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have overwhelmed them completely, Kenniston knew, except that in a measure the shock had been softened.
For a while they had kept their own old city, and it was still there beyond the ridge, an anchor in their
memories. To a certain extent, they had brought their own time with them, for life in the alien city had been
adapted as much as possible to the pattern of life in old Middletown. They had oriented themselves again, they
had built a facsimile of their familiar existence. It had been hard, but they had done it. They could not now,
quite suddenly, throw it all away and start again on something utterly divorced from everything they had ever
known.
Kenniston realized perfectly that it was not only an atavistic clinging to the Earth that had bred them which
made them reject the idea of leaving it so fiercely. It was the physical and immediate horror of entering a
perfectly unknown kind of ship and plunging in it out beyond the sky, into into what? Night and nothingness
and sickening abysses that ran on for ever, with only the cold stars for beacons and the Earth, the solid,
understandable, protecting Earth lost forever! His own mind recoiled from the very imagining. Why couldn't
the woman understand? Why couldn't she realize that a people to whom the automobile was still quite recent
were not psychologically capable of rushing into space!
The great ship brooded on the plain, and all that afternoon and evening the people drifted restlessly toward the
wall of the dome to look at it, and stand in little groups talking angrily, and move away again. The streets
seethed with a half-heard murmur of voices and movement. Crowds gathered in the plaza, and a detachment
of National Guardsmen in full kit went marching down to mount guard at the portal. Dejected, oppressed, and
more than a little sick with worry, Kenniston faced the unavoidable and went to Carol.
She knew, of course. Everybody in New Middletown knew. She met him with the drawn, half-bitter look that
had come more and more often on her face since the June day their world had ended, and she said, They can't
do it, can they? They can't make us go?
They think they're doing the right thing, he said. It's a question of making them understand they're wrong.
She began to laugh, quite softly laughter with no mirth in it. There isn't any end to it, she said. First we
had to leave Middletown. Now we have to leave Earth, Why didn't we stay in our homes and die there, if we
had to, like decent human beings? It's all been madness ever since this city, and now... She stopped
laughing. She looked at him and said calmly, I won't go, Ken.
You're not the only one that feels that way, Kenniston told her. We've got to convince them of that.
Restlessness rode him, and he got up and said, Let's take a walk. We'd both feel better.
She went out with him into the dusk. The lights were on, the lovely radiance that they had greeted with such
joy. They walked, saying very little, burdened with their own thoughts, and Kenniston was conscious again of
the barrier that seemed always between them now, even when they agreed. Their silence was not the silence of
understanding, but the silence which is between two minds that can communicate only with words.
They drifted toward the section of the dome through which the distant starship was visible. The unease in the
city had grown, until the air quivered with it. There was a mob around the portal. They did not go close to it.
Through the curved, transparent wall the lighted bulk of the Thanis was no more than a distorted gleaming.
Carol shivered and turned away.
I don't want to look at it, she said. Let's go back.
Chapter 12 crisis 62
The City at World's End
Wait, said Kenniston. There's Hubble.
The older man caught sight of him and swore. I've been hunting the hell and gone over town for you, he
said. Ken, that bloody fool Garris has blown his top completely, and is getting the people all stirred up to
fight. You've got to come with me and help soothe him down!
Kenniston said bitterly, No wonder Varn Allan thinks we're a bunch of primitives! Oh, all right, I'll come.
We'll walk you back home on the way, Carol.
They started back through the streets, whose towers now shone timelessly beautiful in the calm white
radiance. But the people in those streets, the little tense, talking groups, the worried faces and questions, the
angry expletives, jarred against that supernal calm.
The pulse of unease in the city seemed to quicken. A low cry ran along the streets. People were calling
something, a shout was running along the ways, hands pointed upward, white faces turned and looked at the
shimmer of the great dome above.
What Hubble began impatiently, but Kenniston silenced him.
Listen!
They listened. Above the swell of distant voices, growing louder every moment, they heard a sound that they
had heard only once before. A vibration, more than a sound, a deep, bass humming from the sky, too deep to
be smothered even by the dome.
It came downward, and it was louder, and louder, and then quite suddenly it stopped. People were running
now toward the portal and the words they shouted came drifting confusedly back.
Another starship, said Kenniston. Another starship has come.
Hubble's face was gray and haggard. The evacuation staff. She said they'd arrive soon. And the whole town
ready to blow off Ken, this is it!
Chapter 13 embattled city
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