruction of the Observatory. But as the moment of Darkness drew near a maddening fear had all but stripped their minds of the ability to function. There was no time to think of ground cars, or of weapons, or of leadership, or even of organization. They had rushed to the Observatory on foot, and they were assaulting it with bare hands.

And now that they were there, the last flash of Dovim, the last ruby-red drop of sunlight, flickered feebly over a humanity that had nothing left but stark, universal fear.

Theremon groaned. “Let’s get back upstairs!”

There was no sign of anyone now in the room where they had been gathered. They had all gone to the topmost floor, into the Observatory dome itself. As he came rushing in, Theremon was struck by an eerie calmness that seemed to prevail in there. It was like a tableau. Yimot was seated in the little lean-back seat at the control panel of the gigantic solarscope as if this were just an ordinary evening of astronomical research. The rest were clustered about the smaller telescopes, and Beenay was giving instructions in a strained, ragged voice.

“Get it straight, all of you. It’s vital to snap Dovim just before totality and change the plate. Here, you—you—one of you to each camera. We need all the redundancy we can get. You all know about—about times of exposure—”

There was a breathless murmur of agreement.

Beenay passed a hand over his eyes. “Are the torches still burning? Never mind, I see them!” He was leaning hard against the back of a chair. “Now remember, don’t—don’t try to look for fancy shots. When the Stars appear, don’t waste time trying to get t-two of them in the scope field at a time. One is enough. And … and if you feel yourself going, get away from the camera.”

At the door, Sheerin whispered to Theremon, “Take me to Athor. I don’t see him.”

The newspaperman did not answer immediately. The vague forms of the astronomers wavered and blurred, and the torches overhead had become only yellow splotches. The room was cold as death. Theremon felt Siferra’s hand graze his for a moment—only a moment—and then he was unable to see her.

“It’s dark,” he whimpered.

Sheerin held out his hands. “Athor.” He stumbled forward. “Athor!”

Theremon stepped after him and seized his arm. “Wait. I’ll take you.” Somehow he made his way across the room. He closed his eyes against the Darkness and his mind against the pounding chaos that was rising within it.

No one heard them or paid attention to them. Sheerin stumbled against the wall.

“Athor!”

“Is that you, Sheerin?”

“Yes. Yes. Athor?”

“What is it, Sheerin?” Athor’s voice, unmistakably.

“I just wanted to tell you—don’t worry about the mob—the doors are strong enough to hold them out—”

“Yes. Of course,” Athor muttered. He sounded, Theremon thought, as if he were many miles away.

Light-years away.

Suddenly another figure was among them, moving swiftly, a whirling flail of arms. Theremon thought it might be Yimot or even Beenay, but then he felt the rough fabric of a cultist’s robe and knew that it must be Folimun.

“The Stars!” Folimun cried. “Here come the Stars! Get out of my way!”

He’s trying to get to Beenay, Theremon realized. To destroy the blasphemous cameras.

“Watch—out—” Theremon called. But Beenay still sat huddled in front of the computers that activated the cameras, snapping away as the full Darkness swept down.

Theremon reached out. He caught hold of Folimun’s robe, yanked, twisted. Suddenly there were clutching fingers at his throat. He staggered crazily. There was nothing before him but shadows; the very floor beneath his feet lacked substance. A knee drove hard into his gut, and he grunted in a blinding haze of pain and nearly fell.

But after the first gasping moment of agony his strength returned. He seized Folimun by the shoulders, somehow swung him around, hooked his arm around the Apostle’s throat. At the same moment he heard Beenay croak, “I’ve got it! At your cameras, everyone!”

Theremon seemed conscious of everything at once. The entire world was streaming through his pounding mind—and everything was in chaos, everything was screaming with terror.

There came the strange awareness that the last thread of sunlight had thinned out and snapped.

Simultaneously he heard one last choking gasp from Folimun, and a heavy bellow of amazement from Beenay, and a queer little cry from Sheerin, a hysterical giggle that cut off in a rasp—

And a sudden silence, a strange, deadly silence, from outside.

Folimun had gone limp in his loosening grasp. Theremon peered into the Apostle’s eyes and saw the blankness of them, staring upward, mirroring the feeble yellow of the torches. He saw the bubble of froth upon Folimun’s lips and heard the low animal whimper in Folimun’s throat.

With the slow fascination of fear, he lifted himself on one arm and turned his eyes toward the bloodcurdling blackness of the sky.

Through it shone the Stars!

Not the one or two dozen of Beenay’s pitiful theory. There were thousands of them, blazing with incredible power, one next to another next to another next to another, an endless wall of them, forming a dazzling shield of terrifying light that filled the entire heavens. Thousands of mighty suns shone down in a soul-searing splendor that was more frighteningly cold in its awful indifference than the bitter wind that shivered across the cold, horribly bleak world.

They hammered at the roots of his being. They beat like flails against his brain. Their icy monstrous light was like a million great gongs going off at once.

My God, he thought. My God, my God, my God!

But he could not tear his eyes away from the hellish sight of them. He looked up through the opening in the dome, every muscle rigid, frozen, and stared in helpless wonder and horror at that shield of fury that filled the sky. He felt his mind shrinking down to a tiny cold point under that unceasing onslaught. His brain was no bigger than a marble, rattling around in the hollow gourd that was his skull. His lungs would not work. His blood ran backward in his veins.

At last he was able to close his eyes. He knelt for a time, panting, murmuring to himself, fighting to regain control.

Then Theremon staggered to his feet, his throat constricting him to breathlessness, all of the muscles of his body writhing in a tensity of terror and sheer fear beyond bearing. Dimly he was aware of Siferra somewhere near him, but he had to struggle to remember who she was. He had to work at remembering who he was. From below came the sound of a terrible steady pounding, a frightful hammering against the door—some strange wild beast with a thousand heads, struggling to get in—

It didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

He was going mad, and knew it, and somewhere deep inside a bit of sanity was screaming, struggling to fight off the hopeless flood of black terror. It was very horrible to go mad and know that you were going mad—to know that in a little minute you would be here physically and yet all the real essence that was you would be dead and drowned in the black madness. For this was the Dark—the Dark and the Cold and the Doom. The bright walls of the universe were shattered and their awful black fragments were falling down to crush and squeeze and obliterate him.

Someone came crawling toward him on hands and knees and jostled up against him. Theremon moved aside. He put his hands to his tortured throat and limped toward the flames of the torches that filled all his mad vision.

“Light!” he screamed.

Athor, somewhere, was crying, whimpering horribly like a terribly frightened child. “Stars—all the Stars—we didn’t know at all. We didn’t know anything. We thought six stars is a universe is something the Stars didn’t notice is Darkness forever and ever and ever and the walls are breaking in and we didn’t know we couldn’t know and anything—”

Someone clawed at the torch, and it fell and snuffed out. In that instant the awful splendor of the indifferent Stars leaped nearer to them.

From below came the sound of screams and shouts and breaking glass. The mob, crazed and uncontrollable, had broken into the Observatory.

Theremon looked around. By the awful light of the Stars he saw the dumbstruck figures of the scientists lurching about in horror. He made his way into the corridor. A fierce blast of chilly air coming through an open window struck him, and he stood there, letting it hit his face, laughing a little at the arctic intensity of it.

“Theremon?” a voice called behind him. “Theremon?”

He went on laughing.

“Look,” he said, after a time. “Those are the Stars. This is the Flame.”

On the horizon outside the window, in the direction of Saro City, a crimson glow began growing, strengthening in brightness, that was not the glow of a sun.

The long night had come again.