CHAPTER V
Wales regained a foggy consciousness, to become aware that someone close to him was sobbing.
He felt that he had to get up. There was something he must do. He had very little time, the end of Earth was rushing upon him, and there was someone he must find. He must move, get up....
"Jay," said a voice somewhere. "It's me. Me! Martha."
Wales got his eyes open, and saw a dark figure bending over him, and he threshed his arms numbly, trying to push it away, trying to get up, to fight.
"Jay!"
A flashlight beam suddenly sprang into being right above him, almost dazzling him. Then, his vision clearing, he saw that the beam was not on his face but on the face that bent above him.
A girl's face, quite familiar, framed by dark, hair, but with tears running down it. Martha Kendrick's face.
The beam went out and the darkness was upon them again.
Wales found he was lying on damp grass, one hand resting on a concrete walk. He saw trees and a big house with a crenellated wooden tower, against the stars.
"Martha," he muttered. "So you were here. But there's someone else—someone slugged me—"
Her voice came uncertainly. "That was me, Jay. I—I might have killed you—"
He didn't understand at all. But, as his brain began to clear a little, he became aware of a pounding headache.
He sat up. Martha had her arm around his shoulders, but she seemed more to cling to him than to support him. She was sobbing again.
"How could I know?" she was saying. "I didn't even know you were on Earth. When your car came, when you came up the walk in the dark, I knew it wasn't Lee. Not tall enough. I thought it was one of them. I didn't dare shoot, so I used the gun to hit you—"
He gripped her arm. "Martha, where is Lee?"
"Jay, I don't know. I've been waiting for him here, hoping he'd come. I've been nearly crazy, by myself. And afraid—"
Wales perceived that she was near hysteria. And her fear communicated to him.
He got unsteadily to his feet. "We'd better go inside. Where we can talk, and have a light, without anyone seeing it."
His head felt big as a pumpkin, but he navigated the steps of the old mansion successfully. In the dark interior of the house, he heard Martha lock and chain the door. Then her hand gripped his wrist.
"This way. I have one room blacked out—the kitchen."
He let her lead him through the darkness, heard her close another door. Then her flashlight came on again, illuminating the barny old kitchen.
He looked at her. He had remembered Martha Kendrick as a small, dark girl, something of a spitfire. There was no chip on her shoulder now. She looked near collapse, her face dead white, her hands trembling.
She insisted on putting cold wet cloths on his head. Holding them there, feeling at the same time painful and a little ridiculous in appearance, Wales made her sit down with him at the kitchen table. The flashlight, lying on the table, threw angular shadows against the walls.
"How long have you been hiding here, Martha?"
"Five weeks. It seems like five years." Her lips began to quiver. "It's been like a terrible dream. This old house, the town, everything you knew all your life, deserted and strange. The little sounds you hear at night, the glow in the sky from the burnings—"
"But why have you hidden here? Why didn't you—and Lee too—report to New York for evacuation to Mars, like everyone else?"
Martha Kendrick seemed to get a little control of herself. She spoke earnestly.
"When Castletown, like the rest of this whole region, was evacuated two years ago, Lee wanted to stay on a while. He was working each night over at the Observatory, keeping a constant watch on Nereus. I think he kept hoping that he'd discover some change in its orbit, some hope. But—he found nothing. He'd been right. It would hit Earth."
"But why did you stay, too?" Wales demanded. Martha looked at him in surprise.
"Somebody had to take care of Lee. I wasn't going to Mars until he went. It was lonesome, after everybody left Castletown. Lee said we'd soon go, ourselves. But then—he changed. He began to seem terribly worried about something, terribly afraid."
"We've all been afraid," Wales said somberly, but she shook her head.
"It wasn't the crash, it wasn't Doomsday, Lee was afraid of. It was something else. He said he feared all Earth's people weren't going to get away. He said there were men who didn't want everyone to get away, men who wanted to see a lot of people trapped here when Doomsday comes!"
Wales was electrified out of his headachy grogginess by her statement. He grasped her wrist. "Martha, Lee said that? Who did he say they were—those who wanted to trap millions into staying here?"
Again she shook her head. "He didn't say who they were. He said he wasn't sure, it was only a suspicion. But it worried him. He went to New York once to see John Fairlie about—the regional Evacuation Marshal."
Wales thought hard. "Yes. Fairlie told me he suspected some deliberate, secret effort going on to induce millions of people to stay on Earth till it was too late. Either Fairlie got that idea from Lee, or Lee got it from him—" He broke off, then asked, "Did Lee ever talk about the Brotherhood of Atonement?"
Martha nodded. "Oh, yes, quite often. We've been afraid of them, ever since everyone else left Castletown."
Again, Wales was astonished. "What do you know about that Brotherhood, Martha?"
She seemed surprised by his excitement. "Why, Jay, they're fanatics, a superstitious movement that started long before evacuation was carried out here. People whose minds became unhinged by the coming of Doomsday. They preached, down in the Diamond, I heard them, terrible ravings that Doomsday was sent us for our sins, that only sacrifice and atonement of lives and treasures would save the world. Then, when evacuation went on, here, all the Brotherhood hid in the country so they wouldn't have to go."
"And they're here now?" he exclaimed.
Martha shuddered. "Not here. It's the one thing I've feared most these last weeks, that they'd burn Castletown."
"Burn Castletown? Good God—why?"
Martha looked at him. "Jay, they're burning the empty cities, one by one. A sacrifice. An atonement. I'm afraid Sharon was burned two nights ago—the glow in the sky seemed to come from there. And I've seen other fire-glows in the south—"
Wales, with a sudden cold feeling, remembered the blackened desolation of Brighton Falls. Then it had been no accident? Then it had been deliberate, a purposeful thing, a sacrifice—
He suddenly saw Earth as it was. A nearly-empty planet reeling toward crazy anarchy. In New York, where there was still law and order and you could see the rocket-fleets of the Marslift coming and going methodically in the sky, it had still seemed like a civilized world. But out here in the black, blind evacuated regions was deepening chaos, with law gone and all the most atavistic passions of humanity let loose. With the ignorant and mad who refused to leave battling for the possession of deserted cities, or setting the torch to unpeopled towns in superstitious sacrifice....
He asked Martha, "Did Lee think that the Brotherhood of Atonement was behind the plot to trap people into staying on Earth?"
That seemed to startle her. "He didn't say so. But could they be the ones? Mad people like that—?"
"It would take a fanatic to perpetrate a horror like getting people trapped in Doomsday," Wales said. "But let it pass, for the moment. I want to know what happened to Lee."
Her dark eyes filled with tears again. "I can't tell you. It was like this. Each night, Lee went to the Observatory. I stayed in our home but I had a portable radiophone and he had one, always open, so I could call him if I needed him. But, one night five weeks ago, he called me. He was shouting, hoarse. He said, 'Martha, men breaking in—I think they know I suspect their plan—you get out of the house, quick! If I get away, I'll find you—'"
Her face was white and haunted, as she went on. "Jay, I didn't know what to do! I had to hide but I had to leave some word for Lee so, if he got back, he'd know where to find me. That's why I wrote "The Castle" on the door. Nobody but he would know I meant this old house. I ran out and was only a few blocks away when I heard cars, at our house, and men calling. I kept in the back streets, in the dark, and got here. I—I've been waiting here since then. Weeks. Eternities. And—Lee hasn't come. Do you think they killed him?"
Wales gave her an honest answer. "Martha, I don't know. We'll hope they didn't. We'll try to find him. And the first question is, Who took him? Who are 'they'?”
She spoke more slowly. "I've had time to think. Lots of it. When Lee said, 'I think they know I suspect their plan—' Was he referring to his suspicion that there was a terrible plot to keep many people trapped on Earth till Doomsday? Did they realize Lee suspected them, and seize him?"
Wales' fist clenched slowly. "It's the only possible answer. Lee somehow suspected who was behind the secret propaganda that's been swaying people to remain on Earth. They grabbed him, to prevent him from telling."
He added, suddenly, "And it would serve their purpose another way! It would enable them to point out that Lee Kendrick hadn't left Earth—so that Kendrick's World must be a hoax!"
An expression of pain crossed Martha's white face. "Jay, don't call it that."
"What?"
"Kendrick's World. It's not fair. Lee discovered its new orbit, he gave the whole Earth a lifesaving warning. It's not fair to give his name to the thing that's bringing Doomsday."
He reached out and clasped her hand. "Sorry, Martha. You're right. But we still have that question to answer. Who are 'they'—the 'they' who took Lee? Are they the Brotherhood of Atonement? Or somebody else? Who else would have any motive?"
His head suddenly swayed drunkenly, and he brushed his hand across his eyes. Martha uttered a little cry of distress.
"Jay, you're still not over it—the blow I gave you. Here, let me make fresh compresses."
He held her back. "No, Martha, it's not that. I'm just out, dead tired. Since I reached Earth on this mission, I've had it—and only a few hours sleep in my car, last night."
She took his wrist. "Then you're going to sleep right now. I'll keep watch. This way—I have to put the light out when we leave the kitchen—"
Wales, following her through the dark house, felt that he was three parts asleep by the time he reached the bedroom to which she led him. His head still ached, and the headache and the exhaustion came up over him like a drowning wave.
When he woke, afternoon sunlight was slanting into the dusty bedroom. He turned, and discovered that Martha sat in a chair beside the bed, her hands folded, looking at him.
She said, "I wasn't sleepy. And it's been so long since I've had anyone—"
She stopped, faintly embarrassed. Wales sat up, and reached and kissed her. She clung to him, for a moment.
Then she drew back. "Just propinquity," she said. "You would never even look at me, in the old days."
Wales grinned. "But now you're the last girl in town."
Martha's face changed and she suddenly said, with a little rush of words, "Oh, Jay, do you sometimes get the feeling that it just can't happen, no matter what Lee and all the other scientists say, no matter what their instruments say, that everything we've known all our lives just can't end in flame and shock from the sky—?"
He nodded soberly. "I've had that feeling. We've all had it, had to fight against it. It's that feeling, in the ignorant, that'll keep them here on Earth until it's too late—unless we convince them in time."
"What'll it really be like for us, on Mars?" she asked him. "I don't mean all the cheery government talks about the splendid new life we'll all have there. I mean, really."
"Hard," he said. "It's going to be a hard life, for us all. The mineral resources there are limitless. Out of them, with our new sciences of synthesis, we can make air, water, food. But only certain areas are really habitable. Our new cities out there are already badly crowded—and more millions still pouring in."
He still held her hand, as he said, "But we'll make out. And Earth won't be completely destroyed, remember. Someday years from now—we'll be coming back."
"But it won't be the same, it'll never be the same," she whispered.
He had no answer for that.
Packaged food made them a meal, in the kitchen. It was nearly sunset, by the time they finished.
Martha asked him then, with desperate eagerness, "We're going to try to find Lee now?"
Wales said, "I've been thinking. We'll get nowhere by just searching blindly. Fairlie's agents did that, and found no trace of Lee at all. I think there's only one way to find him."
"What?"
"Since I left New York on this mission, I was followed," Wales told her. He described the shadowy, unseen trailers who had tracked him until he fell into the hands of Lanterman's men. "Now, my mission to find Lee could well have been known. Only reason anyone would follow me is to make sure I didn't find him. So those who tracked me must be some of the 'they' who took Lee. The Brotherhood of Atonement, it seems sure."
He paused, then went on. "So my shadows must know what happened to Lee, where he is. If I could catch one of them, make him talk—"
"We could find out what they've done with Lee!" Martha exclaimed. Then her excitement checked. "But you said they must have lost your trail, at Pittsburgh."
He nodded. "Sure. But what would they do, when they made sure I wasn't with Lanterman's band in Pittsburgh, that I'd slipped away? Knowing that I was headed for Castletown in the first place, they'll come here to look for me. And I'll be waiting for them."
A little pallor came into Martha's face. "What are you going to do, Jay?"
"I'm going to set up a little ambush for them, right down in the center of town," he said grimly. "You'll be quite safe here, until—"
She interrupted passionately. "No. I'm going with you." He started to argue, and then he saw the desperation in her eyes. "Jay, you don't know what it's been like to be so alone. I'm not letting you go without me."
He said, after a moment, "Maybe you're right. But we'd better get started. Do you have a gun?"
She produced an ancient revolver. "I found this, in the house next door. I wanted something—I was so afraid the Brotherhood would come here—"
Wales nodded. "We'll get you something better than that. Now listen, Martha. You must keep silent, you must do what I say. There's no one at all to help us, if things go wrong."
She nodded. He opened the back door and they went out of the old house, and across its ragged back yard to the alley.
Wales, his gun in his hand, led the way down the alley. Where it crossed Grant Street, he stopped, stuck his head out and peered both ways. The street of old houses was still and dead. The maples along it drowsed in the dying sunlight. A little breeze whispered, and was quiet again.
Wales and Martha darted across the street fast, into the shelter of the alley again. As they went down it, hugging the backs of buildings, heading toward the Diamond, Wales had again that fantastic feeling of unreality.
He remembered every foot of these blocks. How many times, carrying a newspaper route as a boy, he had short-cutted along this alley. And how would a boy dream that he would come back to it someday, when the familiar town lay silent and empty before approaching world's end?
They reached the Diamond, an oval of grass with benches and a Civil War monument and with the three-story storefronts all around it, their dusty windows looking down like blind eyes. "KEEP RIGHT" said a big sign at each end of the Diamond, but nothing moved along the wide street, nothing at all.
Wales peered from a doorway, then took Martha's wrist and hurried across. Dutton's Hardware, with its windows still full of fishing-tackle displays, was on the other side. But when he tried the door, it was locked.
He could smash the plate-glass of the door but that would be to advertise his presence inside. He hurried, tense and sweating now, around to the alley in back of the store. The back door by the little loading platform was locked too, but he broke a window with his gun-butt.
The shattering of the glass sounded in the silent town like an avalanche. Wales swore under his breath, waited, listened.
There was no sound. He got the window open, and drew Martha in after him into the dim interior of the store.
"Why here?" she whispered, now.
"Anyone who comes searching Castletown for me is bound to come to the Diamond sooner or later," he told her. "It's our best place to watch."
He had another reason. He went forward through the obscurity of the store, through sheaves of axe-handles and rural mail-boxes in piles, with the hardware-store smell of oil and leather and paint strong in his nostrils.
He found a gun-rack. All rifles and pistols were gone but there were still a row of shotguns, the barrels gleaming in the dimness like organ-pipes. In the worn, deep wooden drawers beneath, he found shells.
"I seem to remember you used to go after pheasant with Lee," he said.
Martha nodded, and took one of the pumpguns.
"Just don't use it, until I tell you," he said.
They went on, toward the front of the store. Then they sat down, and through the show-windows they could look out on the Diamond.
The sun sank lower. The man on the monument cast a longer and longer shadow across empty benches where once old men of Castletown had gossiped.
Nothing happened.
Wales, waiting, thought how outraged crusty Mr. Dutton would have been by what they'd done. It had been like him to carefully lock up the store, front and back, before he left it forever.
He looked across the Diamond, at the Busy Bee Cafe, at the Electric Shoe Repair Shop, at the old brick YWCA.
Twilight deepened. Martha moved a little, beside him. He hoped she wasn't losing her nerve.
Then he realized she had been nudging him. She whispered, "Jay."
At the same moment he heard a thrumming sound. Even here inside the store, it seemed unnaturally loud in the silent town. He crouched lower.
A long green car came down the street and swung around the Diamond, and then with squealing brakes it came to a stop.
The hunters had come to Castletown.