_The Red Sky_
The girl turned from the window, where the bright sky silhouetted her
slender figure.
"How do I know where he is?" she snapped.
"Now look, Virginia," objected one of the men in the room, "there's no
point in getting angry. We must know."
"I know you must, Peter," she returned. "I agree. But I don't know. Do
you understand that? I don't know!"
Peter Moray shrugged. "Anybody capable of building a space resonator
must have enough training to have known about it in the first place."
John Cauldron spoke sharply, "You went out to the corner as suggested?"
"I did. He did not appear. After I returned I watched at regular
intervals. No one came. Also I listened carefully as you suggested.
He hasn't been calling--hasn't called since about eleven o'clock this
morning."
Peter Moray smiled. "Yesterday morning," he corrected.
"Don't be funny. You're the ones that have kept me up all night asking
fool questions over and over."
"They're not fool questions, Virginia."
"Any question repeated too often becomes a fool question," she replied.
Cauldron spoke heavily. "We're not cross-examining you, Virginia.
Please believe that. We ask and ask and ask because it may be that
something might have been said that sounds trivial, but may make large
sense."
The girl shrugged. "You're entitled to try," she said. She passed
a hand across her face wearily. "You've heard and reheard our
conversation as verbatim as I recall it. And it was an experience I
will not forget easily."
"Agreed," said Moray, walking to the west window and looking out. "I
guess we're all overkeyed."
Cauldron grumbled a bit. "There have been a lot of strange things
happening," he said. "This isn't the first."
Virginia smiled wanly but it was Cauldron who spoke next after a short
pause. "And at five-thirty in the morning, everything begins to get
somewhat distorted from a mental standpoint."
Moray turned from the brightness of the sky and mumbled something about
life's lowest ebb occurring just before dawn.
Then he added, "Why did this mess have to happen? Blast it, everybody
that knew swore up and down that the possibility was nil."
"Not nil enough," said Cauldron.
"No," agreed Virginia. "But that's life."
Moray slammed his fist down on the window-sill and swore. "That's
life," he echoed in a mocking tone. "Well, I don't like it!"
"Who does?" demanded Cauldron quietly.
"Can't you face facts?" snapped Moray. "Do you realize that we haven't
much time left? And what are we doing about it? Where are we? Nowhere,
or no further along than we were thirty years ago--exactly thirty years
ago. It's July sixteenth right now, and that's--"
"You're talking like a fool, Moray," said Virginia. "Have you ever
stopped to think that those of us who do not rant and rave and worry
ourselves into ulcers may have faced the fact, and find it ungood?
Well, there are those of us who will do what we can. There's little
sense in worrying about conditions--all it does is remove you from your
highest efficiency.
"When something is awry you do something to correct it if you can. If
you cannot you pigeonhole it until such a time as you can solve it. Not
forget it, never for a moment. But there's no sense in dragging a worry
back and forth across the floor until it is draining your life's blood.
As for that out there, I didn't do it."
"Good for you, Virginia," applauded Cauldron.
"No," snapped Moray. "You didn't. You were not born at that time. But
you can't fold your hands and accept it--nor can you say that it is
none of your business!"
"There's always suicide," said Virginia Carlson.
* * * * *
A clock in the lower part of the house chimed once, marking the hour of
five-thirty.
Moray returned to the window and looked at the sky, west. "At
five-thirty in the morning of July sixteenth," he said, "one hundred
and twenty miles southeast of Albuquerque, in a remote section of the
Alamogordo air base, a group of scientists released the first atomic
fire. Thirty years later," he finished bitterly, "we have a perpetual
sunrise!"
On the laboratory table, the receiver rattled loudly. They turned, as
one.
"Look," snapped Cauldron quickly, "if that is this Ed Bronson
character, get in touch with him. We can use any technician we can get
our hands on. Any man with a brain might well hold the key to that
living cancer out there that is burning up the very earth."
"I'll put my chances on a space rocket," replied Peter Moray.
"I'd rather stop that fire out there."
"Why?" demanded Moray.
"Where would you go?" snapped Cauldron angrily. "There isn't a planet
fit for human occupation and you know it. You'll either put it out or
we'll all die. Not a chance for escape in any other way."
"I--"
"Shut up, while Virginia answers Bronson. He's having interference
trouble--you'll make it no easier."
From the speaker was coming Ed Bronson's voice, calling for Miss
Carlson and requesting an answer, for he had filters installed that
eliminated the whistlings.
Cauldron jabbed Moray with an elbow. "He's a right bright fellow," he
observed in a whisper.
Virginia Carlson spoke into the microphone. "You're right on the big
moment," she told Bronson.
"Big moment?" he replied.
"Sure. Thirty years ago today--this moment."
"Yeah?" drawled Bronson. "And what happened?"
Peter Moray looked at John Cauldron. "Tell me," he snapped, "what kind
of man could live to maturity and not know Alamogordo?"
"I don't know. I can't imagine," replied John Cauldron. "But
maybe--just maybe--it is the answer we've been seeking."
* * * * *
Ed Bronson shook his head though he knew that the girl could not see
him. He had not heard Moray or Cauldron mention Alamogordo. He repeated
his query.
"And what happened?"
Virginia Carlson told him, "Thirty years ago, at Alamogordo, the
scientists first released the energy from the atom."
"Oh," he replied. "I didn't know it was marked on the calendar as a
holiday."
"Holiday?" exploded Virginia.
"Well?"
"That atomic fire is still burning!" snapped Virginia.
"Oh, no!"
"Well, I'm within a hundred and thirty miles of it," she replied, "and
I can see it out of the window."
"Where the dickens are you?" he asked.
"You know my address," she replied.
"Yes," he agreed. "And I went there and got pushed in the face for my
trouble."
"And the people who live at your address are named Carrington, not
Bronson."
"How old are you?" asked Bronson.
"Twenty-five--why?"
"Look," he said, "if that atomic fire is running out there, then how
did the World War Two end?"
"They brought high officials over to see the awful pillar of fire.
They didn't tell them that the atomic flame would eventually eat the
earth--so surrender was a matter of expediency. Once the shooting was
over all the earth turned at once to the job of putting it out. You
know that."
"Nope," he replied. "It worked--as did the others at Hiroshima,
Nagasaki, and two at Bikini Atoll."
"Hiro--and what was at Bikini Atoll?" demanded the girl.
"Tests--Operation Crossroads."
"_Tests!_" exploded Virginia. "And none of them started atomic fires in
the earth itself?"
"Nope."
"Then you tell me what happened?"
"I don't know."
"You're not psycho?" asked Virginia.
"Not that I know of," he replied with a chuckle. "Though--as Pontius
Pilate is credited with having said--'What is truth?'"
"Hmmm. I cannot deny your right to state truth as you see it, Bronson,
but be it remembered that practically every human born since the atomic
fire is a mutation of some sort or another."
"So what does that make me?"
"You might be some sort of brain mutation--don't ask what kind--one who
does not recognize the truth."
"All I know is what I read in the papers, what I see in the moving
pictures, and how I feel at the moment. Also, I am no mutation. I was
exactly one year old when Alamogordo took place, even supposing that it
did take off with radiations that might have mutated the germ plasm."
"Well, it did."
"According to you it did," replied Bronson.
"May I repeat your own statement to yourself?" she told him. "All I
know--et cetera."
"Okay," he said. "And granting that our separate tales are true, then
what?"
Virginia mentioned a few items of history. Both then got their own
history books and started to compare closely. They agreed on everything
up to the moment of the atomic bomb at Alamogordo.
And at that moment, the histories diverged.
"Nature," said Ed Bronson, "must have been perplexed. So she took both
roadways. One in which the earth is engulfed with atomic flame and one
in which the thing worked."
"What do we do next?" asked Virginia.
"We get in touch with the respective authorities of our worlds," said
Bronson. "Alone we can do little. Together we can do something to aid
you."
"Tomorrow night at seven, then?" asked Virginia.
"Right."
The contact was broken.
"And there," said Peter Moray, "is our answer!"