"Certainly. Why not?"
They went to the edge of town and out into a pasture and stopped finally
by a brook where the water flowed sluggishly.
After a while, Hugh said, "I'm not supposed to tell anybody anything,
but somehow it doesn't seem decent--keeping the truth from your own
brother. And what difference does it make--really?"
"What's happened, Hugh."
"There weren't any bombs."
"No bombs."
"It happened this way. Long before this Earth was formed, a million
light years out in space, a white dwarf died violently."
"You're talking in riddles."
Hugh looked up into the blue sky. "A dwarf star, Jim. So incredibly
heavy, it would be hard for you to conceive of its weight. This star
blew up--broke into five pieces and the five pieces followed each other
through space. This world was formed in the meantime--maybe even this
galaxy--we don't know. So the five pieces of heavy star had a rendezvous
with a world unborn. The world was born and grew old and then the
rendezvous was kept. Right on schedule. On some schedule so huge and
ponderous we can't even begin to understand it."
"The five bombs."
"They hit the earth in a line and drove deep into the ground. But that
was only the beginning. It all has to do with magnetism--the way they
kept right on burrowing toward the center of our earth--causing the
earthquakes--causing apples to fall from trees." Hugh turned to glance
at Jim. "Did you know you weigh around six hundred pounds now?"
"I haven't weighed myself lately."
"We checked and found out what the stuff was. We'd never seen anything
like it before. That star was a real heavyweight. All the pieces are
drawing together toward the center of earth. But they'll never get
there."
"They won't."
"We're doomed, Jim. Earth is doomed. That's the why of this censorship.
We didn't want panics--mass suicide--a world gone mad."
"How's it going to come?"
"If allowed to run its course, the world would come to a complete
standstill. Nothing would grow. People would move slower and slower
until they finally fell in their tracks and could not get up. Eternal
night on one side of a dead planet--eternal day on the other."
"But it's not going to happen?"
Hugh's mind went off on another track. "You know, Jim--I've never been a
religious man. In fact I've only had one concept of God. I believe that
God--above all, is a gentleman."
Jim said nothing and after a moment, Hugh went on. "Do you know what
they do when they execute a man by firing squad?"
"What do they do?"
"After the squad fires its volley, the Captain steps up to the fallen
man and puts a bullet through his brain. The man is executed for a
reason, but the bullet is an act of mercy--the act of a gentleman.
"We are being executed for a reason we can't understand, and the bullet
has already been fired, Jim. Another ten hours--eleven hours."
"What bullet?"
"Look up there. See it? The Moon."