To The End of Time and Other Stories, page 3
In front of each meter, a Noro watched intently. The wizened Noro at the control board, watching Thorndyke, shoved home a final switch.
Thorndyke screamed as a million microscopic needles jabbed him. He felt a supercharged jolt of electric tension spring into existence in the air around him. Yellow lightning licked across his vision. He saw the Noros, the vast hall itself, waver and fade like a vision seen through distorting glass.
Cold struck him, he did not know how many degrees of it, but he knew if it lasted long, he would be frozen stiff. He had the impression of flickering movement far too fast for the eye to follow.
The cold faded. He fell, stumbled, fell again, got to his feet.
Weak sunlight hit him. The cloud-bank was gone. The jungle was gone. The sun shone down on a dying planet.
He was on a slope. Below him in a valley a line of dead trees marked where there was a dry riverbed. Dust blew past him on a languid wind.
This—this was the future of Venus, how many million years away he could not tell. This was the Veiled Planet when it was no longer veiled. He was not at the end of time, but he was near it, for this planet
He was aware that his mind was showing symptoms of refusing to obey him. His will forced it back into its proper groove. Below him, on the slope, a creature lay—a cat lizard. Dead. He could not see the cause of death. Nearer still there was a man, one of the men who had been with Haswell. The man was dead.
Where was Neva? He lifted his voice again, calling her name. The effort made his lungs hurt. In the thin air, his shout was not much louder than a whisper. He felt his heart begin to pound as it struggled to supply sufficient oxygen to his tissues. In this air, the life-giving gas was scarce.
The pack circling his chest hummed softly. He felt the surge of electric currents in it, reminding him that back in another time the Noros still maintained contact with him, through this pack.
“Neva!”
A halting voice answered him. She stood up slowly.
He saw her. He ran toward her.
She stared at him as if she could not believe her eyes. It was the first time in his life that a woman had ever seemed pleased to see him. Her clothes and her face were dust covered. He thrust the pack toward her. “Here. Put this on, I came for you. This will take you back.” The effort made him pant.
“You—came for me?” She seemed dazed, unable to comprehend. Reaching out, she touched him. “You’re real,” she whispered.
He tried to grin. “The Noros sent me. This pack will take us back. There isn’t time to explain. Just put it on—”
She took the pack from him, stared at it as if she did not understand. To one side a footstep squeaked. A voice rasped: “Where’s my pack?”
Haswell stood there. He had been sitting down and had remained unseen until he stood up.
Aghast, Thorndyke stared at the prospector. Until this moment, he had forgotten that Haswell existed.
“So you didn’t bring a pack for me?” Haswell said.
“I—I’m sorry. I—”
“Don’t let it bother you,” Haswell said. “I’ll just take yours.” He lifted the machine pistol.
“Like hell—” Thorndyke said. Haswell squeezed the trigger. A stream of lead squirted past Thorndyke’s head. He ducked.
“If that pack will get me back, I want it,” Haswell said. “I’d just as soon take it off a dead body.”
“All right,” Thorndyke choked. The pack was a circling band of metal eighteen inches wide and over two inches thick. He had seen the Noros fit a series of compact tiny instruments into that space. Tiny batteries furnished a limited supply of ’ power. Slowly, Thorndyke released the catches. He slipped it from his body, handed it to Haswell. The prospector reached for it. Thorndyke’s fingers seemed to loose their grip. The pack fell to the ground. Haswell bent to pick it up.
Thorndyke stepped forward. With all the strength in his body, he hit the prospector behind the ear.
Haswell went over. Thorndyke jumped at him. Both went to the ground with Thorndyke on top. Haswell, gripping the pistol, tried to bring the muzzle up against the body of his antagonist. Thorndyke caught the wrist of the hand that held the gun. He heard Haswell swear.
The prospector was as agile as a cat lizard. Somehow he got a knee up into Thorndyke’s groin. Stars splashed before Thorndyke’s eyes. Strength went out of him. But he held on to the gun hand. He waited for his strength to come back.
It didn’t.
Aware that his lungs were laboring for air, he guessed the fatal truth. His strength was not coming back. Strength depended on oxygen and there was too little oxygen in this air to support activity. A fight here was impossible. Violent, exertion would result in the collapse of oxygen-starved tissues. The cat lizard and the man on the slope had died for this reason.
Panting for breath, Thorndyke let Haswell try to throw him off. His sole activity was to hold on to the gun hand.
Haswell dropped the gun. After that, Thorndyke made no effort to resist.
He felt Haswell heave violently at him. A quiver ran through the prospector’s body.
“Damn you—” Haswell shuddered. And was still.
The man was dead. His overburdened heart, pounding furiously in an effort to supply oxygen to meet the needs of -tissues that had evolved on Earth, had simply collapsed’ from the effort. Death here was simple and quick.
Thorndyke knew that he too, was very close to death. He did not move a muscle. He was aware that Neva was trying to help him. He whispered to her to stay away.
He was fighting another battle, harder perhaps than the fight against Haswell, a fight for enough oxygen to stay alive. The only way he could win was to keep absolutely quiet. Even then, he was not certain he could win. It might be that his efforts to breathe, even the beating of his heart itself, used up more oxygen than he was taking in.
He thought, Here, near the end of time, when the solar system is running down, when man and all of man’s achievements are gone.…
Every muscle in his body screamed for more oxygen. Every instinct in him yelled for him to breathe faster. But, if he breathed faster, the very act of breathing itself might be using up more oxygen than this air contained. He forced his laboring lungs to breathe slower and slower.
Eventually, nerve cell by nerve cell it seemed to him, the clamor in his body died down. He knew then that he had won this fight. He sat up.
He told Neva what had happened. “Put the pack on, Neva. Ill put mine back on. Well get out of here.”
Back to a day when oxygen was plentiful, back to a time when the solar system was not near death. He picked up the pack, started to slip it into place, stopped, stared at it. For a moment he thought his heart was going to stop.
Either he or Haswell had kicked the pack. Part of the metal cover had been knocked off. Inside, in a jangle of broken wiring, all loose ends and smashed. connections, hung the broken coils and tubes.
“Can you fix it?” Neva whispered.
“I can try,” he answered.
Half an hour later, he knew it was a hopeless task. Special tools were needed, special knowledge, special skills, tools and knowledge and skills that only the Noros possessed.
“You—you can’t go back?” Neva asked him.
Thorndyke shook his head. He was marooned here, forever.
“Then I won’t go either,” Neva said. “If you have to stay here, I will stay too, with you.”
In another world and in another time they had had a word for what she was saying. It was a word that Thorndyke had never fully understood until now. Now he knew what it meant, knew also that it was too late to realize that meaning. He choked.
They sat side by side, leaning against a stone ledge, and watched the dull red ball of the sun go down. It went down very slowly.
“Listen—” Neva whispered. Thorndyke at first thought his ears were deceiving him. In the thin air of this planet, coming from nowhere and from everywhere, was a trace of music. He listened to it, caught his breath.
It was the madness melody: Journey to the End of Time.
It swelled in a mighty chorus, burst into a flood of sound, then died in quick silence.
On the slope above them bass voices called.
“Thorny I Never!”
They leaped to their feet.
“Here!” Thorndyke called, huskily.
.…On the slope above them were—Noros! They saw the face of Tom. It was a worried face, then at the sight of them, it broke into a grin. Tom came bounding down the slope to them. He too, wore a time pack.»The thin air did not seem to bother him. His barrel chest hardly heaved.
“Was worried—oh, I see. Get plenty busy here plenty quick.”
He saw the damaged pack, guessed what had happened. He and the other Noros with him got busy. Noro tools they had, Noro knowledge, Noro skill. Thorndyke’s voice lifted in a shout of exultation.
“Pack fixed,” Tom said. “Now we go back again.” He looked up at Thorndyke, tried to find words for something he wanted to say, spoke rapidly to Neva in his own language.
Neva translated. “He says to tell you that the Noros came from this time, long ago, that they escaped from the oxygen death of this world back into time, fleeing the death that is here.”
“What?” Thorndyke gasped. Yet he knew the Noros had come from some other land. Why not from this land? Their barrel chests could only have evolved in air where oxygen was scarce. Most of all, their tremendous sciences could only have been the result of millenniums of development.
“He says to tell you that they are the descendents of both humans and Venusians, that the two races intermingled and became one race, becoming smaller at the same time. He says that in one sense, the Noros are your far-removed grandsons.”
“Grandsons!” The thought shocked him.
Yet he saw that, in one sense, at least, it was true. To them, he was Cro-Magnon man, the shaggy man beast of the dawn world.
“Hi, pop,” Tom said, grinning.
“Hi, son,” Thorndyke answered.
They fitted the packs into place. Thorndyke and Neva went together, through the biting instant of cold. The vast cavern appeared and again in their ears was the enigmatic music—Journey to the End of Time.
The great hall rang with the sound of it. To Thorndyke, it was the happiest sound he had ever heard.
Later, Thorndyke returned to Earth with Neva. Still later, he built himself a house in the heart of the Rockies, a house with a picture window looking out over a breathtaking panorama of mighty peaks stretching away into the far distance.
In his hand is a pleasant drink; the room is cool; the touch of spring is in the air. The cushions are soft and Neva is sitting beside him, snuggled close, her head resting on his arm, her dark hair flowing downward.
With a shock, he realizes that this is the hallucination that came to him in the swamp.
The future that he saw on far-off Venus has come true.
Or has it? He may still be in the pool of water, with the garo searching for him. The Noros on the bank may be projecting into his mind the colors of the Rocky Mountain sunset, the picture window, even Neva herself.
Which is the reality, and which is hallucination?
He realizes he will never know. He doesn’t care. It is enough just to dream that she is here with him and that the sunset colors are guilding the distant peaks with gold.
There is a trace of soft music somewhere in the background. He listens. Is he remembering something or is he really hearing this music? It is the soft muted strains of Journey to the End of Time.
WHERE TALL TOWERS GLEAM
Like a child taking holiday, the wind ran whooping down the hillside. Having gained speed in this mad slide, it ran hilariously through the willow trees, crossed the brook, and raced still whooping up the hill where the red clover grew. From the top of that hill—as if the purpose of this whole maneuver had been to gain all possible speed for this one effort—it leaped madly into the sky as if striving to reach there some haven of the winds.
In his chair under the willow trees, Grandfather Rucker saw that the two children were growing tired of listening to him. “Run along and play,” he said, his voice gruff to hide the twinge of hurt within him. “Run along. I am tired of talking.”
They went, skippity-hoppity, down to the spring. He leaned back in his chair under the willow trees. For a while he watched the antics of the wind in the field of red clover, then he watched the sky…
Dick was leaning over the spring, looking for the single solitary old crawfish that lived on the bottom of that crystal pool. He did not see the man come down the long road where the summer’s dust was deep. He did not know a stranger was near until he heard Kathie say:
“Why, there’s a man. Hello, man.”
Dick looked up. The man standing there in the dusty road was not such a man as can be seen any day in summer. His clothing was a soft golden color and he did not wear a suit but a loose robe which came almost to his ankles. The robe was pulled down over his shoulders and his hands were folded out of sight in it, so Dick could not see them. But Dick could see his face. It was a beautiful brown, like the face of a young man who has been much in the sun, but somehow this man did not seem to be young. His eyes were old; they were not like the eyes of any man Dick had ever seen except, possibly, those of Grandfather Rucker when Grandfather Rucker was watching the passing of the wind.
The man did not speak. So Kathie, who at five did not know there was anything but love in the world, said:
“Hello, man. Why don’t you talk to us, man?”
Something that looked like the shadow of a smile went across the man’s face. But he did not speak.
“Would you like a drink?” Kathie said. She took the tin cup from its resting place between the moss-covered stones and filled it with water. Splashing silver drops at every step, she trotted with it to the man in the dusty road. In Kathie’s experience every man who stopped here wanted a drink.
And this man too. He smiled and took the cup from her hand. “Thank you, little miss.”
Dick clearly heard the words. But he was watching closely and the thing he saw astonished him so much he jumped up and ran and stood beside Kathie and looked up at the man to make sure. The man drank the water slowly, as though he relished every drop of it. He smiled and looked down and said:
“Spring water. Yes. I have needed a drink of spring water for a very long time, I think. Thank you, little miss.”
Dick saw the same thing happen again. In his surprise, he blurted out the words: “You talk like Edgar Bergen.”
The man had not opened his mouth when he spoke. He had not moved his lips. Dick, at seven, had very keen eyes and he had seen this thing happen.
Kathie had seen it too. She jumped up and down in great excitement.
“Do it again, man. Do it lots.”
“Eh? Do what lots?”
“Talk like Edgar Bergen!” Dick and Kathie said together.
“And who is—ah—Edgar Bergen?” Now the man opened his mouth when he spoke but he did not do it very well for some of the words came out when his mouth was closed. Dick saw this and was a little disappointed but Kathie was not critical.
“You know about Edgar Bergen and—and Charlie McCarthy,” Kathie said, as if she had explained all that any man needed to know.
And she had explained all that was necessary, it seemed. The man looked at her very thoughtfully. “Yes. Ah. Yes. I see.”
So he talked like Edgar Bergen and now his lips did not move at all. Dick nodded approvingly at this performance and Kathie squealed in glee and danced in circles around the man. The daisies growing on the slope beside the spring suddenly found voices and told them in soft flowerish tones how □ice it was to be a daisy nodding in the wind. A bumblebee that came buzzing by stopped and talked to them. He told them he was gathering honey to take back to his nest in the clover field, and Kathie, who was usually a little reserved with bumblebees, was not afraid of this one at all. For he was a nice bee. A blackbird that came down to drink from the spring gave them a pleasant, “Good morning.” It was fun.
But Dick thought it was the most fun when the old crawfish came out of his hole in the bottom of the spring and floated to the top of the water and spoke to them in a thin, reedy voice. Usually the crawfish stayed in his hole. Most of the time, like Grandfather Rucker, he seemed to be watching and waiting, though for what, no one knew.
“I’ll bet grandfather would like to see this!” Dick said. He started to lift his voice, to call his grandfather, but the man said, “Wait. Where is your grandfather?”
“There under the willow trees.”
The man looked. “But he’s asleep,” he said. Sure enough, Grandfather Rucker was dozing there in his chair. “We wouldn’t want to wake him, would we?” the man said.
“I guess not,” Dick said.
Kathie was still laughing at the crawfish. “Isn’t he funny? You must stay with us always, man, and make things talk.”
It was suddenly very quiet by the spring. The only sound was the whisper of the wind in the willow trees and the gurgle of the water in the brook. The crawfish was silent. But the crawfish stayed on top of the water and looked up.
The man said, slowly: “Do you really want me to stay with you?”
“I sure do.” She walked to his side and looked up, for Kathie was the friend of the whole wide world and everything that lived in it except, sometimes, bumblebees, and everything in the whole wide world was her friend too. “We want you to stay with us always and always, don’t we, Dick?”
