Last Call for Doomsday! by Edmond Hamilton - HTML preview

CHAPTER IX

Over New York there hung in the sky a new moon, big and red and terrifying.

Once it had been a mere track, on an astronomical photo, a figure in a calculation. Once it had been a threat, but an abstract one. Now it was real at last. Week by week, it had grown from a spark to a speck to a little moon, and now Kendrick's World was rushing in fast toward the fatal rendezvous with its bigger, sister world.

Wales sat at his desk in the office high in the UN tower, and looked out the window at the skyscrapers looming strange in the bloody light. There was a great silence everywhere. The frantic thunder of the Marslift was stilled at last. The last-but-one rockets had left at dusk, and now as night advanced it seemed that the whole Earth was hushed and waiting.

He felt a weariness that smothered all happiness of success. For they had succeeded, in these four frantic months. After Lee Kendrick had told his story to the world, after the plotters who had ruthlessly condemned millions "for the good of the race" had been exposed and arrested, those millions of dubious folk had suddenly felt the full panicky shock of truth, had realized at last that Doomsday was real.

They had poured into New York, in fear-driven mobs that could hardly be handled. And Wales, as the hastily appointed new Evacuation Marshal, had felt in his soul that it was too late, that some would surely be left.

He had reckoned without that quality in human beings that draws their greatest strength out of peril. The Marslift had been speeded up, speeded up farther, speeded up until rocket-crews fainted of fatigue at their posts. But it had, at last, been done....

The door opened, and Martha came across the office to where Wales sat hunched and weary with his hands spread out on the empty desk.

"It's time, Jay," she said. "Lee and the others are waiting."

He looked slowly up at her. "We got them all off," he said.

"Yes. We got them all off."

"About one thing," he said, "Fairlie was right. It'll be hard on Mars for us, harder because of all those last millions. But I don't think anyone will ever complain."

He thought of the people who had streamed through New York, into the Marslift rockets, these last weeks and days.

He thought of Sam Lanterman and his people from Pittsburgh, and Lanterman complaining, "Hell, I got to own a whole city and what happens—I get scared out of it! Oh well, I guess it won't be so bad out there."

Martha touched his shoulder gently. "Come, Jay."

He got to his feet and walked heavily with her to the lift.

They went down through the silent, empty building to the empty street. Empty, except for the car in which Kendrick and the two others waited, looking up silently at the crimson face of the thing that was coming fast, fast, toward Earth.

The car bore them fast through the empty streets, and the lifeless metropolis fell behind them and they rushed across a countryside already wearing a strange and ominous new aspect, to the Spaceport.

The last rocket waited, a silvery tower flashing back the red light from the sky. They got out of the car and walked toward it.

Hollenberg had won the honor of being the last rocket-captain to leave Earth. But he did not look as though he enjoyed that honor now.

"We're ready," he said.

Wales asked, "Is Fairlie aboard?"

Hollenberg nodded grimly. "Aboard, and locked up. He was the last evacuee taken on, as per orders."

They stood, looking at each other. It came to Wales what was the matter. They stood upon Earth, and it was the last time that they might ever stand upon it.

He said harshly, "If we're ready, let's go."

The rocket-ship bore them skyward on wings of flame and thunder, and an Earth empty of man lay waiting.

A million miles out in space, they watched from the observation port. They could see the planetoid only as a much smaller, dark mass against the blue, beautiful sphere of Earth.

"One minute, fifteen seconds," said Kendrick, in a dry, level voice.

Martha sobbed, and hid her face against Wales' shoulder, and he held her close.

"Thirty seconds."

And all Wales could think of was the cities and their silent streets, the little houses carefully locked and shuttered, the quiet country roads and old trees and fields, with the red moon looming over them, coming down upon them, closer, closer—

"She's struck," said Kendrick. And then, "Look—look—"

Wales saw. The blue sphere of Earth had suddenly changed, white steam laced with leaping flames enwrapped it, puffing out from it. Giant winds tore the steam and he glimpsed tortured continents buckling, cracking, mountains rising—

He held Martha close, and watched until he could watch no more, and turned away. Kendrick, with his telescope set up, was talking rapidly.

"The continental damage isn't too bad. The seas are all steam now, but they'll condense again in time. Terrific volcanoes, but they'll not last too long. In time, it'll cool down—"

In time, Wales thought. In their time? Maybe not until their children's time?

He looked ahead, at the red spark of Mars, the world of refuge. It would be hard living on Mars, yes, for all the millions of men. But there were other worlds in space, and they had the knowledge and the ships. He thought they would go farther than Mars, much farther. He thought that they could not guess now, how far.

But someday, they or their children would come back to old Earth again. Of that, he was very sure.

END