City at Worlds End | Page 9

bewildered voice enquired, "But if a war's started, who's the enemy?"
The enemy, Kenniston thought bitterly, is a country that perished and was dust-- how
many millions of years ago?
There were loafers on the Mill Street bridge, staring down at the muddy bed of the river
and trying to explain the sudden vanishing of its water. In the beer-parlors that cheered
the grimy street, there were more men than was normal for this hour. Kenniston could
hear them as he passed, their voices high, excited, a little quarrelsome, but with no edge
of terror.
A woman called across the street from an upstairs flat window, to the other housewife
who was sweeping the opposite front porch. "I'm missing every one of my radio stories!
The radio won't get anything but the Middletown station today!"
Kenniston was glad when he got to Bud's Garage. Bud Martin, a tall thin young man with
a smudge of grease on his lip, was reassembling a carburetor with energetic efficiency
and criticizing his harried young helper at the same time.
"Haven't got to your car yet, Mr. Kenniston," he protested. "I said around five,
remember?"
Kenniston shook his head and told Martin what he wanted. Martin shrugged. "Sure, you
can hire the jeep. I'm too busy to answer road calls today, anyway." He did not seem
particularly interested in what Kenniston intended to do with the jeep. The carburetor
resisted and he swore at it.
A man in a floury baker's apron stuck his head into the garage. "Hey, Bud, hear the news?
The mills just shut down-- all of them."
"Ah, nuts," said Martin. "I been hearing news all morning. Guys running in and out with
the damnedest stories. I'm too busy to listen to 'em."
Kenniston thought that probably that was the answer to the relative calm in Middletown.
The men, particularly, had been too busy. The strong habit patterns of work, a job at hand
to be done, had held them steady so far.
He sighed. "Bud," he said, "I'm afraid this story is true."
Martin looked at him sharply and then groaned. "Oh, Lord, another recession! This'll ruin
business-- and me with the garage only half paid for!"
What was the use of telling him, Kenniston thought, that the mills had been hastily shut
down to conserve precious fuel, and that they would never open again.
He filled spare gasoline cans, stacked them in the back of the jeep, and drove northward.
Topcoats were appearing on Main Street now. There were knots of people on street

corners, and people waiting for buses were looking up curiously at the red Sun and dusky
sky. But the stores were open, housewives carried bulging shopping-bags, kids went by
on bicycles. It wasn't too changed, yet. Not yet.
Nor was quiet Walters Avenue, where he had his rooms, though the rows of maples were
an odd color in the reddish light. Kenniston was glad his landlady was out, for he didn't
think he could face many more puzzled questions right now.
He loaded his hunting kit-- a .30-30 rifle and a 16-gauge repeating shotgun with boxes of
shells-- into the jeep. He put on a mackinaw, brought a leather coat for Hubble, and
remembered gloves. Then, before re-entering the jeep, he ran down the street half a block
to Carol Lane's house.
Her aunt met him at the door. Mrs. Adams was stout, pink and worried.
"John, I'm so glad you came! Maybe you can tell me what to do. Should I cover my
flowers?" She babbled on anxiously. "It seems so silly, on a June day. But it's so much
colder. And the petunias and bleeding-heart are so easily frost-bitten. And the roses--"
"I'd cover them, Mrs. Adams," he told her. "The prediction is that it will be even colder."
She threw up her hands. "The weather, these days! It never used to be like this." And she
hurried away to secure covering for the flowers, the flowers that had but hours to live. It
hit Kenniston with another of those sickening little shocks of realization. No more roses
on Earth, after today. No more roses, ever again.
"Ken-- did you find out what happened?" It was Carol's voice behind him, and he knew,
even before he turned to face her, that he could not evade with her as he had with the
others. She didn't know about science, and such things as time warps and shattered
continuums had never entered her head. But she knew him, and she gave him no chance
to temporize.
"Are they true, the stories about an atom bomb going off over Middletown?"
She had had time, since he called her, to become really alarmed. She had dark hair and
dark eyes. She was slim in a sturdy fashion,