Wales saw men around him become savage
beasts, shooting, looting, killing in frantic
hysteria. Men without hope, they awaited the--
Last Call For Doomsday!
By S. M. Tenneshaw
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
December 1956
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
A deep shudder shook Jay Wales. He wished now he hadn't had to come
back here to Earth this last time. He wanted to remember the old world
of man as it had been, not as it was now in its dying hour.
"It seems impossible that it will really happen," said Hollenberg, the
docket captain.
He wasn't looking at Earth. He was looking beyond it at the glittering
stars.
Wales looked too. He knew where to look. He saw the faint little spark
of light far across the Solar System.
A spark, a pinpoint, an insignificant ray upon the optic nerves--that
was all it was.
That--and the hand of God reaching athwart the universe.
"It'll happen," said Wales, without turning. "September 27th, 1997.
Four months from now. It'll happen."
The rocket-ship was suddenly convulsed through all its vast fabric by
the racking roar of brake-jets letting go. Both men exhaled and lay
back in their recoil-chairs. The thundering and quivering soon ceased.
"People," said Hollenberg, then, "are wondering if it really will.
Happen, I mean."
For the first time, Wales looked at him sharply. "People where?"
Hollenberg nodded toward the window. "On Earth. Every run we make, we
hear it. They say--"
And here it was again, Wales thought, the rumors, the whispers, that
had been coming out to Mars, stronger and more insistent each week.
There in the crowded new prefab cities on Mars, where hundreds of
millions of Earth-folk were already settling into their new life, with
millions more supposed to arrive each month, the rumors were always the
same.
"_Something's wrong, back on Earth. The Evacuation isn't going right.
The ships aren't on schedule--_"
Wales hadn't worried much about it, at first. He had his own job.
Fitting the arriving millions into a crowded new planet, a new, hard
way of life, was work enough. He was fourth in command at Resettlement
Bureau, and that meant a job that never ended.
Even when the Secretary called him in to the new UN capital on Mars,
he'd only expected a beef about resettlement progress. He hadn't
expected what he got.
The Secretary, an ordinarily quiet, relaxed man, had been worn thin and
gray and nervous by a load bigger than any man had ever carried before.
He had wasted no time at all on amenities when Wales was shown in.
"You knew Kendrick personally?"
There was no need to use first names. Since five years before, there
was only one Kendrick in the world who mattered.
"I knew him," Wales had said. "I went to school with both Lee and
Martha Kendrick--his sister."
"Where is he?"
Wales had stared. "Back on Earth, at Westpenn Observatory. He said he'd
be along soon."
The Secretary said, "He's not at the Observatory. He hasn't come to
Mars yet, either. He's disappeared."
"But, why--"
"I don't care _why_, Wales. I want to know _where_. Kendrick's got to
be found. His disappearance is affecting the Evacuation. That's the
report I get from a dozen different men back on Earth. I message them,
'Why are the rocket-schedules falling behind?' I tell them, 'It's
Doomsday Minus 122, and Evacuation must go faster.' I get the answer
back, 'Kendrick's disappearance responsible--are making every effort to
find him'."
After a silence the Secretary had added, "You go back to Earth, Wales.
You find Kendrick. You find out what's slowing down Evacuation. We've
_got_ to speed up, man! There's over twelve million people still left
on Earth."
And here he was, Wales thought, in a rocket-ship speeding back to
Earth on one of the endless runs of the Marslift, and he still didn't
know why Evacuation had slowed, or what Lee Kendrick's disappearance
had to do with it, and he'd have precious little time to find out.
* * * * *
They were sweeping in in a landing-pattern now, and the turquoise had
become a big blue balloon fleeced with white clouds. And Hollenberg was
far too busy with his landing to talk now. The rocket-captain seemed,
indeed, relieved not to be questioned.
The rush inward, the roar of air outside the hull, the brake-blasts
banging like the triphammers of giants, the shadowed night side of the
old planet swinging up to meet them....
When he stepped out onto the spaceport tarmac, Wales breathed deep of
the cool night air. Earth air. There was none like it, for men. No
wonder that they missed its tang, out there on Mars. No wonder old
women in the crowded new cities out there still cried when they talked
of Earth.
He braced back his shoulders, buttoned the tunic of his UN uniform. He
wasn't here to let emotion run away with him. He had a job. He got onto
one of the moving beltways and went across the great spaceport, toward
the high, gleaming cluster of lights that marked the port headquarters.
Far away across the dark plain loomed the massive black bulks of
rocket-ships. Dozens of them, hundreds of them. And more were coming
in, on rigid landing-schedule. The sky above, again and again, broke
with thunder and the great ships came riding their brake-jets of flame
downward.
Wales knew, to the last figure, how many times in the last years
ships had risen from this spaceport, and how many times, having each
one carried thousands of people to Mars, they had returned. Tens of
millions had gone out from here. And New Jersey Spaceport was only one
of the many spaceports serving the Evacuation. The mind reeled at the
job that had been done, the vast number who had been taken to that
other world.
And it was still going on. Under colored lights, Wales saw the long
queue of men, women, children moving toward one of the towering ships
nearby. Signals flashed. Loudspeakers bawled metallically.
"--to Ship 778! All assigned to Ship 778 this way! Have your
evacuation-papers ready!"
Wales went by these people, not looking at their faces, not wanting to
see their faces.
The noise and crowded confusion got worse as he neared the
Administration Building. Near it the buses were unloading, the endless
cargoes of people, people--always people, always those pale faces.
An armed guard outside Administration's entrance looked at Wales'
uniform and then at his credentials, and passed him through.
"Port Coordinator's office straight ahead," he said.
The interior of the building was a confusion of uniformed men, and
women, of clicking tabulating machines, of ringing phones.
Wales thought that here you felt the real pulse of the Marslift. A
pulse that had quickened now--like the pulse of a dying man.
Bourreau, the Port Coordinator, was a stocky, bald sweating man, who
had thrown off his uniform jacket and was drinking coffee at his desk
when Wales came in.
"Sit down," he said. "Heard you were coming. Heard the Secretary was
sending you to burn our tails."
"Nothing like that," said Wales. "He just wants to know, why the devil
are Evacuation schedules falling behind?"
Bourreau drained his cup, set it down, and wiped his mouth. "Listen,"
he said, "you don't want to talk to me."
"I don't?"
"No, I'm the Port Coordinator, that's all. I've passed millions of
people through here. Evacuation Authority sends them in here, from the
marshalling point over in New York. Good people, not-so-good people,
and people that aren't worth saving. But to me, they're all just units.
They reach here, I shoot them out. That's all. The man you want to talk
to is John Fairlie."
"The regional Evacuation Marshal?"
"Yes. Talk to him, over in New York. I've got a car and driver ready
for you."
* * * * *
Wales stood up. It was obvious that Bourreau had been all ready for
him, and was not going to take a rap for anybody. It was equally
obvious that he'd learn nothing about Kendrick's disappearance from
this man.
"All right," he said. "I'll see Fairlie first."
The driver of the car, a UN private, turned off on a side road almost
as soon as they left the spaceport.
"No use bucking all the buses and trucks on the evacuation thruways,"
he said. "We use the old roads when we want to hurry. No traffic on
_them_ now."
The old roads. The ribbons of concrete and asphalt that once had
carried thousands of cars, day and night. Now they were dark and empty.
The car went through a village. It too was dark and empty. They swung
on through countryside, without a light in it. And then there was a
bigger village, and its dark windows stared at them like blind eyes.
"All evacuated," said the driver. "Every village, town, farm, between
here and New York was closed out two-three years ago."
Wales, sitting hunched by the open window, watching the road unreel,
saw an old farmhouse on the curve ahead. The headlights caught it,
and he saw that all its window-shutters were closed. Someone, some
family, had left that house forever and had carefully shuttered its
windows--against doomsday.
The poplars and willows and elms went by, and now and again there was a
drifting fragrance of flowers, of blossoming orchids. Old apple-trees,
innocently ignorant of world's end, were preparing to fruit once more.
Wales felt a sharp, poignant emotion. He asked himself, as a world had
been asking for five years, _Why did it have to be?_
There was only one answer. Far out in the dark lonesomeness of the
solar system, far beyond man's new Martian colonies, the thousands of
asteroids that swung in incredibly intricate and eccentric orbits--they
were the answer. They had been shuttles, weaving fate's web.
Kendrick had been the first to see it, to note the one big asteroid
whose next passage near Jupiter would make its eccentricity of orbit
_too_ great. With camera and telescope Kendrick had watched, and with
the great electronic calculators he had plotted that orbit years ahead,
and....
Wales had often wondered what Lee Kendrick had felt like when the first
knowledge came to him, when the first mathematical formulae of doom
came out on the calculator printing-tape. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,
spelled out in an equation. An electronic computer, passionately
prophesying the end of man's world....
"_In five years, the eccentricity of the asteroid Nereus will bring
it finally across Earth's orbit at a point where it will collide with
Earth. This collision will make our planet uninhabitable._"
He well remembered the first stupefaction with which the world had
received the announcement, after Kendrick's calculations had been
proved beyond all doubt.
"_No force available to us can destroy or swerve an asteroid so big.
But in five years, we should be able to evacuate all Earth's people to
Mars._"
Kendrick, Wales thought now, had been able to give Earth the years
of advance warning that meant escape, the years in which the tens of
thousands of great rocket-ships could be built and the Marslift get
under way. If mankind survived, it would be due to Kendrick's warning.
Why should he vanish now?
Wales suddenly became conscious that his driver was putting on the
brakes. They were in the outskirts of Morristown.
The streets here were _not_ all dark and dead. He saw the glimmer of
flashlights, the movement of dark figures, and heard calling voices.
"I thought you said these cities were all closed out?" Wales said.
The driver nodded. "Yeah. But there's still people around some of them.
Looters." He stopped. "We'd better detour around here."
"Looters?" Wales was astounded. "You mean, you don't stop them?"
"Listen," said the driver. "What difference does it make what they
take, when the place is closed out?"
Wales had forgotten. What difference did it make, indeed? The
nearly-deserted Earth was any man's property now, when inevitable
catastrophe was rushing toward it.
A thought struck him. These folk couldn't expect to take loot with them
when they were evacuated. So they didn't plan to _be_ evacuated.
He said, "Wait here. I'm going to have a look at them."
"I wouldn't," said the driver hastily. "These people--"
"Just wait," said Wales crisply.
He walked away from the car, toward the flashlights and the shadows and
the shouting voices.
The voices had a raw edge of excitement in them, and a few were
thick with alcohol. They were mixed men and women, and a few yelping
youngsters.
They weren't breaking windows. They simply used crowbars to force
open doors. Many doors weren't even locked. Eager hands passed out a
motley collection of objects, small appliances, liquor bottles, canned
synthefood, clothing.
No wonder Evacuation was going off schedule, thought Wales! Letting
people play the fool like this--
A flashlight beam flared beside him, a man's face peered at his
uniform, and a loud voice bellowed close to his ears, "Look, everybody!
It's an Evacuation Officer!"
There was a dead silence, and then the flashlights converged on him.
Somewhere in the group, a woman screamed.
"They're after us! They're going to put us on the ships and take us
away!"
"Kill the bastard, knock him down!" yelled a raging voice.
Wales, too astounded to defend himself, felt a sudden shower of clumsy
blows that sent him to his knees.
CHAPTER II
It was the very number of Wales' attackers that saved him. There were
too many of them, they were too eager to get at him. As he hit the
pavement, they dropped their flashlights and crowded around in the
dark, getting in each other's way, like frantic dogs chivvying a small
animal.
A foot trampled his shoulder and he rolled away from it. All around him
in the dark were trousered legs, stumbling over him. Voices yelled,
"Where is he?" They yelled, "Bring the lights!"
The lights, if they came, would mean his death. A mob, even a small mob
like this one, was a mindless animal. Wales, floundering amid the dark
legs, kept his head. He shouted loudly,
"Here come the Evacuation trucks--here they come! We'd better beat it!"
He didn't think it would work, but it did. In that noisy, scuffling
darkness, no one could tell who had shouted. And these people were
already alarmed.
The legs around him shifted and stamped and ran away over the pavement.
A woman screeched thinly in fear. He was alone in the dark.
He didn't think he would be left alone for long. He started to scramble
to his feet, beside the curb, and his hand went into an opening--a long
curbside storm-sewer drain.
A building was what he had had in mind, but this was better. He got
down on his belly and wormed sidewise into the drain. He lay quiet, in
a concrete cave smelling of old mud.
Feet came pounding back along the streets, he glimpsed beams of light
angling and flickering. Angry voices yelled back and forth. "He's not
here. He's got away. But there must be other goddamned Evacuation men
around. They're going to round us up--"
"By God, nobody's going to round _me_ up and take me to Mars!" said a
deep bass voice right beside Wales.
Somebody else said, "All that nonsense about Kendrick's World--" and
added an oath.
Wales lay still in his concrete hole, nursing his bruised shoulder. He
heard them going away.
He waited, and then crawled out. In the dark street, he stood, muddy
and bruised, conscious now that he was shaking.
What in the world had come over these people? At first, five years ago,
it had been difficult to convince many that an errant asteroid would
indeed ultimately crash into Earth. Kendrick's first announcement had
been disbelieved by many.
But when all the triple-checking by the world's scientists had
confirmed it, the big campaign of indoctrination that the UN put on
had left few skeptics. Wales himself remembered how every medium of
communication had been employed.
"Earth will not be destroyed," the UN speakers had repeated over
and over. "But it _will_ be made uninhabitable for a long time. The
asteroid Nereus will, when it collides, generate such a heat and shock
wave that nothing living can survive it. It will take many years
for Earth's surface to quiet again after the catastrophe. Men--all
men--must live on Mars for perhaps a whole generation."
People had believed. They had been thankful then that they had a way
of escape from the oncoming catastrophe--that the colonization of Mars
had proceeded far enough that it could serve as a sanctuary for man,
and that modern manufacture of synthetic food and water from any raw
rock would make possible feeding all Earth's millions out on that arid
world.
They had toiled wholeheartedly at the colossal crash program of
Operation Doomsday, the building of the vast fleet of rocket-ship
transports, the construction and shipping out of the materials for the
great new prefab Martian cities. They had, by the tens and hundreds
of millions, gone in their scheduled order to the spaceports and the
silver ships that took them away.
But now, with millions still left on Earth, there was a change. Now
skepticism and rebellion against Evacuation were breeding here on Earth.
It didn't, Wales thought, make sense!
He was suddenly very anxious to reach New York, to see Fairlie.
* * * * *
He went back along the dark street to the main boulevard, where the
little white route signs glimmered faintly. He looked for the car, but
did not see it.
Shrugging, Wales started along the highway. He couldn't be too far
from the big Evacuation Thruways.
He had gone only a few blocks in the dark, when lights suddenly came on
and outlined him. He whirled, startled.
"Mr. Wales," said a voice.
Wales relaxed. He walked toward the lights. It was the car, and the
driver in the UN uniform, parked back in an alley.
"I thought you were back at the spaceport by now," Wales said sourly.
The driver swore. "I wasn't going to run away. But no use tackling that
crowd. Didn't I warn you? An Evacuation uniform sets them crazy."
Wales got in beside him. "Let's get out of here."
As they rolled, he asked, "When I left Earth four years ago, there
didn't seem a soul who doubted Doomsday. Why are these people doubtful
now?"
The driver told him, "They say Kendrick's World is just a scare, that
it's not going to hit Earth after all."
"Who told them that?"
"Nobody knows who started the talk. Not many believed it at first.
But then people began to say, 'Kendrick was the one who predicted
Doomsday--if he really believed it, _he'd_ leave Earth!'"
"What did Kendrick say to that?"
"He didn't say anything. He just went into hiding, they say. Leastwise,
the officials admitted he hadn't gone to Mars. No wonder a lot of folks
began to say, 'He _knows_ his prediction was wrong, that's why he's not
leaving Earth!'"
Wales asked, after a time, "What do you think, yourself?"
The driver said, "_I'm_ going out on Evacuation, for sure. So maybe
Kendrick and the rest are wrong? What have I got to lose? And if the
big crash does come, I won't be here."
Dawn grayed the sky ahead as the car rolled on through more and more
silent towns. It took to a skyway and as they sped above the roofs, the
old towers of New York rose misty and spectral against the brightening
day.
In the downtown city itself, they were suddenly among people again.
They were everywhere on the sidewalks and they were a variegated
throng. Workers and their families from the midwest, lumbermen and
miners from the north, overweight businessmen, women, children, babies,
dogs, birds in cages, a shuffling, slow-moving mass of humanity walking
aimlessly up and down the streets, waiting their call-up to the buses
and the spaceports and the leaving of their world.
Evacuation Police in their gray uniforms were plentiful, and to Wales'
surprise they were armed. Only official cars were in the streets, and
Wales noticed the frequent unfriendly looks his own car got from faces
here and there in the throngs. He didn't suppose people would be too
happy about leaving Earth.
The big new UN Building, towering over the city, had been built thirty
years before to replace the old one. He had supposed it would be an
empty shell, now that the whole Secretariat was out on Mars. But it
wasn't. Here was Evacuation headquarters for a whole part of America,
and the building was jammed with officials, files, clerks.
He was expected, it seemed. He went right through to the regional
Evacuation Marshal's office.
* * * * *
John Fairlie was a solid, blond man of thirty-five or so, with the kind
of radiant strength, health, and intelligence that always made Wales
feel even more lanky and shy than he really was.
"We've been discussing your mission here," Fairlie said bluntly.
He indicated the three other men in the room. "My friends and
fellow-officials--they're assistants to Evacuation Marshals of other
regions. Bliss from Pacific Coast, Chaumez from South America, Holst
from Europe--"
They were men about Fairlie's age, and Wales thought that they were
anxious men.
"We don't resent your coming, and you'll get 100 percent cooperation
from all of us," Fairlie was saying. "We just hope to God you can get
Evacuation speeded up to schedule again. We're worried."
"Things are that bad?" said Wales.
Bliss said gloomily, "Bad--and getting worse. If it keeps up, there's
going to be millions still left on Earth when Doomsday comes."
"What," asked Wales, "do you think ought to be done first?"
"Find Kendrick," said Fairlie promptly.
"You think his disappearance that important?"
"I _know_ it is." Fairlie strode up and down the office, his physical
energy too restless to be still. "Listen, Wales. It's the fact that
Kendrick, who first predicted the catastrophe, hasn't himself left
Earth that's deepening all these doubts. If we could find Kendrick and
show people how he's going to Mars, it would discredit all this talk
that his prediction was a mistake, and that he knows it."
"You've already tried to find him?"
Fairlie nodded. "I've had the world combed for him. I wish I could
guess what happened to him. If we could only find his sister, even, it
might lead to him."
Yes, Wales thought. Martha and Lee Kendrick had always been close. And
now they had vanished together.
He told Fairlie what had happened to him in the Jersey City. Neither
Fairlie nor the others seemed much surprised.
"Yes. Things are bad in some of the evacuated regions. You see, once we
get all the listed inhabitants out, we can't go back to those places.
We haven't the time to keep going over them. So others--the ones who
don't want to go--can move into the empty towns and take over."
"_Why_ don't they want to go?" Wales studied the other's face as he
asked the question. "Five years ago, everyone believed in the crash,
in the coming of Doomsday. Now people here are skeptical. You say that
Kendrick might convince them. But what made them skeptical, in the
first place?"
Fairlie said, "I don't know, not for sure. But I can tell you what I
think."
"Go ahead."
"I think it's secret propaganda at work. I think Evacuation is being
secretly sabotaged by talk that Doomsday is all a hoax."
Wales was utterly shocked. "Good God, man, who would do a thing like
that? Who would want millions of people to stay on Earth and die on
Doomsday?"
Fairlie looked at him. "It's a horrible thought, isn't it? But fanatics
will sometimes do horrible things."
"Fanatics? You mean--"
Fairlie said, "We've been hearing rumors of a secret organization
called the Brotherhood of Atonement. A group--we don't know how large,
probably small in numbers--who seem to have been crazed by the coming
of Doomsday. They believe that Nereus is a just vengeance coming on a
sinful Earth, and that Earth's sins must be atoned by the deaths of
many."
"They're preaching that doctrine openly?" Wales said, incredulous.
"Not at all. Rumors is all we've heard. But--you wondered who would
want millions of people to stay on Earth till Doomsday. That's a
possible answer."
It made, to Wales, a nightmare thought. Mad minds, unhinged by the
approach of world's end, cunningly spreading doubt of the oncoming
catastrophe, so that millions would doubt, and would stay--and would
atone.
* * * * *
Bliss said, "The damn fools, to believe such stuff! Well, if they get
caught on Earth, it'll be the craziest, most ignorant and backward part
of the population that we'll lose."
Fairlie said wearily, "Our job is not to lose anybody, to get them all
off no matter who or what they are."
Then he said to Wales, with a faint smile, "Sorry if we seem to be
griping too much. I expect your job on Mars hasn't been easy either.
Things are pretty tough there, aren't they?"
"They're bound to be tough," said Wales. "All those hundreds of
millions, and more still coming in. But we'll make out. We've got to."
"Anyway, that's not my worry," Fairlie said. "My headache is to get
these stubborn, ignorant fools who don't want to go, off the Earth."
Wales thought swiftly. He said, after a time, "You're right, Kendrick
is the key. I came here to find him and I've got to do it."
Fairlie said, "I hope to God you can. But I'm not optimistic. We looked
everywhere. He's not at Westpenn Observatory."
"Lee and Martha and I grew up together in that western Pennsylvania
town," Wales said. "Castletown."
"I know, we combed the whole place. Nothing."
"Nevertheless, I'll start there," said Wales.
Fairlie told him, "That's all evacuated territory, you know. Closed out
and empty, officially. Which means--dangerous."
Wales looked at him. "In that case, I'll want something else to wear
than this uniform. Also I'll want a car--and weapons."
It was late afternoon by the time Wales got the car clear of the
metropolitan area, out of the congested evacuation traffic. And it was
soft spring dusk by the time he crossed the Delaware at Stroudsburg and
climbed westward through the Poconos.
The roads, the towns, were empty. Here and there in villages he saw
gutted stores, smashed doors and windows--but no people.
As the darkness came, from behind him still echoed the boom-boom of
thunder, ever and again repeated, of the endless ships of the Marslift
riding their columns of flame up into the sky.
By the last afterglow, well beyond Stroudsburg, he looked back and
thought he saw another car top a ridge and sink, swiftly down into the
shadow behind him.
Wales felt a queer thrill. Was he being followed? If so, by whom? By
casual looters, or by some who meant to thwart his mission? By the
society of the Atonement?
He drove on, looking back frequently, and once again he thought he
glimpsed a black moving bulk, without lights, far back on the highway.
He saw only one man that night, on a bridge at Berwick. The man leaned
on the rail, and there was a bottle in his hand, and he was very drunk.
He turned a wild white face to Wales' headlights, and shook the bottle,
and shouted hoarsely. Only the words, "--Kendrick's World--" were
distinguishable.
Sick at heart, Wales went by him and drove on.