The Second Science Fiction MEGAPACK®. Robert Silverberg
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forms on the elbows and knees. The neck and shoulders toughen. The nostrils learn to snort away the ashes before they inhale. The bad leg swells and festers. It numbs, and presently it will rot and fall off.
“I beg pardon,” Crane said, “I didn’t quite get that—”
He peered up at the tall figure before him and tried to understand the words. It was Hallmyer. He wore his stained lab jacket and his gray hair was awry. Hallmyer stood delicately on top of the ashes and Crane wondered why he could see the scudding cinder clouds through his body.
“How do you like your world, Stephen?” Hallmyer asked.
Crane shook his head miserably.
“Not very pretty, eh?” said Hallmyer. “Look around you. Dust, that’s all; dust and ashes. Crawl, Stephen, crawl. You’ll find nothing but dust and ashes—”
Hallmyer produced a goblet of water from nowhere. It was clear and cold. Crane could see the fine mist of dew on its surface and his mouth was suddenly coated with dry grit.
“Hallmyer!” he cried. He tried to get to his feet and reach for the water, but the jolt of pain in his right leg warned him. He crouched back.
Hallmyer sipped and then spat in his face. The water felt warm.
“Keep crawling,” said Hallmyer bitterly. “Crawl round and round the face of the Earth. You’ll find nothing but dust and ashes—” He emptied the goblet on the ground before Crane. “Keep crawling. How many miles? Figure it out for yourself. Pi-R-Square. The radius is eight thousand or so—”
He was gone, jacket and goblet. Crane realized that rain was falling again. He pressed his face into the warm sodden cinder mud, opened his mouth, and tried to suck the moisture. He groaned and presently began crawling.
There was an instinct that drove him on. He had to get somewhere. It was associated, he knew, with the sea—with the edge of the sea. At the shore of the sea something waited for him. Something that would help him understand all this. He had to get to the sea—that is, if there was a sea any more.
* * * *
The thundering rain beat his back like heavy planks. Crane paused and yanked the knapsack around to his side where he probed in it with one hand. It contained exactly three things. A pistol, a bar of chocolate, and a can of peaches. All that was left of two months’ supplies. The chocolate was pulpy and spoiled. Crane knew he had best eat it before all value rotted away. But in another day he would lack the strength to open the can. He pulled it out and attacked it with the opener. By the time he had pierced and pried away a flap of tin, the rain had passed.
As he munched the fruit and sipped the juice, he watched the wall of rain marching before him down the slope of the ocean bed. Torrents of water were gushing through the mud. Small channels had already been cut—channels that would be new rivers some day. A day he would never see. A day that no living thing would ever see. As he flipped the empty can aside, Crane thought: The last living thing on Earth eats its last meal. Metabolism plays its last act.
Wind would follow the rain. In the endless weeks that he had been crawling, he had learned that. Wind would come in a few minutes and flog him with its clouds of cinders and ashes. He crawled forward, bleary eyes searching the flat gray miles for cover.
Evelyn tapped his shoulder. Crane knew it was she before he turned his head. She stood alongside, fresh and gay in her bright dress, but her lovely face was puckered with alarm.
“Stephen,” she cried, “you’ve got to hurry!”
He could only admire the way her smooth honey hair waved to her shoulders.
“Oh, darling!” she said, “you’ve been hurt!” Her quick gentle hands touched his legs and back.
Crane nodded.
“Got it landing,” he said. “I wasn’t used to a parachute. I always thought you came down gently—like plumping onto a bed. But the gray earth came up at me like a fist—and Umber was fighting around in my arms. I couldn’t let him drop, could I?”
“Of course not, dear—” Evelyn said.
“So I just held on to him and tried to get my legs under me,” Crane said. “And then something smashed my legs and side—”
He paused, wondering how much she knew of what really had happened. He didn’t want to frighten her.
“Evelyn, darling—” he said, trying to reach up his arms.
“No dear,” she said. She looked back in fright. “You’ve got to hurry. You’ve got to watch out behind!”
“The cinder storms?” He grimaced. “I’ve been through them before.”
“Not the storms!” Evelyn cried. “Something else. Oh, Stephen—”
Then she was gone, but Crane knew she had spoken the truth. There was something behind—something that had been following him all those weeks. Far in the back of his mind he had sensed the menace. It was closing in on him like a shroud. He shook his head. Somehow that was impossible. He was the last living thing on Earth. How could there be a menace?
The wind roared behind him, and an instant later came the heavy clouds of cinders and ashes. They lashed over him, biting his skin. With dimming eyes, he saw the way they coated the mud and covered it with a fine dry carpet. Crane drew his knees under him and covered his head with his arms. With the knapsack as a pillow, he prepared to wait out the storm. It would pass as quickly as the rain.
The storm whipped up a great bewilderment in his sick head. Like a child, he pushed at the pieces of his memory, trying to fit them together. Why was Hallmyer so bitter toward him? It couldn’t have been that argument, could it?
What argument?
Why, that one before all this happened.
Oh, that!
Abruptly, the pieces fit themselves together.
* * * *
Crane stood alongside the sleek lines of his ship and admired it tremendously. The roof of the shed had been removed and the nose of the ship hoisted so that it rested on a cradle pointed toward the sky. A workman was carefully burnishing the inner surfaces of the rocket jets.
The muffled sounds of an argument came from within the ship and then a heavy clanking. Crane ran up the short iron ladder to the port and thrust his head inside. A few feet beneath him, two men were buckling the long tanks of ferrous solution into place.
“Easy there,” Crane called. “Want to knock the ship apart?”
One looked up and grinned. Crane knew what he was thinking. That the ship would tear itself apart. Everyone said that. Everyone except Evelyn. She had faith in him. Hallmyer never said it either. But Hallmyer thought he was crazy in another way. As he descended the ladder, Crane saw Hallmyer come into the shed, lab jacket flying.
“Speak of the devil!” Crane muttered.
Hallmyer began shouting as soon as he saw Crane. “Now listen—”
“Not all over again,” Crane said.
Hallmyer dug a sheaf of papers out of his pocket and waved it under Crane’s nose.
“I’ve been up half the night,” he said, “working it through again. I tell you I’m right. I’m absolutely right—”
Crane looked at the tight-written equations and then at Hallmyer’s bloodshot eyes. The man was half mad with fear.
“For the last time,” Hallmyer went on. “You’re using your new catalyst on iron solution. All right. I grant that it’s a miraculous discovery. I give you credit for that.”
Miraculous was hardly the word for it. Crane knew that without conceit, for he realized he’d only stumbled on it. You had to stumble on a catalyst that would induce atomic disintegration of iron and give 10x1010 foot-pounds of