Allan attempted to rise. He was unutterably weak; to move a finger was
a gigantic task, to do more impossible. He tried to call out. No sound
came from his straining throat.
The couple straightened. The man spoke, too low for Dane to hear. Each
took something from the table, something that gleamed metallically.
Then they turned--and Allan saw what the white robes clothed!
* * * * *
Skulls leered at him from beneath the hoods--fleshless skulls; tinted
a pale green! Jutting jawbones, cavernous cheeks, lipless mouths that
grinned mirthlessly--his eyes froze to them and a scream formed within
him that he could not utter. Hands appeared from within the flowing
sleeves, and they were skeleton hands, each phalanx clearly marked.
They moved, that was the worst of it, the hands moved; and deep in the
shadowed eye-pits of the skulls blue light glowed in living eyes that
peered at something to Allan's right.
His eyes followed the direction of their gaze. Ranged along the wall,
and jutting out, he saw four couches. On each was a figure, shrouded
and hooded in white. Utterly still they were--and the cadaverous
countenances exposed between robe and hood betrayed not the slightest
twitch. The arms were crossed on each breast. Allan realized that his
own arms were similarly crossed. He looked down at them, saw the white
gleam of a robe that fell down his length in smooth, still folds, saw
his hands--greenish skin stretched tight over fleshless bones.
Suddenly it seemed to him that the air was musty and fetid.
Footsteps slithered across the floor. The woman-form bent over the
farthest couch. With one skeleton hand she bared an arm of the
corpselike figure; the other hand lifted--metal glinted in it and
plunged into the unshrinking limb! A slow movement of the bony fingers
and the threadlike, silvery thing was withdrawn. She stared
ghoulishly--and the man, too, gazed tensely at her victim. A long
quiver ran through the recumbent shape, another. The death's-head on
the pallet moved slightly--and merciful blackness welled up in Allan's
brain....
* * * * *
A cool liquid was in his mouth. He swallowed instinctively, and warmth
ran through his veins. He felt strength flooding back into him--and he
remembered horror.
"That's better," a mellow voice said, close above him. "Drink just a
little more." The cool liquid came up against Allan's lips again,
pungent, and he drank. Once more strength surged warmingly within him.
"That's a good fellow. A little more now."
Fingers were on Allan's wrist, life-warm. There was friendliness in
the voice that was speaking to him, and solicitude. He dared to look.
A skull-like head was right before him. But seen thus closely, the
terror of it was lessened. Fleshless indeed it was. But a parchment
skin was tightly drawn over the bones, and Allan could see that its
true shade was a sere yellow. It was the bluish light that had given
it the green of decay. The deep-sunk eyes were kindly; they gleamed
with pleasure as Allan's opened; and the voice asked:
"How do you feel?"
Allan made shift to reply, though a strange lassitude still enervated
him, and his mouth was full of tongue. "Much better, thank you. But
who--who...?"
With a sudden access of energy Allan sat up on his couch. He looked
about him, and his fears were back full flood.
He was in a chamber with neither door nor window--floor, walls, and
arched ceiling entirely formed of the palely lustrous, glasslike
substance. The room was perhaps twenty by forty feet, its ceiling
curving to about five yards from the floor at its highest point, and
the spectral blue glow that filled it was apparently sourceless. It
lit three vacant couches to his left. To his right were the four he
had already seen. The woman was ministering to the occupants of
these--living skeletons that lay flaccid, but whose heads were moving,
barely moving from side to side. Like nothing else but a sepulcher the
place seemed, a tomb in which the dead had come to life!
* * * * *
Allan clutched at Anthony's arm, grasped textured fabric that was cold
to his frantic touch, and thin bone beneath. "In Heaven's name," he
mouthed, "tell me what sort of place this is before--" He stopped,
appalled by a sudden thought. Perhaps he was insane, this seeming tomb
really some hospital ward transformed by his crazed brain. A wave of
weakness overcame him, and he fell back.
"Careful," the other spoke soothingly, "you must give the plasma time
to act or you may harm yourself."
If Allan shut out sight with his eyelids, and listened only to the
resonance of Anthony's voice, he could hold his slipping grip on
reason. He felt that the cloth of his robe was metal, fine spun and
woven. That was strangely reassuring.
"How long do you think you have slept?"
"How long?" Dane murmured. Something told him that he had been
unconscious for a long time. "A week?"
Anthony sighed. "No. Longer than that, much longer." There was
reluctance in his tone. "You have lain here for twenty years."
Allan's eyes flew open, and he stared up into the speaker's face.
Twenty years! Somehow it did not occur to him to disbelieve this
astounding statement. He struggled hard to realize its implication.
Two decades had passed since last he remembered. He had been a youth
then. Now he was forty-four.
Anthony continued. "That may be a shock to you, but this will be a
greater. Unless I am greatly mistaken, we seven, we four men and three
women, are the only living humans left on Earth."
The words dripped into Allan's consciousness. Beyond them, he could
hear movements, exclamations. But they meant nothing to him. Only the
one thought tolled, knell-like, within him. "We seven are the only
living humans left on Earth."
* * * * *
Dimly he knew that Anthony was talking. "There is a possibility, a
bare possibility, that somewhere near here there are two others. That
chance is faint indeed. Otherwise humanity is dead, killed by its own
hand."
Through a dizzy vertigo that blurred sight and sound Allan heard the
rounded voice go on and on, telling the story of the doom that Man's
own folly had brought. And intermingled with that tale of a world gone
mad there came back to the listener the clear-cut vision of the day of
horror that to him seemed but yesterday. He remembered the sudden
ultimatum of the Easterner's, the Western Coalition's stanch defiance.
Again he saw a supposedly invincible fleet utterly destroyed, saw
comrades whiffed out of existence in infinitesimal seconds. Again he
watched a city of twenty millions inundated by a muddy yellow gas in
which no human being, no animal, might live. He waked once more to
find himself helpless with weakness, among living corpses, in a place
that seemed a tomb.
"All this we saw in our long-distance televisoscope." Anthony gestured
to a blank screen above the apparatus ranged along the opposite wall.
"Then, just as that last weird battle ended, something happened to the
eye-mast outside, and we were isolated." He fell silent, in a brooding
reverie, and Allan, recovered somewhat, saw that the other strange
occupants of the place had risen and were clustered about that cage
where something fluttered.
He turned to his mentor. "But I still don't understand. How is it that
we escaped the holocaust?"
"Four of us, members of the scientific faculty of the National
University, having foreseen the inevitable result of the course of
world events, had joined forces and developed a substance--we called
it nullite--so dense and so inert that no gas could penetrate it or
chemical break it down. We offered it to the Western General Staff,
and were laughed at for our pains. Then we decided to use it to
preserve our families from the danger we foresaw.
"At first we sheathed one room in each of our own dwellings with the
nullite. Later we decided that the deposited gas might last for many
years, and blasted out this cave, a hundred feet below the summit of
Sugar Loaf Mountain, for a common refuge.
"When the red word flared from the newscast machines, 'War!', we fled
here with our wives, as we had planned. All, that is, save one couple,
the youngest of us. They never arrived--I waited for them in the
clearing at the entrance to the shaft. At the last moment I saw you
dropping in your parachute, saw the death beam just miss you, saw you
land at my feet, unconscious, but still breathing. I carried you in
with me. There were two vacant spaces: you could occupy one of them.
Then we sealed the last aperture with nullite, and settled to our
vigil. We did not know how long the gas would last, but we had
sufficient concentrated food, and enough air-making chemicals, to last
two persons for a century."
"Two people," Allan interjected. "But there were seven here."
* * * * *
Anthony nodded. "We had worked out every detail of our plan. When
release came we needs must be in the full vigor of our prime. From our
loins must spring the new race that will repopulate the Earth; that
will found a new civilization, better, we hope, and wiser than the
one that had died. By injecting a certain compound we suspended
animation in all but a single couple. Those so treated were to all
intents dead, though their bodies did not decay. The two who remained
awake kept watch, making daily tests of the outside atmosphere, drawn
through tubes of nullite that pierced the seal. At the end of six
months they revived another couple by the use of a second injection,
and were themselves put to sleep. We exempted you from the watch,
since you could have no companion, so that while we have lived about
seven years in the twenty, you have not aged at all."
"Not aged at all!" Dane exclaimed. "Why, I have wasted away to a mere
bagful of bones, and you others also."
The other smiled wistfully. "Even though life was the merest thread
there was still an infinitely slow using of bodily tissue. But the
drink we partook of as we awoke is a plasma that will very quickly
restore the lost body elements. In an hour we shall all have been
rejuvenated. You will be again the age you were on that fateful day in
2163, and the rest of us but seven years older. Look!" He moved aside,
so that Allen could see the others, who had gathered around his couch.
They were a curious semicircle of gaunt figures, but he could see that
they had subtly changed. Still emaciated beyond description, they were
no longer simulacra of death. The contours of their faces were
rounding, were filling out, and the faintest tinge of pink was
creeping into the yellow of their skins.
"Anthony, isn't it time that we opened the seals and went outside?
Haven't we been long enough in this prison?" It was a short man who
spoke, his voice impatient, and there was an eager murmur from the
others.
"I am as anxious as you." Anthony's slow words were dubious. "But it
may still be dangerous. The gas may have cleared away only from our
immediate vicinity. In hollows, or places where the air is stagnant,
it may still be toxic. It is my opinion that only one should go at
first, to investigate."
A babble of volunteering cries burst out, but Dane's voice cut through
the others. "Look here," the sentence tumbled from his lips. "I'm an
extra here. It doesn't matter whether I live or die--I have no special
knowledge. I cannot even father a family, since I have no wife. I am
the only one to go out as long as there is danger."
"The young man is right," some one said. "He is the logical choice."
"Very well," agreed Anthony, who appeared the leader. "He shall be the
first."
* * * * *
His instructions were few. One plane had been preserved, and was in
the shaft. Allan was to make a circuit of the neighborhood. If he
deemed it safe he was to visit the building, described to him, where
the fourth couple had lived, and see if he could find trace of them.
Then he was to return and report his findings.
All stuffed their ears with cotton wool, and crowded against one end
of the chamber. Anthony had the end of a long double wire in his hand,
and it curled across the floor to the farther wall. He pressed the
button of a pear-switch--and there was a concussion that hurled the
watchers against the wall behind them. A great gap appeared in the
farther wall, beyond it a black chasm, and a helicopter that was dimly
illumined by the light from within the room. A quick inspection of
the flier revealed that its alumino-steeloid had been unaffected by
the passage of time, and Allan climbed into it. A wave of his hand
simulated an insouciance he did not feel. Then he was rising through
darkness. The sun's light struck down and enveloped him, and he was in
the open air. He rose above the trees.
Desolation spread out beneath him. In all the vastness that unfolded
as the lone 'copter climbed into a clear sky, nothing moved. The air,
that from babyhood Allan had seen crowded with bustling traffic, was a
ghastly emptiness. Not even a tiny, wheeling speck betrayed the
presence of a bird. And below--the gas that was fatal to animal life
seemed to have stimulated vegetable growth--an illimitable sea of
green rolled untenanted to where the first ramparts of New York rose
against the sky. Roads, monorail lines, all the countless tracks of
civilization had disappeared beneath the green tide. Nature had taken
back its own.
Heartsick, he turned south, and followed the silver stream of the
Hudson. The river, lonely as the sky, seemed to drift oily and
sluggish down to plunge beneath the city at the lower end of the
Tappan Zee. Allan Dane came over New York, gazed down at the ruin of
its soaring towers, at the leaping arabesque of its street bridges. He
peered into vast rifts of tumbled, chaotic concrete and steel. Nothing
moved in all that spreading wonder that had housed twenty millions of
people.
Allan drifted lower, and saw that from what had been gardened
roof-parks, now a welter of strewn earth, the green things had spread
till they covered the heaped jetsam with a healing blanket of foliage.
Not all the city had been laid waste, however. Here and there, great
expanses of the cliff-like structures still stood, undamaged, and in
the midst of one of these areas he saw the high-piled edifice to which
he had been directed. Its roof was lush with vegetation but by
dextrous handling he set his helicopter down upon it.
The engine roar diminished and died. Silence folded around him, a
black, thick blanket.
* * * * *
Dane got heavily from his seat, oppressed by the vast soundlessness,
and pushed through curling plants that caught at his heels. The sound
of his passage was like crackling thunder. A decaying door was marked,
in faded, almost undecipherable letters, "Emergency Stairs." It was
half open, and Allan squeezed around its edge. Spiral steps curved
down into blackness. He hesitated a moment. He could _feel_ the awful
silence, the emptiness below was a pit of death. Anthony's words came
back to him, echoed in his ears: "We seven are the only living humans
left on Earth."
In that moment, out of the pitch-black well of soundlessness, a scream
shrilled! No words, only a red, thin thread of sound, rising, and
falling, and rising again out of depths where not even a living mouse
should be! It came again, ripping the silence--a woman's scream,
high-pitched, quivering with fear!
Allan plunged down into the darkness, caroming from wall to wall as he
half ran, half fell, down the twisting stairs. Another sound
reverberated from unseen walls, and Dane realized that it was his own
voice, shouting.
His feet struck level floor. A pale rectangle of light showed before
him, and he dived through it. He was in a corridor, dim-lit by
phosphorescent fungi that cloaked the damp walls. He halted, at
fault. The long hall stretched away to either side, cluttered with
grimed bones, slimy with mold. By the age-blistered name cards on
closed doors he knew himself to be on a residential level. But which
way should he turn? Whence had come that scream? He crouched against
the wall, his heartbeats thudding loud in his ears, and listened for a
clue.
A muffled sound of scuffling came from his left. Allan whirled toward
it and sped down the corridor. He was breathing in great gasps, and
the air he breathed was thick and musty. Too late to stop, he saw a
slick of green slime on the floor. His foot struck it, flew out from
under him, he fell and slid headlong.
Something stopped him, something that crunched sickeningly as his
sliding body crashed into it: two skeleton forms, clasped in each
others' arms, moldering fabric hanging in rags from them. They lay
across the threshold of a door, and just within Dane heard snarls,
snufflings, bestial growls, the sounds of a struggle. Something
thumped against the door and fell away. He heaved to his feet and his
hand found the doorknob. But suddenly he was powerless to turn it.
Panic tugged at him with almost palpable fingers, drove him to go back
to his plane and safety. Almost he fled--but he remembered in time
that it was a _human_ scream he had heard.
* * * * *
The portal gave easily to his lunge. Bluish light flooded the chamber,
dazzling after the fungous dimness. A bulking form, whether ape or man
he could not make out, so brutish the face, so hairy the dark body
revealed by its tattered rags bent over the sprawled shape of a girl.
Dane saw her in a fleeting glimpse--the slim length of her, the
tumbled, golden hair half hiding, half revealing white curves of
beauty, a shoulder from which the tunic had been torn away. Then her
attacker whirled toward the intruder. Allan leaped from the threshold,
his fist arcing before him. The blow landed flush on the other's jaw.
Yellow, rotted fangs showed in a jet-black face, and the huge Negro
lunged for Dane, roaring his rage. Before the American could dodge or
strike again the other's long arms were around him. Allan was jerked
against a barrel chest, felt his bones cracking in a terrific hug.
Eyes, tiny and red, stared into his. Dane drove knees and fists into
the Negro, but the awful pressure of those simian arms across his back
increased till he could no longer breathe. The American was almost
gone, the black face blurred, and the continuous snarling of the brute
was dull in his ears.
Suddenly Dane went limp. Victory flashed into the red eyes. The
squeezing arms relaxed, and in that moment Allan's legs curled around
the black's, heels jerking into the hollows behind his captor's knees.
At the same instant, levering from that heel hold, Dane butted sharply
up against the rocky jaw. All the strength that was left in him went
into that trick, and it worked! The Negro crashed backward to the
floor. Allan twisted, and rolled free. He was up, looking desperately
around for some weapon. But it was not needed; the hulk on the floor
never moved. The back of the Negro's head had smashed against the
floor, and he was out.
Dane turned and bent to the girl. She, too, was motionless, but to his
relief her breast rose and fell steadily. He glanced about looking for
water to revive her. Then he saw that this room was sheathed with
nullite. Then this was one of the chambers prepared before the plans
were changed. But the girl could not be of the fourth couple--the
missing two that had never appeared. She was no more than eighteen.
And whence had come the giant black who had attacked her?
"Stick up your hands. Quick!"
* * * * *
Allan whirled to the sudden challenge. The man in the doorway was
pointing a ray-gun steadily at him! Dane's hands went up, and he
gasped inanely: "Who are you?"
"What is going on here? Where did you come from?" The newcomer's
English was precise, too precise. No hulking brute, this. A yellow
man, slitted eyes slanted and malevolent; broad, flat nose above thin
lips that were purple against the saffron skin. The uniform he wore
showed signs of some attempt to keep it in repair, and to its
threadbare collar still clung a tarnished insignia: the seven-pointed
star, emblem of the enemy Allan had fought on a yesterday that was two
decades gone.
"Well? Have you lost the power of speech?" The ray-gun jerked forward
impatiently.
An obscure impulse prompted Allan's reply. "Almost. I've spoken to no
one for twenty years."
"So-o,"--softly. The Oriental's eyes flicked past Dane, and a sudden
light glowed in them. "You have been alone for twenty years in this
city we thought was empty, but you were on hand to fight with Ra-Jamba
for this delightful creature." Something leered from his face that
sent the hot blood surging to Allan's temples. The Easterner stepped
catlike into the room, shutting the door behind him with his free
hand.
"That is true," the American said, with what calmness he could
muster. Through the dizzy whirl of his mind he clung to one thought:
he must conceal the existence of the little group on Sugar Loaf
Mountain at all costs. "I had just discovered that it was safe to
leave the room, similar to this, in which I had hidden from the gas,
when I heard a scream. I reached here just in time to--"
"To interfere with Ra-Jamba's pleasure, and save the little white
dove--for me. My thanks." The yellow man bowed mockingly. "Too bad,"
he purred, "that you should be robbed of the spoils of your fight."
Then he asked irrelevantly. "So some of you Americans found a way to
cheat our gas. How many?"
Allan temporized. There had been several similar refuges prepared, he
said, but he did not know whether they had been used. This was the
first he had visited beside his own. But how was it that the
questioner knew so little about what had happened here? Had his people
simply laid this country waste and never revisited it?
* * * * *
The Oriental shrugged. "My people are gone, wiped out by your gas as
yours were wiped out by ours." He retold Anthony's story. "The crew of
my own ship mutinied," he concluded. "We fled north, from that last
terrible fight, north, ever north, till at the top of the world we
found a little space that was not gas-covered. There was nothing
there, just the ice, and the snow, and the cold. We lived there,
twelve of us, all men. There were a few bears and seals. We slew them
for food--and we grew a little mad. We were men--all men--do you
understand?"
As he said this last, his thin voice rose to a shriek, and his eyes
darted to the girl's recumbent form. At length, he went on, the gas
began to retreat, and they followed it down. They had searched town
after town, city after city, had found food in plenty, and all the
trappings of civilization. But there was never a living being. And the
fever in their blood drove them on.
That very morning the insane search had reached New York. They had
landed on the roof of this very building. "We separated to hunt--and
Ra-Jamba was the lucky one. But I--Jung Sin--am still luckier." He
crept nearer to Allan, and tapped him on the chest with his weapon.
"For look you--while those fools used all their ray-gun charges, even
the charge of the big tube on our ship, to kill food, I husbanded
mine." He laughed shrilly. "So you see, I have the only ray-gun in the
world. It shall make me master of the Earth." Again he laughed wildly.
"Now I'm going to kill you." The black cylinder leveled, and Dane
stared at death. Alone, he would almost have welcomed it, but the
thought of the girl in the filthy power of this beast seared through
him. Jung Sin, the little red worms of madness crawling in his brain,
paused for a final taunt.
"Let the thought of the white dove in my arms cons--" Allan's sandaled
foot shot out into the man's stomach. In the same movement his hands
came down, one snatched at and caught the ray-gun, the other smashed
into the yellow face. Jung Sin lifted to the drive of fist and foot,
crashed into the wall, fell to its foot. From the crumpled heap rose a
shriek, a long piercing wail that ended in a gurgle.
* * * * *
Dane froze, the captured cylinder in his hand, and listened. There
were others of the unholy band about. Had they heard? Dim sounds came
to him. He leaped to the door, flung it open. Faint footfalls, a
distant shout, came from far down the corridor, away from the
direction of the stairs. Allan glimpsed dark forms, rushing toward
him. He darted back to the girl, swung her, still unconscious, to his
shoulder, and was out. The floor was slippery beneath his feet. He
reeled as he ran, and the sounds of pursuit gained on him. The heavy
burden weighed him down, the dim hallway stretched endlessly before
him. From close behind came hoarse, guttural shouts that chilled him.
The pack was not twenty feet away when Allan reached the stair door.
He slammed it behind him, heard the latch click. He mounted the
narrow, winding steps with the last dregs of energy draining from him,
and heard a crash below that told of the collapse of the barrier. But
he had reached his plane, had flung the girl into it, and was pulling
himself in when the first of the pursuers burst out on the roof.
Allan thrust home the throttle, the helio-vanes whined, and his
'copter leaped skyward. He glimpsed men running across the roof; they
vanished behind a leafy arbor. Dane turned the nose of his craft
toward Sugar Loaf, amethyst in the haze of distance, but from that
green arch a black aircraft zoomed up and shot after him. The American
shook his head free of the cobwebs of fatigue, and veered westward. He
must not lead the Easterners to Anthony's refuge.
Through the dead air, over a dead world they shot--Allan's white flier
and the ebony plane with the bloody emblem of the seven-pointed star
emblazoned on its nose. Allan wheeled again as the pursuers reached
his level on a long, climbing slant.
But they continued rising! They, were five hundred, a thousand feet
above him. Then they leveled out, and dived down. Their strategy
flashed on him--they were planning to shepherd Dane down, to force
him to land where they would have him at their mercy. And their craft
was the faster!
* * * * *
The black ship was right on his tail; Allan flicked his controls and
his 'copter slid sidewise on one wing. The other plane banked in a
tight arc and sped for him; Dane countered with a lightning loop that
brought him behind his enemy. His gray eyes were steel-hard, his lips
were a straight, thin gash. The other ship was faster, but his,
lighter and smaller, was more flexible. He could not get away,
but--They flipped up and back in an inside loop; Allan's little craft
barrel-rolled from under.
This sort of thing could not last forever. With each maneuver he was
losing altitude. Serrated roof-tops were already a scant fifteen
hundred feet beneath him, gaunt gray fingers that reached up to pluck
him from the sky.
Only half Allan's mind was concentrated on the aerial acrobatics. The
other half plodded a weary treadmill. In the nullite chamber beneath
Sugar Loaf's summit, he thought, were three couples whose knowledge
and wisdom had preserved them for the repeopling of the Earth. Their
children, and their children's children--starting from such a source
what heights might not the new race attain?
On the other hand, the ship that pursued him carried cowards who had
failed in mankind's supreme test; men who had lost their manhood,
ravening demi-beasts, half mad with loneliness and desire. As long as
they remained alive they would be a menace to those others, an unclean
band that would forever sully the new world with the old world's
evils. Even should Allan himself escape them by some trick of fortune,
they must inevitably find the little band of men--and women. A cold
chill ran through Dane as he visioned the result.
He was not afraid to die. And the girl in the cabin behind him--better
that she never awake than that she be the sport of Ra-Jamba's kind. A
grim resolve formed itself, and he watched for a chance to put it into
execution.
It came. At the end of a shifting maneuver the black 'copter was above
and behind the white. Dane's fingers played swiftly over the control
board. His ship flipped over backward, rolling on its long axis as it
somersaulted. It was directly beneath the other. Then the helio-vanes
screamed, and the American plane surged straight up!
* * * * *
A resounding crash split the air. Metal ripped, a fuel tank exploded.
A black wing scaled earthward, zigzagging oddly. Dane's craft and the
Eastern ship clung in an embrace of death. They started to drop. But,
queerly, the black plane fell faster, left the white one behind as its
descent gained speed till it splashed against concrete below. The
American helicopter was dropping, too, but sluggishly. Something was
buoying it up. Allan, momentarily struggling out of the welter of
blackness and pain into which the concussion had thrown him, heard a
familiar whine. His helio-vanes were still twirling, limply,
stutteringly, bent and twisted, but gripping the air sufficiently to
brake his crushed plane's fall.
Afterwards, Allan figured it out. The black pilot had slipped sidewise
in that last frantic moment. His effort to escape had been futile, but
instead of his ship's body, Dane's plane had struck the wing and torn
it off. The impact had irreparably damaged the American craft, but the
helicopter motor and vanes had somehow continued to function--just
enough. The stanch alumino-steeloid fuselage, though bent and
disfigured, had fended the full force of the crash from Allan and his
passenger.
Just now, however, Allan Dane was doing no figuring. Pain welled
behind his eyes, his left arm was limp, and a broken stanchion jammed
his feet so they couldn't move. The vane motor stuttered and stopped,
the plane floor dropped away from beneath him, then thudded against
something. The jar jolted Allan into a gray land where there was
nothing....
* * * * *
Someone was talking. He couldn't make out the words, but the sound was
pleasant. It soothed the throb, throb in his head. Gosh, that had been
some party last night, celebrating Flight ZLX's first prize in
maneuvers! Great bunch, but would they be as good in real war--sure to
come soon? Dane's stuff had too much kick; he must have passed out
early.
Somebody shaking him.
"Lea' me 'lone; wanna sleep."
"Oh, wake up, please wake up."
Girl's voice. Nice voice. Voice like that should have pretty face.
Better not look, though; too bad if she had buck teeth or squint eyes.
"Oh, what will I do? You're not dead? Please, you're not dead?"
"Don't think so. Head hurts too much." Allan opened his eyes. "Wrong
again. Mus' be dead. Only angel could look like that. Not in right
place, though. Mistake in shipping directions--tags switched or
something."
A cold hand lay across his brow, and he felt it quiver. "Don't talk
like that. Wake up." There was hysteria in the limpid tones.
Allan's brain mists cleared, and he grinned wryly. "I remember now.
You all right?"
"Yes. But who are you? Are you Anthony Starr?"
"No. But Anthony sent me." Allan struggled to rise. He saw twisted
wreckage beside him. He gasped. "I seem to be a bit conked. But
what--what do you know about Anthony?"
The girl fumbled in her garments, brought out a paper. Allan found
that he could move his right arm without much pain. He took the
yellowed sheet, and read the faded writing.
Dear Naomi:
You are asleep, and we have been standing by your couch,
drinking in the dear sight of you. You sleep soundly, tired
as you are by the long-promised story we told you on this,
your sixteenth birthday, the tale of how the world you know
only from our teachings was destroyed, of how we planned
with our friends to escape the general fate, of how an
accident separated us from them and immured us here alone,
of how you were born in this room and why you have lived
here all your short life. We told you all that, but there is
one thing we did not tell you.
Our food supply has run low, and the gas outside shows no
signs of abatement. With careful husbanding we could all
three live for another four months, but there is no prospect
that we shall be released in so short a time. Alone, you
will have sufficient for a year. If we had had some of Carl
Thorman's life-suspension serum--but it was his perfection
of that which caused the change of plan to a common refuge,
and we never thought to stock with it the discarded rooms in
our own apartments.
We have talked it over, and have decided that you must have
that eight months' extra chance. And so, dear daughter, this
must be farewell.
When the gas is gone Anthony will come to seek us, if he
still lives. You will know him by the white robe of metal
fabric he will wear, with its black girdle. Trust yourself
to him; he was our friend. If all the food has been
consumed, and he still has not come, open the door. But fate
will not be so cruel to you.
We are weary of the long waiting, Naomi. Do not grieve for
us. We shall go out into the gas hand in hand, and release
will be welcome.
God guard you.
* * * * *
Allan was deeply moved by the love and sacrifice so simply worded. He
looked at the girl, and had to blink away a mist that hazed his sight
before he could see her. "I see," he said. "When the year ended and
Anthony had not come, you opened the door--"
"And the gas was gone. Then I heard someone moving far down the
corridor. I was so happy. Who could it be but Anthony? I called. A
hairy, black giant came running, bellowing in some strange language. I
was terribly frightened: I think I screamed, and tried to shut the
door. But he was too quick for me: he was in the room, and his filthy
paws reached out for me. I screamed again, dodged away from him. He
pursued me. I threw myself backward, tripped, and fell. My head
crashed against the floor.
"The next thing I knew I was here, and you were twisted and jammed
there in front of me. At first I wanted to run, then I saw your robe.
I dragged you out. Then I spied that other pile of wreckage, and I
thought you too were dead...." She covered her face with her hands.
* * * * *
Allan turned his head, saw for the first time the crumpled debris of
the black ship, a hundred feet away, saw stark forms. "There's nothing
to be afraid of now," he said. "It's all over. We'll soon be with your
father's friend, with Anthony."
A little smile of reassurance trembled on the girls lips. "Oh, do you
think so?"
Allan nodded.
"Sure thing! Just trust to me, Miss ...?"
"Call me Naomi."
"I'm Allan." The pilot thrust out his big hand, full fleshed now, and
a little white one fluttered into it. An electric thrill rippled at
the contact, and the two hands clung. The girl gave a little gasp, and
pink flushed her cheeks.
Naomi shivered a little, and Allan realized that a chill breeze was
sweeping across the roof-tops and that daylight was almost gone. "Look
here, partner, we'd better get started, somewhere." He pulled himself
to his feet. Pain shot through him and his head still throbbed. "I'd
better take a look at that." He gestured to the wreck of the Eastern
ship. "You wait here."
When he returned his face was pallid, and there was a sick look in his
eyes. The girl asked sharply: "What is it? What's wrong? Tell me,
Allan!"
He looked at her grimly, started to say something, thought better of
it. Then: "It wasn't a pleasant sight." He shrugged. "Come on, let's
see what we can find. We'll have to spend the night here, and start
for Sugar Loaf Mountain in the morning."
Once more Allan descended a narrow, spiral staircase into darkness and
silence. But this time someone was at his side, and a warmness ran
through him at the thought.
* * * * *
The topmost floor of this building was a residential level. Like the
one where he had found Naomi, a green mold covered everything, and
pallid fungi, emitting a pale-green phosphorescence, clung to the
walls and ceiling of the long corridor. Apparently the dwellers here
had rushed out at the first alarm, had died elsewhere. "This is luck,"
Allan said. "We shall have a comfortable place to sleep, and food is
not far away."
"How is that?"
"Why, the stores level is not far below. Most of New York's structures
have a number of residential levels at the top, then a floor of retail
stores, and below that amusement places, offices, and factories."
"But whatever food there was must be decayed by this time."
"The fresh food, yes. But there was a lot of canned stuff, and that is
probably all right." He pushed open a door. In the eery light a
well-furnished living room was revealed. "You wait here, and I'll see
what I can rustle up."
"But I want to go with you."