City at Worlds End

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The City at World's End
by Edmond Hamilton
1951




Chapter I
-- cataclysm
Kenniston realized afterward that it was like death. You knew you were going to die
someday, but you didn't believe it. He had known that there was danger of the
long-dreaded atomic war beginning with a sneak punch, but he hadn't really believed it.
Not until that June morning when the missile came down on Middletown. And then there
was no time for realization. You don't hear or see a thing that comes faster than sound.
One moment, he was striding down Mill Street toward the plant, getting ready to speak to
the policeman coming toward him. The next moment, the sky split open.
It split wide open, and above the whole town there was a burn and blaze of light so swift,
so violent, that it seemed the air itself had burst into instantaneous flame. In that fraction
of a second, as the sky flared and the ground heaved wildly under his feet, Kenniston
knew that the surprise attack had come, and that the first of the long-feared super-atomic
bombs had exploded overhead....
Shock, thought Kenniston, as his mouth crushed against the grimy sidewalk. The shock
that keeps a dying man from feeling pain. He lay there, waiting for the ultimate
destruction, and the first eye-blinding flare across the heavens faded and the shuddering
world grew still. It was over, as quickly as that.
He ought to be dead. He thought it very probable that he was dying right now, which
would explain the fading light and the ominous quiet. But in spite of that he raised his
head, and then scrambled shakily to his feet, gasping over his own wild heartbeats,
fighting an animal urge to run for the mere sake of running. He looked down Mill Street.
He expected to see pulverized buildings, smoking craters, fire and steam and devastation.

But what he saw was more stunning than that, and in a strange way, more awful.
He saw Middletown lying unchanged and peaceful in the sunlight.
The policeman he had been going to speak to was still there ahead of him. He was getting
up slowly from his hands and knees, where the quake had thrown him. His mouth hung
open and his cap had fallen off. His eyes were very wide and dazed and frightened.
Beyond him was an old woman with a shawl over her head. She, too, had been there
before. She was clinging now to a wall, the sack of groceries she had carried split open
around her feet, spilling onions and cans of soup across the walk. Cars and street-cars
were still moving along the street in the distance, beginning erratically to jerk to a halt.
Apart from these small things, nothing was different, nothing at all.
The policeman came up to Kenniston. He looked like a young, efficient officer. Or he
would have, if his face had not gone so slack and his eyes so stunned. He asked hoarsely:
"What happened?"
Kenniston answered, and the words sounded queer and improbable as he said them.
"We've been hit by a bomb-- a super-atomic."
The policeman stared at him. "Are you crazy?"
"Yes," said Kenniston, "I think maybe I am. I think that's the only explanation."
His brain had begun to pound. The air felt suddenly cold and strange. The sunshine was
duskier and redder and did not warm him now. The woman in the shawl was crying.
Presently, still weeping, she got painfully down upon her thick old knees and Kenniston
thought she was going to pray, but instead she began to gather up her onions, fumbling
with them as a child does, trying to fit them into the broken paper bag.
"Look," said the policeman, "I've read stuff about those super-atomic bombs, in the
papers. It said they were thousands of times more powerful than the atom-bombs they
used to have. If one of them hit any place there wouldn't be anything left of it." His voice
was getting stronger. He was convincing himself. "So no super-atomic bomb could have
hit us. It couldn't have been that."
"You saw that terrific flash in the sky, didn't you?" said Kenniston.
"Sure I did, but--" And then the policeman's face cleared. "Say, it was a fizzle. That's
what it was. This super-atomic bomb they've been scaring the world with-- it turned out
to be just a fizzle." He laughed noisily, in vast relief. "Isn't that rich? They tell for years
what terrible things it's going to do, and then it just makes a big fizz and flash like a bad
Fourth of July firecracker!"
It could be true, Kenniston thought with a wild surge