A throbbing, lurid light beat in through the front windows of the
store, as the flames across the Diamond swept up the fronts of old
buildings. The hoarse hallelujah-chorus of the Brotherhood, the
quickened booming of the drums, was louder. And the fiery light
illumined the bloodless, distorted face of their prisoner as he stared
up at Wales and Martha.
Wales still felt the shock of terrible surprise. He had been so _sure_
that only the mad Brotherhood could possibly be behind the plot to
seize Kendrick, the ghastly scheme to keep millions of people on Earth
until Doomsday crashed down upon them. Who else but madmen would do
such a thing? Who else would have any motive?
He didn't know. But their pudgy prisoner knew. And, even at the risk of
trapping Martha and himself in the holocaust of Castletown, he meant
to find out.
"Please," panted Pudgy. "We haven't got a chance if we stay here
longer. I've seen these maniacs and their Atonements. They won't leave
a building standing here!"
Wales looked at Martha's white face. "All right, Martha, we'll get
going. We'll leave this fellow here." He started to turn away.
"No, it's murder!" screamed Pudgy. "You can't leave me here, my hands
tied--"
"Then tell," Wales pressed. "Who seized Kendrick? Who's behind all
this?"
Beads of sweat stood out on Pudgy's dough-white face. His eyes rolled
horribly, and then he said hoarsely,
"Fairlie. John Fairlie. And others--"
"Fairlie? The regional Evacuation Marshal? What about him?" Wales
demanded.
"He--and friends of his, other Evacuation officials--they're the ones,"
Pudgy said. "They've got Lee Kendrick. They're the ones that want a lot
of people left on Earth."
Furious, Wales took their prisoner by his fat throat and shook him.
"All right, you had your chance," he raged. "And you tell us a brazen
lie like that. By God, we _are_ leaving you--"
Pudgy's voice rose almost to a scream. "It's the truth! You made me
tell you, now I've done it, and you won't believe me! There's a bunch
of them in it, I don't know how many. I know that besides Fairlie,
there's a couple of assistant Evacuation Marshals in other countries
and some minor officials and some others I don't know. I've seen them,
up near New York. It's where they've got Lee Kendrick. They'd kill me
for telling, and now I've told and you won't believe--"
Martha said uncertainly, "Oh, Jay, maybe he is telling the truth--maybe
that's where Lee is!"
Wales exclaimed, "Don't you see what a lie it is? John Fairlie is one
of the men charged with evacuating all the people off Earth--why would
he and other Evacuation officials want to trick millions into staying
here?"
"Because they don't want them on Mars, because they think they're scum
and ought to be left on Earth!" Pudgy cried. "I heard them talk, didn't
I? Talk about how hard it's going to be for years on Mars with too many
people there, already. And about how it'd be better for everyone if a
lot of ignorant crumb-bums and their families weren't taken to Mars to
be a load on everyone else. Didn't I hear them--"
Wales' rage at their prisoner receded, swept away by an icy tide of
terrible doubt that despite himself was rising now in his mind.
* * * * *
He remembered things, now. He remembered Fairlie's grim face as he'd
spoken broodingly of how hard a life it would be on Mars, with every
one of Earth's millions there. He remembered the bitterly contemptuous
way in which Fairlie--and Bliss and Chaumez and Holst--had spoken of
the looters, the ignorant resisters, the crazy folk, whom it would be
difficult to evacuate from Earth.
"Only fanatics would want to trap millions on Earth--" He, Wales, had
said that. He'd been thinking then of the Brotherhood. But suppose
there were other and more terrible fanatics? Fanatics who ruthlessly
decided that the more backward and ignorant of Earth's millions would
only be a burden in the hard years ahead, on Mars--and who secretly
planned to trick those millions into staying until it was too late?
Such things had been planned and done before, by egotistical,
self-appointed guardians of the public interest! And if--_if_ this was
the truth, it explained why he, Wales, had been followed, it explained
why Fairlie had made him suspect the Brotherhood, it explained many
things--
_Halle-lu-jah!_ roared the chorus of howling voices, out in the
streets. And the ruddy, throbbing light increased in intensity suddenly.
"Jay!" cried Martha, in tones of horror. He whirled around.
The front of the hardware store was on fire, with flames writhing
around the edges of the windows, outside.
"You've got us killed!" sobbed Pudgy.
Wales, his thoughts now a chaos, realized that he dared delay no
longer. He picked up the Venn gun, and then yanked their prisoner to
his feet.
"Come on, Martha," he said. "Out that back window."
Pudgy stumbled awkwardly, his hands still bound behind him. They
hurried back through the old store, with the firelight beating brighter
from behind them, and got through the window into the alley.
To their left flames shot skyward with a roar from the Penn Hotel,
showers of sparks sailing into the darkness. A glance told Wales that
the Brotherhood had fires going along whole blocks of Mercer and South
Jefferson Streets.
"This way," he cried, starting down the alley that ran southward
between the streets. He had Pudgy by the shoulder, but there was no
need to make their terrified prisoner hurry.
Wales put everything from his mind, but the necessity of escape from
the holocaust of this latest flaming Atonement. And the new suspicion
in his mind was so shocking that he didn't want to think of it until he
had to.
He knew the alleys and streets of Castletown, even in darkness. And
they had light to guide them--more and more light throbbing up into the
night sky behind them.
He cut across Mill Street, and on up southeastward to a residential
street of cottages. Here, he gave Martha his pistol and had her stand
guard over Pudgy while he himself looked for a car.
He found one, in the garage attached to the first cottage. He had to
break through the house itself to enter the garage. The rooms were just
as someone had left them, the furniture, the rugs, all the things they
could not take with them in Evacuation, still in place.
Again, Wales felt a pang. Someone had toiled and planned for this
little house and the things in it. And now it would not even endure
until the common Doomsday--it would perish in the senseless flames.
He drove out into the street, and pushed Pudgy into the back seat.
Taking no chances, he tied their prisoner's ankles too. Then, with
Martha beside him, Wales drove fast up the steep streets southeast.
"Jay--look!" she cried, when they reached a crest. She was looking
back. He stopped the car, and looked back with her.
The whole downtown section of Castletown blazed high toward the stars.
The wind whirled sparks away in burning clouds, and a great pall of
smoke lay toward them.
Southward from the center of town moved a river of torches. And from
those streets, only now just kindling, above the crackle of flames came
the distant boom of the Brotherhood drums, and their rising and falling
chant.
Martha was crying. He put his arm around her, and turned her away from
the sight.
"It doesn't mean anything, Martha. It would have only lasted the few
months till Doomsday, anyway."
Yet he could understand her emotion. It had been a long time since he
had lived in Castletown. But he wished his last look at the old town
had not been like this.
He turned toward Pudgy. "Now you can talk. Let's have it."
Pudgy said sullenly, "I've already talked too much. You didn't believe
me, anyway."
Wales' face hardened. He said, "All right. The flames will reach this
residential section in an hour. We'll leave you here."
It was enough. Their prisoner's doughy face seemed to fall apart a
little.
"All right!" he cried. "But what's the use telling you when you just
say I'm lying?"
"Nevertheless, give it to me from the first," Wales ordered.
Pudgy said, "Look, this whole scheme to keep the crummy no-goods here
on Earth--that wasn't _my_ idea. Five years ago, when they were first
organizing Operation Doomsday, I got a job in the Evacuation Police.
I did all right. Pretty soon I was a sergeant. Then--I began to hear
things about the Evacuation from one of the other sergeants."
The man paused, then went on. "Eugene--that was my friend in the
Police--told me that Fairlie and some other Evacuation officials needed
some men for special secret police work. Said the work was so important
and so secret nobody must know about it. I said okay, I'd like to be
one of these special secret Evacuation Police. So they took me in. And
Fairlie himself talked to me and a couple of others."
* * * * *
Wales, watching Pudgy narrowly, saw him mop the sweat off his
brow. "Fairlie told us, that they weren't going to be able to get
_everybody_ off Earth before Doomsday. He said it was impossible, there
was bound to be millions would get left. He told us that he and some of
the other officials in key places in the Evacuation had decided that
since they were going to have to leave people, it'd be better to leave
a lot of crummy hillbillies and share croppers and ignorant trash. He
said they'd only make things tougher for everyone on Mars, anyway. It
was better, Fairlie said, to weed them out and leave them here."
An icy feeling of terrible conviction began to grow in Wales, despite
all his attempts to repel it.
He'd heard just that kind of talk, before. Not openly, but in sly
whispers and hints. People who felt sure of escaping from Earth
themselves had expressed aristocratic regret that _all_ Earth's people
must be saved, that they must be burdened on the new world by the
"backward."
No one had quite dared to advocate such ideas publicly. But there were
those who secretly held them. And those who did, very well might have
secretly decided to see that the "useless, backward" ones _didn't_
escape Earth. Fairlie--and others like him--could be among them--
"Fairlie told us," Pudgy went on, "that they wouldn't prevent anyone
leaving that wanted to leave. But, he said, lots of the dumber ones
wouldn't want to leave if things were managed right, and that would
solve the whole problem."
Martha interrupted. "But my brother--what of him? You said they had
Lee?"
Pudgy nodded. "I was coming to that. Fairlie called some of us in real
worried one night and told us we had to go to Castletown and grab Lee
Kendrick. He said they'd been sounding Kendrick out about helping along
the scheme, and that Kendrick wouldn't play ball."
"You mean," Wales said quickly, "that Fairlie and his group wanted
Kendrick to _help_ them trap the 'backward ones' here on Earth?"
Pudgy's head bobbed. "Near as I got it, that was it. Kendrick could
make a statement kind of throwing doubt on whether Doomsday would
happen--and the boobs would decide to stay. But I guess when Fairlie
sounded him out a little, Kendrick was horrified at the idea, and
Fairlie had to cover up fast and say he didn't mean it."
Martha clutched Wales' arm. "Jay, _that's_ why Lee was so terribly
worried, so anxious--that's why he wouldn't leave Earth! He was afraid
such a scheme was really being planned!"
Wales could imagine that. He knew Lee Kendrick, and he knew that even a
breath of suspicion of a plan so ruthless and terrible would have had a
shattering effect on him.
"So," Pudgy finished, "before Kendrick could get too suspicious and
start talking, we went to Castletown and grabbed him, and took him to
New York. And his disappearance was nearly as good as his statement
would have been--the boobs all figured Kendrick hadn't left Earth, so
they would not."
"But he's alive?" Martha cried. "They haven't killed him."
Pudgy shrugged. "Not so far. Fairlie still wants him to make that
statement, so all the scum will feel sure it's safe and will stay on
Earth till too late."
Wales suddenly felt a revulsion from all that he had heard, from the
shocking nightmare quality of it.
"It's not true, it _can't_ be true!" he exclaimed. "Martha, this man
had to tell some story to save his skin, and that's all he's done!"
Her face was white in the distant firelight. "Jay, people have done
things like that, terrible as it is. They _have_ killed millions, in
the past, for just such reasons."
He knew that, too, and it was a knowledge he fought against--struggling
against a cold conviction that he could not quite down.
"If Lee is still alive, Lee could tell us!" she was saying. "If we
could reach him, rescue him--"
Wales turned back to the sullen-faced Pudgy. "You said that Fairlie and
the others were holding Kendrick near New York. Just where?"
"Where he's right handy and near, yet where nobody can walk in on him,"
said Pudgy. "Bedloe's Island, in New York harbor. You know, the old
Statue of Liberty island."
Wales thought, his mind a turmoil. Now the flames were marching up the
hillside streets toward them, and now the sound of drums and distant
chanting came from away southward.
The Brotherhood were leaving Castletown, on their way to make some
other lifeless city a fiery sign of their atonement.
"I still," said Wales, "can't believe it. But we'll prove it, one way
or another. We'll go back to New York, and see if Lee is really on that
island."
"You haven't got a prayer!" said Pudgy, his voice rising into a high
whine. "They've got him guarded there."
"And you," Wales said, "can tell us just where the guards are and how
best to pass them. Yes, you're going with us."
He ignored the man's frantic objections, and started the car. He headed
eastward, to skirt the flaming city at a safe distance.
The danger ahead, the hunters who would still be seeking him, Wales
ignored. What was there anywhere but danger, on an Earth rocking toward
Doomsday?