He added, suddenly, "And it would serve their purpose another way! It would enable them to point out that Lee Kendrick hadn't left Earth—so that Kendrick's World must be a hoax!"
An expression of pain crossed Martha's white face. "Jay, don't call it that."
"What?"
"Kendrick's World. It's not fair. Lee discovered its new orbit, he gave the whole Earth a lifesaving warning. It's not fair to give his name to the thing that's bringing Doomsday."
He reached out and clasped her hand. "Sorry, Martha. You're right. But we still have that question to answer. Who are 'they'—the 'they' who took Lee? Are they the Brotherhood of Atonement? Or somebody else? Who else would have any motive?"
His head suddenly swayed drunkenly, and he brushed his hand across his eyes. Martha uttered a little cry of distress.
"Jay, you're still not over it—the blow I gave you. Here, let me make fresh compresses."
He held her back. "No, Martha, it's not that. I'm just out, dead tired. Since I reached Earth on this mission, I've had it—and only a few hours sleep in my car, last night."
She took his wrist. "Then you're going to sleep right now. I'll keep watch. This way—I have to put the light out when we leave the kitchen—"
Wales, following her through the dark house, felt that he was three parts asleep by the time he reached the bedroom to which she led him. His head still ached, and the headache and the exhaustion came up over him like a drowning wave.
When he woke, afternoon sunlight was slanting into the dusty bedroom. He turned, and discovered that Martha sat in a chair beside the bed, her hands folded, looking at him.
She said, "I wasn't sleepy. And it's been so long since I've had anyone—"
She stopped, faintly embarrassed. Wales sat up, and reached and kissed her. She clung to him, for a moment.
Then she drew back. "Just propinquity," she said. "You would never even look at me, in the old days."
Wales grinned. "But now you're the last girl in town."
Martha's face changed and she suddenly said, with a little rush of words, "Oh, Jay, do you sometimes get the feeling that it justcan'thappen, no matter what Lee and all the other scientists say, no matter what their instruments say, that everything we've known all our lives just can't end in flame and shock from the sky—?"
He nodded soberly. "I've had that feeling. We've all had it, had to fight against it. It's that feeling, in the ignorant, that'll keep them here on Earth until it's too late—unless we convince them in time."
"What'll it really be like for us, on Mars?" she asked him. "I don't mean all the cheery government talks about the splendid new life we'll all have there. I mean,really."
"Hard," he said. "It's going to be a hard life, for us all. The mineral resources there are limitless. Out of them, with our new sciences of synthesis, we can make air, water, food. But only certain areas are really habitable. Our new cities out there are already badly crowded—and more millions still pouring in."
He still held her hand, as he said, "But we'll make out. And Earth won't be completely destroyed, remember. Someday years from now—we'll be coming back."
"But it won't be the same, it'll never be the same," she whispered.
He had no answer for that.
Packaged food made them a meal, in the kitchen. It was nearly sunset, by the time they finished.
Martha asked him then, with desperate eagerness, "We're going to try to find Lee now?"
Wales said, "I've been thinking. We'll get nowhere by just searching blindly. Fairlie's agents did that, and found no trace of Lee at all. I think there's only one way to find him."
"What?"
"Since I left New York on this mission, I was followed," Wales told her. He described the shadowy, unseen trailers who had tracked him until he fell into the hands of Lanterman's men. "Now, my mission to find Lee could well have been known. Only reason anyone would follow me is to make sure Ididn'tfind him. So those who tracked me must be some of the 'they' who took Lee. The Brotherhood of Atonement, it seems sure."
He paused, then went on. "So my shadows must know what happened to Lee, where he is. If I could catch one of them, make him talk—"
"We could find out what they've done with Lee!" Martha exclaimed. Then her excitement checked. "But you said they must have lost your trail, at Pittsburgh."
He nodded. "Sure. But what would they do, when they made sure I wasn't with Lanterman's band in Pittsburgh, that I'd slipped away? Knowing that I was headed for Castletown in the first place, they'll comehereto look for me. And I'll be waiting for them."
A little pallor came into Martha's face. "What are you going to do, Jay?"
"I'm going to set up a little ambush for them, right down in the center of town," he said grimly. "You'll be quite safe here, until—"
She interrupted passionately. "No. I'm going with you." He started to argue, and then he saw the desperation in her eyes. "Jay, you don't know what it's been like to be so alone. I'm not letting you go without me."
He said, after a moment, "Maybe you're right. But we'd better get started. Do you have a gun?"
She produced an ancient revolver. "I found this, in the house next door. I wanted something—I was so afraid the Brotherhood would come here—"
Wales nodded. "We'll get you something better than that. Now listen, Martha. You must keep silent, you must do what I say. There's no one at all to help us, if things go wrong."
She nodded. He opened the back door and they went out of the old house, and across its ragged back yard to the alley.
Wales, his gun in his hand, led the way down the alley. Where it crossed Grant Street, he stopped, stuck his head out and peered both ways. The street of old houses was still and dead. The maples along it drowsed in the dying sunlight. A little breeze whispered, and was quiet again.
Wales and Martha darted across the street fast, into the shelter of the alley again. As they went down it, hugging the backs of buildings, heading toward the Diamond, Wales had again that fantastic feeling of unreality.
He remembered every foot of these blocks. How many times, carrying a newspaper route as a boy, he had short-cutted along this alley. And how would a boy dream that he would come back to it someday, when the familiar town lay silent and empty before approaching world's end?
They reached the Diamond, an oval of grass with benches and a Civil War monument and with the three-story storefronts all around it, their dusty windows looking down like blind eyes. "KEEP RIGHT" said a big sign at each end of the Diamond, but nothing moved along the wide street, nothing at all.
Wales peered from a doorway, then took Martha's wrist and hurried across. Dutton's Hardware, with its windows still full of fishing-tackle displays, was on the other side. But when he tried the door, it was locked.
He could smash the plate-glass of the door but that would be to advertise his presence inside. He hurried, tense and sweating now, around to the alley in back of the store. The back door by the little loading platform was locked too, but he broke a window with his gun-butt.
The shattering of the glass sounded in the silent town like an avalanche. Wales swore under his breath, waited, listened.
There was no sound. He got the window open, and drew Martha in after him into the dim interior of the store.
"Why here?" she whispered, now.
"Anyone who comes searching Castletown for me is bound to come to the Diamond sooner or later," he told her. "It's our best place to watch."
He had another reason. He went forward through the obscurity of the store, through sheaves of axe-handles and rural mail-boxes in piles, with the hardware-store smell of oil and leather and paint strong in his nostrils.
He found a gun-rack. All rifles and pistols were gone but there were still a row of shotguns, the barrels gleaming in the dimness like organ-pipes. In the worn, deep wooden drawers beneath, he found shells.
"I seem to remember you used to go after pheasant with Lee," he said.
Martha nodded, and took one of the pumpguns.
"Just don't use it, until I tell you," he said.
They went on, toward the front of the store. Then they sat down, and through the show-windows they could look out on the Diamond.
The sun sank lower. The man on the monument cast a longer and longer shadow across empty benches where once old men of Castletown had gossiped.
Nothing happened.
Wales, waiting, thought how outraged crusty Mr. Dutton would have been by what they'd done. It had been like him to carefully lock up the store, front and back, before he left it forever.
He looked across the Diamond, at the Busy Bee Cafe, at the Electric Shoe Repair Shop, at the old brick YWCA.
Twilight deepened. Martha moved a little, beside him. He hoped she wasn't losing her nerve.
Then he realized she had been nudging him. She whispered, "Jay."
At the same moment he heard a thrumming sound. Even here inside the store, it seemed unnaturally loud in the silent town. He crouched lower.
A long green car came down the street and swung around the Diamond, and then with squealing brakes it came to a stop.
The hunters had come to Castletown.
CHAPTER VI
Three men got out of the car and stood there in the dusk, at the south side of the Diamond.
They wore windbreakers and slacks. One of them was short and pudgy, the other two were average-looking men. All of them carried Venn guns.
They talked, briefly. One of the average men seemed to be the leader, Wales thought, from the way he gesticulated and spoke.
"What are they going to do?" whispered Martha.
"Look for me," Wales said. "A hundred to one they've left a man at the Observatory, and at your home—in case I come there. And these three are going to search downtown for me."
The three separated. One walked east along Washington Street. The other one got back into the car and drove off on North Jefferson. The remaining man—the dark-haired pudgy one, started going around the Diamond, keeping close to the fronts of the stores, ready to dart into cover at any moment.
An idea came to Wales, and he acted upon it at once. He crept to the front door of the hardware store, unlocked it, and silently opened it a few inches.
He came back, rummaged frantically in the dimness of the shelves till he found a spool of wire. Then he told Martha,
"Come on, now—get down behind this counter. And stay there."
"Jay, he's coming this way!" she protested. "He'll see the door ajar—"
He interrupted. "Yes. I want him to. Do as I say."
Her face white in the dusk, she got down behind the counter, back in the middle of the store.
Wales crept swiftly to the front of the store, whipped behind the counter there, and crouched down.
Now, with the door ajar, he could hear the pudgy man coming along the sidewalk. Then he saw him, his heavy, doughy face turning alertly from side to side as he came along.
The man stopped and the tommy-gun in his hands came up fast. He had seen the hardware-store door was a little open.
With the gun held high, the pudgy man came slowly to the door. His foot kicked it wide open. He peered into the dimness of the store, poised on his feet like a dancer, ready to turn instantly.
Wales' fingers closed on a little carton of hinges, under the counter. He suddenly hurled the little box toward the other side of the store. It struck a display of tinware with a tremendous clatter.
The pudgy man whirled toward that direction, in a flash.
With a movement as swift, Wales darted out in the same moment and jammed his pistol into the pudgy man's back.
"Let go of that gun," Wales said, "or I'll blow your spine out!"
He saw the pudgy man stiffen and arch his back, in a convulsive movement. Wales' finger tightened on the trigger. But, before he pulled it, the tommy-gun clattered to the floor.
"Martha," said Wales.
She came, fast, her face white and scared in the dusk.
"Take this wire and tie his wrists behind him," Wales said. "Don't get in front of my gun."
With shaking fingers, she did as he ordered. "Now shut the front door."
Wales turned the pudgy man around. "Now sit down, on the floor. First sound you make above a whisper, you're dead."
The pudgy man spoke, in a high falsetto whisper. "You're dead, right now. Whatever happens to me,youwon't get out of Castletown."
"Don't worry about us," Wales advised. "Worry about yourself. Where's Lee Kendrick?"
The pudgy man looked at him calmly. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Martha whispered, with astounding fierceness, "Make him tell, Jay."
Wales first searched their prisoner. He found no papers on him at all, nothing but clips for the gun. Pudgy seemed quite unperturbed.
"All right, where's Kendrick?" Wales said again.
Pudgy said, "You talking about the Kendrick that discovered Doomsday coming?TheKendrick? How should I know?"
"Who are you working for?" Wales persisted. "Who took Kendrick, who sent you to follow me here from New York? The Brotherhood?"
Pudgy looked at him in blank surprise. "Huh?"
"The Brotherhood of Atonement," Wales said. "You're one of them, aren't you? They've got Kendrick, haven't they? Where?"
Pudgy's face split in the beginnings of a guffaw. Wales raised his pistol quickly, and the man choked off the laugh. But his sides shook.
"Me one of that Brotherhood? You're funny. You're really funny, Wales."
"So you know me," Wales snapped. "You know all about me, you came trailing me when I started to hunt for Kendrick. Who sent you?"
A queer gleam came into the eyes of Pudgy, but he remained silent.
Something in that look made Wales whirl around. Their prisoner sat facing the store-front.
Out there in the dusk, one of the two other men had come back into the Diamond.
"Martha," whispered Wales.
"Yes?"
"Take your shotgun. If he tries to open his mouth, bring it down on his head."
Promptly, she picked up the shotgun and stood with it raised. Pudgy looked up at her, and winced.
Wales crept back to the front of the store and looked out. The other man out there seemed worried, holding his Venn gun high and looking slowly all around the Diamond. That he was worried by Pudgy's absence, Wales knew.
The man out there got into cover behind the pedestal of the monument, and waited. Waiting, obviously, for the man with the car to come back.
Minutes passed. The twilight was deepening into the soft May darkness. Suddenly Martha whispered.
"Jay!"
He swung around. Her face was a queer white blur in the darkness. "What?"
"I hear singing," she said. "Someone is singing, a way off."
"Just the wind in the wires," he said. "There's no one in the whole town but us—and them. You keep your eye on that fellow, I think we're due for trouble soon."
He waited again. From outside, he could hear the sound of the wind rising and falling. Then a strange conviction crept over him.
It was not the wind. It was the rise and fall of distant voices, many of them. Now the breeze brought it through the night a little louder, now it ebbed back to a murmur. Carefully, Wales opened the door a crack to listen.
He exclaimed, "It's from up on North Hill, but what in the world—"
He suddenly crouched lower again, his pistol raised. Down the hill along North Jefferson came the long green car, racing fast.
It swung around the Diamond. The man in it leaned out and called. The man behind the monument ran out to meet him, talking fast and gesticulating.
But the driver of the car pointed northward and shouted. Wales could not see his face but he could hear the raw tone of his voice, and caught the one final word, "—coming!"
The other man leaped into the car, after a last look around the empty Diamond. The car shot away down Washington, heading east.
"Why, they've gone, run away!" Martha exclaimed. "They left their partner here and—"
Wales held up his hand. "Listen!"
As the roar of the receding car died away, the sound of singing came again—and this time it was louder, much louder, and there was a steady throb of drums beneath it.
It rolled down from the north and he thought now he could hear the words of a chorus, endlessly repeated.
"Halle-lu-jah! Halle-lu-jah—"
Lights suddenly sprang into being up there on the crest of North Jefferson Street hill. They were not steady lights, they were moving, tossing and shaking, and there were dozens, scores of them. They were torches.
A long, thick snake of burning torches came down the wide street into the dark and lifeless town. Wales could see no people, only the torches, scores of them, hundreds of them. But he could hear the loud chanting of the people who carried those lighted brands.
"Halle-lu-jah—"
Crash-crash-boom, thundered drums from the forefront of the river of torches, and Wales felt a wild quickening of their beat and of the chanting voices, that checked his breathing.
Martha uttered a low cry. "Jay, it's the Brotherhood coming! The fanatics comingherenow, to—"
The hair bristled on Wales' neck. She did not need to finish the horrified exclamation. The nightmare shape of the looming event was only too clear.
From town to town the Brotherhood of Atonement marched, those weak, crazed minds unhinged by the coming of Doomsday. Brighton Falls they had burned, and Sharon, and God knows how many other deserted towns. And now it was the turn of Castletown to be a sacrifice and an atonement....
He wanted to turn and flee from that mad, oncoming parade. But he did not. He crouched, watching, and he felt Martha, beside him, shivering.
"Jay, if they have Lee—he might be with them!"
"That's what I'm hoping for," he whispered.
Now the torches were coming down into the Diamond, and now he could see the people who carried them. They started around the oval, and the tossing of the red burning brands was flashed back from the windows all around, that shone like big eyes watching in amazement.
First, ahead of the torches, marched a half-dozen men and women with drums, beating a heavy, absolutely unvarying rhythm. After them came the main mass. He thought there might be two to three hundred of them.
Men, women, children. Torn and dusty clothes, unkempt hair, unshaven faces, but eyes glittering with a wild, rapt emotion, voices shouting the endless chorus of
The Brotherhood of Atonement....Halle-LU-jah!
The Brotherhood of Atonement....
Halle-LU-jah!
These crazed fanatics were gripped by no religious passion. The religious folk of the world had seen God's hand in the saving of Earth's peoples by man's newly-won knowledge. But these shouting marchers had gone back to dark barbarism, to pagan propitiation of a threatening fate, back beyond all civilization.
Boom-boom crashed the drums, right in front of the Dutton store, as the van of the mad parade swept past, following a tightening path around the oval, making room for more and more of the torch-bearers here in the center of the old town. And presently they were all in the Diamond, a packed mass of wild faces and shaken torches, all turned toward the center where the monument stood.
A man with a white face and burning eyes leaped up onto the pedestal of the monument, and the drums banged louder and a great cry went up from the Brotherhood. He began to speak, his voice shrill and high.
"Jay, do you see Lee? I don't—"
"No," Wales said. "He's not with them."
From out there, across the waving torches, came the screeching voice. "—burn the places of sin, and the powers of night and space will see the shining signs of our Atonement, and withhold their wrath—"
Martha said, "Oh, Jay, they're going to burn Castletown. Can't we stop them, somehow—"
He took her by the shoulders. She had had too much, but he could have no hysteria now.
"Martha, we can't stop them, they'd tear us to shreds! And whatdifferencedoes it make now? Don't you realize—in four months this town and all towns will be destroyed anyway!"
Their prisoner, back in the darkness, suddenly raised his voice. Wales leaped back, pressed his pistol against the pudgy man's body.
"You call out and you get it now!" Wales warned savagely.
Pudgy looked up at him, and said hoarsely, "Are you crazy? Those maniacs aren't friends of mine! They're going to burn this whole town like they burned others—we got to get out of here!"
The frantic fear in the man's voice was utterly sincere. And to Wales, crouching beside the captive, came a shattering enlightenment.
He said, "Then you and your pals aren't working for the Brotherhood? Then it wasn't the Brotherhood that took Lee Kendrick, after all?"
"They're maniacs!" said Pudgy, again. "For Christ's sake, Wales, are you going to let them burn us alive?"
Wales stooped, grabbed the man by the throat. "It's not the Brotherhood who took Kendrick, then. All right—who was it? Who wants to see millions of people trapped on Earth? Who sent you after me?Who?"
Pudgy's voice turned raw and raging. "Get me out of here, and I'll tell you. But if we stay here, we're goners."
"You'll tell me right now!"
Pudgy remained sullenly silent. Then, of a sudden, the single high screeching voice out in the diamond ended, on a frenzied note.
Boom-boom, crashed out the drums again. The Brotherhood roared, as with the single voice of a mighty beast. The men with torches began to mill, to split off from the main mass, to run into the four main cross streets, shaking their firebrands and shouting.
One yelling woman applied her torch to the faded canvas awning in front of the Electric Shoe Repair Parlor. The canvas blazed up, and the drums rolled again.
"Jay!" cried Martha.
Wales forced Pudgy to his feet, faced him toward the front windows, and the torch-blazing chaos out beyond them.
"Martha and I are going, out the back way," Wales said. "We're leavingyouhere tied and helpless—unless you tell!"
CHAPTER VII
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 sosurethat 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, weareleaving 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—ifthis 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'tmyidea. 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 geteverybodyoff 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 thatallEarth'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" onesdidn'tescape 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 tohelpthem 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'swhy 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, itcan'tbe 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. Theyhavekilled 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?
CHAPTER VIII
Thunder rolled and bellowed across the night sky, mounting to a deafening crescendo. Up into the starry heavens rose a great black bulk, climbing starward on a column of fading fire. And hardly had its echoes ebbed than the dull explosions came again, and another rocket-ship took off in the unending Marslift.
Crouching with Martha in the darkness of an old pier, with the murmuring black vagueness of the Upper Harbor in front of them, Wales looked over his shoulder at the fiery finger that pointed out to man's new home in the sky. He turned back to Martha, as she whispered to him. She was staring out over the dark water.
"I don't see any lights, Jay. Not one."
"They wouldn't show lights," he said. "They'd not advertise the fact that they're there."
"Ifthey're there," she said. "If Lee's there."
He took her roughly by the shoulders. "Martha, don't lose your nerve now. Think what depends on this."
He jerked his head in the direction of the distant New Jersey Spaceport, as still another Mars-bound ship rode up in majestic thunder and flame.
"There should be twice as many ships, twice as many evacuees, going out now as there are! All the people who doubt, who hold back, who refuse to go—Lee is the key to saving them."
"But if we only hadhelp, Jay! The authorities—"
Wales said, "Fairlie, as regional Evacuation Marshal,isthe top local authority here now. And don't you see—if that story is true, Fairlie is the last man we dare let know we're here."
He took her hand. "Come on. We've still got to find a skiff of some kind."
They started along the dark waterfront. They were, Wales figured, somewhere in the southern Jersey City docks. Out in the dark harbor lay Bedloe's Island, and it was past midnight and there was little time.
He and Martha, with their prisoner, had come across Pennsylvania by unused, deserted back roads during the day. The circuitous route had taken time, and a few hours of sleep snatched in a thicket off the road had taken more time. But Wales had not dared to risk being seen.
If Pudgy's story was true, Fairlie was the enemy. Fairlie was the man who had sent hunters after him. And it would be so easy for the Evacuation Marshal, with his regional authority, to have Wales proclaimed an outlaw on some phony charge, and set every Evacuation Police post around New York looking for him.
They dared seek aid of no one. If Kendrick was a prisoner on the little island, they must attempt the rescue themselves. And that would not be easy, judging from what Pudgy had said.
Wales had driven into an alley in deserted Jersey City, and had dragged their bound prisoner into an empty store.
"Now," said Wales, "we're going to leave you here."
"Tied hand and foot?" cried Pudgy. "Why not kill me and get it over with? This town is closed out, I could yell all day and nobody would hear me. I'll starve! No one will ever come—"
"We'llcome, and free you," Wales said. "After we've got Kendrick off that island. But of course, if we fail, if they get us, then we'll never be back. I want you to think about that."
Pudgy had thought about it, and it was clear that he did not like that thought at all. When it had sunk in, Wales said,
"Now you tell us all you know about the set-up on that island. How many guards, where they usually are, how they're armed, where Kendrick is kept. Everything. If you brief us well enough, wemaysucceed—and then we'll be back for you."
Pudgy had got the point. He had talked long and rapidly, feverishly giving Wales every scrap of information he possessed.
They had left him there, and had come by foot to the waterfront, and now if they had a boat, the island was only a little way ahead.
But there was no boat, not a canoe even, along these dark docks. Wales led the way farther along the waterfront. He dared not flash a light, and they might search all night amid these dark piers without success.
He was beginning to despair, when they came to a small boatyard. He found a skiff by stumbling over it in the dark. There were no oars, but he soon forced the door of the dark office-shack and found those.
"Now before we start, Martha—" He was fitting the oars into locks that he'd made as silent as possible by rag mufflings. "—when we reach the island, I want you to stay on the shore and wait."
"I'm not afraid—" she began, but Wales cut her short.
"Listen, it's not that. I'll be in the dark there. If I have to shoot, I want to be sure I'm not shooting you by mistake."
He pushed out onto the water, and bent to the oars, rowing steadily. The tide was running, and he had to allow for that, but there was only a little choppiness on the Upper Harbor.
Wales thought again how unreal everything on Earth seemed by now. And this scene most of all! This harbor had once been the busiest in the world, and by night the lights of shipping, of docks, of bridges, had flared everywhere, with the electric glow of Manhattan blazing over everything.
And now there was silence and darkness on the waters. All the millions who had lived around these shores had left Earth long ago, and their cities were dark and still. Only the downtown tip of Manhattan still showed patterns of lighted windows, where the ceaseless activities of Operation Doomsday centered.
Wales rowed on, and then rested his oars a moment and turned and peered ahead in the darkness. He saw a lofty shadow now against the stars, and knew that it was the great Statue. He lifted the oars again, rowing now with infinite care to make no sound.
Brr-rumble—oom—oom—oom—
Up into the sky westward rose another of the mighty Marslift rocket-ships, and then in quick succession, two more.
The flare of them in the heavens sent a wild, shaking light over the waters, over the little skiff.
"Get down!" Wales whispered frantically, and he and Martha crouched low in the little craft.
Theoom—oom—oomfaded away in muttering echoes. Wales could but pray that they had not been seen from the island ahead, and row on.
He hoped desperately that there would be no more rocket-ships taking off, no more flares in the sky, until he reached the island. It seemed to him that he rowed eternally, and got nowhere.
Then, in the darkness, Martha whispered warning. The skiff bumped land. Wales made out a low bank rising above them. He picked up the Venn gun and climbed ashore.
He whispered, "Stay in the skiff, Martha. You can push off if I fail." And added quickly, "Don't you see, if I do fail, you'll be the last hope left."
He gave her no time to argue. He gripped the Venn gun, and started through the darkness.
There was no doubt about directions. Huge now against the stars loomed the Statue. And in it, if Pudgy had told truth, were Lee Kendrick—and the four of Fairlie's secret police who guarded him.
Wales crossed the park with his stubby gun held high. The grass was tall and ragged from long lack of care. And there was not a sound, or a light, on the little island.
He circled around to the front of the Statue, and stared up at the parapet of the mighty pedestal, and the entrance to the giant figure.
Nothing. No light, no sound of movement.
Wales felt a chill of dismay. He had not realized how much he had begun to hope, until now.
Brr-rumble—
He heard the first preliminary roar from the west, and immediately he dropped flat behind a shrub.
The full thunderous diapason of take-off broke around him, and the flaming exclamation point in the heavens blazed brightly.
And Wales saw a man, with a gun under his arm, standing on the parapet.
The flare of light died, and the rocket-roar grumbled away.
But now, as he rose to his feet, Wales felt a wild triumph. The guard was there, as Pudgy had said, and that meant—
He moved forward, and started up the steps. He was more than halfway up them, moving softly, when he heard a movement above.
Wales froze. The guard above might not have heard him. But he could take no chances, with all that depended on him now.
He crouched waiting on the steps, the Venn gun raised. It seemed to him that hours went by.
Rumble-boom-boom—
As the distant rocket-roar crashed again, as the column of fire streaked across the sky, by its light Wales saw the man on the parapet peering down toward him with his gun alertly raised.
Instantly, Wales shot him. He shot to kill.
The man dropped. Wales raced on up the steps, hoping that the brief burst of his Venn gun would not have been heard in the rocket-roar.
But a door above swung open, and light spilled out from inside the base of the giant Statue. Two men appeared in the doorway, drawing pistols.
"What—" one cried.
Wales fired, a prolonged burst. He had no intention whatever of taking extra risks by sparing life. These men, and the men they worked for, would have taken the lives of millions. There was no mercy in him.
One of the two in the doorway fell. The other, blood welling from his shoulder, tried to shift his pistol to his other hand.
Wales, racing up to them, heard pounding footsteps inside the statue, and he took no time to shoot again. He clubbed the Venn gun's barrel down over the head of the wounded man, and sprang over him and the dead one in the doorway, right into the base of the lofty figure.
A light burned in here. He ran to the foot of the winding stair that led upward. Frantic feet running up above him made reverberating echoes. He glimpsed a pair of legs on the stair—
He shot, and the legs crumpled and a man came sliding back down the stair, screaming and trying to aim his gun. Wales triggered again, and when the scream of richocheting steel and the echoes of gunfire died away, there was silence unbroken.
He started running up the stair. In a minute he heard Martha's voice calling, from down beneath.
"Jay!"
He shouted back down, and ran on, his heart pounding, his lungs pumping.
He came into the grotesque room of angled steel that was the inside of the giant head. There was a carefully shaded light here. And a man huddled on the floor near it, shackled to the wall.
Wales turned the light full on him. A bearded face looked at him, with wild dark eyes—a face he could hardly recognize.
"Lee?" he said. And then suddenly, he was sure. "Lee Kendrick."
Kendrick said, hesitantly, "Why it's Jay Wales. But you were on Mars. How—" And then Kendrick's eyes suddenly flamed and he shouted hoarsely. "Wales, you don't know what's happened, what they're planning—"
"I know," Wales said, stooping by him. "Take it easy. Please—"
Kendrick clutched him, babbling, pleading. Not until Martha came in, and stooped beside her brother, crying, could Wales get away.
He said, "Try to quiet down. There must be a key to these shackles somewhere."
He went back down the stair. The man he had shot in the shoulder and then stunned, was now stirring and groaning.
Wales made a rough bandage for the bleeding shoulder, and then tied the man's wrists with his own belt. He thought it would hurt, when the man came to. He hoped it would.
He searched pockets until he found keys, and then went back up. Kendrick seemed to have got control of himself. He talked feverishly as Wales tried keys.
"There's still time before Doomsday, isn't there?" he pleaded. "Still time to get everybody off Earth? It isn't too late?"
"I think there may be time enough," Wales said. He got the shackles unlocked, and helped Kendrick to his feet. "But we've still Fairlie to reckon with."
Kendrick broke into raging curses, and Wales stopped him sharply. "Cut it, Lee. I feel exactly the same way about it but we've no time for hysteria. It'll be tricky trying to get to Fairlie in his own stronghold, over in New York. Tell me—has he come here often?"
"He hasn't been here for two weeks," Kendrick said. "He—and Bliss and the others in it with him—you know what they wanted of me? They wanted me to issue statements saying that Nereus might not hit Earth after all. They said they'd leave me here for Doomsday, if I didn't. Damn them—"
Again, Wales calmed him down. "Those guards didn't go over to New York to report to him, did they? Did they use radiophone?"
Kendrick looked startled. "Why, yes, they did. I've heard them. But I don't know what secret wavelength they used."
"Maybe," said Wales tightly, "we can find that out. Martha, you help him down the stairs. A few steps at a time, till his legs steady."
He hurried back down again. The wounded man he had tied up had recovered consciousness. He sat, his face a pallor of pain, and looked up at Wales with wide, fearful eyes.
"Yes," said Wales softly. "I'd love to kill you. You're right about that. But maybe I won't. What's your name?"
"Mowler."
"You know how to call Fairlie, on the portable radiophone? Well, you're going to call him. You're going to tell him just what I say."
By the time he found the radiophone and brought it, Kendrick was coming shakily down the last steps with Martha steadying him.
Wales asked Mowler, "What's the wavelength for Fairlie's private phone?"
Mowler, looking up into his face, shivered and told him. He set the dial.
Then he told the wounded man what to say. He finished, "Don't do it wrong."
Again looking into Wales' face, Mowler said, "I won't."
Wales touched the call-button. He held the instrument in front of Mowler. And presently a voice came from it.
"Fairlie speaking."
"Mowler here," said Mowler. "Our guest wants to see you. He says he's ready to make that statement now—any statement you want."
"About time," growled Fairlie's voice. "All right, I'll come."
Wales switched off the instrument and took it away. He went out on the parapet, and waited in the darkness with the Venn gun in his hands.
Martha and Kendrick came out, and as another Marslift ship flamed up across the sky, he saw that her face was white and strained.
She said, "Don't kill him, Jay."
He said, without turning, "The Evacuation has been delayed, and there may not be enough time to make up that delay. We may not get everyone off Earth in time. And every one of those who are left to face Doomsday will have been killed by Fairlie and his pals."
"I know," she said. "But don't, Jay."
He would make no promise, or answer. He waited. And they heard the purr of the fast power-boat, less than an hour later.
Dawn was gray in the eastern sky when Fairlie, and one armed man in Evacuation Police uniform, came up the steps to the pedestal.
Wales stepped out, the Venn gun levelled, and Kendrick came out behind him.
Fairlie stopped. The Police officer with him made an uncertain sound and movement.
"Don't be stupid," Fairlie said. "He's got us cold."
He came up a few more steps. He looked up at Wales, and there was in his powerful face an immense disgust.
"You're proud, aren't you, Wales?" said Fairlie. "You think you've done something big and gallant. You've saved, or tried to save, a lot of human lives and that makes you happy." He suddenly raged. "Human refuse! The weak, the unfit, the no-damned-good, that we've been saddled with all our lives here on Earth—and now we must take them with us to drag us all down on Mars."
"Don't, Jay," whispered Martha, and her voice was a painful sound.
Fairlie said:
"Let him. I'd sooner go out now as see all human civilization dragged down out there by the weight of the useless rabble who would be better dead."
Wales said, "You're so sure, just who should live and who should die. You felt such a big man, making secret decisions like that, didn't you? Fairlie, who knows what's best for everybody. You and your pals liked that feeling, didn't you? There have always been characters like you—"
He paused, and then he said, "We're going over to New York. We're going to have Kendrick tell his story to all the millions still on Earth, and it's a story that two of your own men will back up. We're going to try to get every last soul off Earth before Doomsday. But if we don't—"
"If you don't?" sneered Fairlie.
"You'll know it," said Wales, and now he was shaking. "Because you, Fairlie, will not leave Earth till every last soul is evacuated. If any human being faces Doomsday here, you'll face it right with him."
CHAPTER IX
Over New York there hung in the sky a new moon, big and red and terrifying.
Once it had been a mere track, on an astronomical photo, a figure in a calculation. Once it had been a threat, but an abstract one. Now it was real at last. Week by week, it had grown from a spark to a speck to a little moon, and now Kendrick's World was rushing in fast toward the fatal rendezvous with its bigger, sister world.
Wales sat at his desk in the office high in the UN tower, and looked out the window at the skyscrapers looming strange in the bloody light. There was a great silence everywhere. The frantic thunder of the Marslift was stilled at last. The last-but-one rockets had left at dusk, and now as night advanced it seemed that the whole Earth was hushed and waiting.
He felt a weariness that smothered all happiness of success. For theyhadsucceeded, in these four frantic months. After Lee Kendrick had told his story to the world, after the plotters who had ruthlessly condemned millions "for the good of the race" had been exposed and arrested, those millions of dubious folk had suddenly felt the full panicky shock of truth, had realized at last that Doomsday was real.
They had poured into New York, in fear-driven mobs that could hardly be handled. And Wales, as the hastily appointed new Evacuation Marshal, had felt in his soul that it was too late, that some would surely be left.
He had reckoned without that quality in human beings that draws their greatest strength out of peril. The Marslift had been speeded up, speeded up farther, speeded up until rocket-crews fainted of fatigue at their posts. But it had, at last, been done....
The door opened, and Martha came across the office to where Wales sat hunched and weary with his hands spread out on the empty desk.
"It's time, Jay," she said. "Lee and the others are waiting."
He looked slowly up at her. "We got them all off," he said.
"Yes. We got them all off."
"About one thing," he said, "Fairlie was right. It'll be hard on Mars for us, harder because of all those last millions. But I don't think anyone will ever complain."
He thought of the people who had streamed through New York, into the Marslift rockets, these last weeks and days.
He thought of Sam Lanterman and his people from Pittsburgh, and Lanterman complaining, "Hell, I got to own a whole city and what happens—I get scared out of it! Oh well, I guess it won't be so bad out there."
Martha touched his shoulder gently. "Come, Jay."
He got to his feet and walked heavily with her to the lift.
They went down through the silent, empty building to the empty street. Empty, except for the car in which Kendrick and the two others waited, looking up silently at the crimson face of the thing that was coming fast, fast, toward Earth.
The car bore them fast through the empty streets, and the lifeless metropolis fell behind them and they rushed across a countryside already wearing a strange and ominous new aspect, to the Spaceport.
The last rocket waited, a silvery tower flashing back the red light from the sky. They got out of the car and walked toward it.
Hollenberg had won the honor of being the last rocket-captain to leave Earth. But he did not look as though he enjoyed that honor now.
"We're ready," he said.
Wales asked, "Is Fairlie aboard?"
Hollenberg nodded grimly. "Aboard, and locked up. He was the last evacuee taken on, as per orders."
They stood, looking at each other. It came to Wales what was the matter. They stood upon Earth, and it was the last time that they might ever stand upon it.
He said harshly, "If we're ready, let's go."
The rocket-ship bore them skyward on wings of flame and thunder, and an Earth empty of man lay waiting.
A million miles out in space, they watched from the observation port. They could see the planetoid only as a much smaller, dark mass against the blue, beautiful sphere of Earth.
"One minute, fifteen seconds," said Kendrick, in a dry, level voice.
Martha sobbed, and hid her face against Wales' shoulder, and he held her close.
"Thirty seconds."
And all Wales could think of was the cities and their silent streets, the little houses carefully locked and shuttered, the quiet country roads and old trees and fields, with the red moon looming over them, coming down upon them, closer, closer—
"She's struck," said Kendrick. And then, "Look—look—"
Wales saw. The blue sphere of Earth had suddenly changed, white steam laced with leaping flames enwrapped it, puffing out from it. Giant winds tore the steam and he glimpsed tortured continents buckling, cracking, mountains rising—
He held Martha close, and watched until he could watch no more, and turned away. Kendrick, with his telescope set up, was talking rapidly.
"The continental damage isn't too bad. The seas are all steam now, but they'll condense again in time. Terrific volcanoes, but they'll not last too long. In time, it'll cool down—"
In time, Wales thought. In their time? Maybe not until their children's time?
He looked ahead, at the red spark of Mars, the world of refuge. It would be hard living on Mars, yes, for all the millions of men. But there were other worlds in space, and they had the knowledge and the ships. He thought they would go farther than Mars, much farther. He thought that they could not guess now, how far.
But someday, they or their children would come back to old Earth again. Of that, he was very sure.