City at Worlds End | Page 2

have any super-atomic bomb at all."
Kenniston, without lowering his gaze, spoke in a dry whisper. "They had them, all right. And they used one on us. And I think we're dead and don't know it yet We don't know yet that we're only ghosts and not living on Earth any more."
"Not on Earth?" said the policeman angrily. "Now, listen--"
And then his voice trailed away to silence as he followed Kenniston's staring gaze and looked up at the Sun.
It wasn't the Sun. Not the Sun they and all the generations of men had known as a golden, dazzling orb. They could look right at this Sun, without blinking. They could stare at it steadily, for it was no more than a very big, dull-glowing red ball with tiny flames writhing around its edges. It was higher in the sky now than it had been before. And the air was cold. "It's in the wrong place," said the policeman. "And it looks different." He groped in half-forgotten high-school science for an explanation. "Refraction. Dust that that fizzle-bomb stirred up--"
Kenniston didn't tell him. What was the use? What was the good of telling him what he, as a scientist, knew-- that no conceivable refraction could make the Sun look like that. But he said, "Maybe you're right."
"Sure I'm right," said the policeman, loudly. He didn't look up at the sky and Sun, any more. He seemed to avoid looking at them.
Kenniston started on down Mill Street. He had been on his way to the Lab, when this happened. He kept on going now. He wanted to hear what Hubble and the others would say about this.
He laughed a little. "I am a ghost, going to talk with other ghosts about our sudden deaths." Then he told himself fiercely, "Stop that! You're a scientist. What good is your science if it cracks up in the face of an unexplained phenomenon?"
That, certainly, was an understatement. A super-atomic bomb went off over a quiet little Midwestern town of fifty thousand people, and it didn't change a thing except to put a new Sun into the sky. And you called that an unexplained phenomenon.
Kenniston walked on down the street. He walked fast, for the air was unseasonably cold. He didn't stop to talk to the bewildered-looking people he met. They were mostly men who had been on their way to work in Middletown's mills when it had happened. They stood now, discussing the sudden flash and shock. The word Kenniston heard most often was "earthquake." They didn't look too upset, these men. They looked excited and a little bit glad that something had happened to interrupt their drab daily routine. Some of them were staring up at that strange, dull-red Sun, but they seemed more perplexed than disturbed.
The air was cold and musty. And the red, dusky sunlight was queer. But that hadn't disturbed these men too much. It was, after all, not much stranger than the chill and the lurid light that often foreshadow a Midwestern thunderstorm.
Kenniston turned in at the gate of the smoke-grimed brick structure that bore the sign, "Industrial Research Laboratories." The watchman at the gate nodded to him unperturbedly as he let him through.
Neither the watchman nor any of Middletown's fifty thousand people, except a few city officials, knew that this supposed industrial laboratory actually housed one of the key nerve centers of America's atomic defense setup.
Clever, thought Kenniston. It had been clever of those in charge of dispersal to tuck this key atomic laboratory into a prosaic little Midwestern mill town.
"But not clever enough," he thought.
No, not quite clever enough. The unknown enemy had learned the secret, and had struck the first stunning blow of his surprise attack at the hidden nerve center of Middletown.
A super-atomic, to smash that nerve center before war even started. Only, the super-atomic had fizzled. Or had it? The Sun was a different Sun. And the air was strange and cold.
Crisci met Kenniston by the entrance of the big brick building. Crisci was the youngest of the staff, a tall, black-haired youngster-- and because he was the youngest, he tried hard not to show emotion now.
"It looks like it's beginning," said Crisci, trying to smile. "Atomic Armageddon-- the final fireworks." Then he quit trying to smile. "Why didn't it wipe us out, Kenniston? Why didn't it?"
Kenniston asked him, "Don't the Geigers show anything?"
"Nothing. Not a thing."
That, Kenniston thought numbly, fitted the crazy improbability of it all. He asked, "Where's Hubble?"
Crisci gestured vaguely. "Over there. He's had us trying to call Washington, but the wires are all dead and even the radio hasn't been able to get through yet."
Kenniston walked across the cluttered plant yard. Hubble, his chief, stood looking up at the dusky sky and at the red dull Sun you could stare at without blinking.