City at Worlds End | Page 3

He was only fifty but he looked older at the moment, his graying hair disordered and his thin face tightly drawn.
"There isn't any way yet to figure out where that missile came from," Kenniston said.
Then he realized that Hubble's thoughts weren't on that, for the other only nodded abstractedly.
"Look at those stars, Kenniston."
"Stars? Stars, in the daytime--?"
And then, looking up, Kenniston realized that you could see the stars now. You could see them as faint, glimmering points all across the strangely dusky sky, even near the dull Sun.
"They're wrong," said Hubble. "They're very wrong."
Kenniston asked, "What happened? Did their super-atomic really fizzle?"
Hubble lowered his gaze and blinked at him. "No," he said softly. "It didn't fizzle. It went off."
"But Hubble, if that super-atomic went off, why--"
Hubble ignored the question. He went on into his own office in the Lab, and began to pull down reference volumes. To Kenniston's surprise, he opened them to pages of astronomical diagrams. Then Hubble took a pencil and began to scrawl quick calculations on a pad.
Kenniston grabbed him by the shoulder. "For Christ's sake, Hubble, this is no time for scientific theorizing! The town hasn't been hit, but something big has happened, and--"
"Get the hell away from me," said Hubble, without turning.
The sheer shock of hearing Hubble swear silenced Kenniston. Hubble went on with his figures, referring often to the books. The office was as silent as though nothing had happened at all. Finally, Hubble turned. His hand shook a little as he pointed to the figures on the pad.
"See those, Ken? They're proof-- proof of something that cannot be. What does a scientist do when he faces that kind of a situation?"
He could see the sick shock and fear in Hubble's gray face, and it fed his own fear. But before he could speak, Crisci came in.
He said, "We haven't been able to contact Washington yet. And we can't understand-- our calls go completely unanswered, and not one station outside Middletown seems to be broadcasting."
Hubble stared at his pad. "It all fits in. Yes, it all fits in."
"What do you make of it, Doctor?" asked Crisci anxiously. "That bomb went off over Middletown, even though it didn't hurt us. Yet it's as though all the world outside Middletown has been silenced!"
Kenniston, cold from what he had seen in Hubble's face, waited for the senior scientist to tell them what he knew or thought. But the phone rang suddenly with strident loudness.
It was the intercom from the watchman at the gate. Hubble picked it up. After a minute he said, "Yes, let him come in." He hung up. "It's Johnson. You know, the electrician who did some installations for us. He lives out on the edge of town. He told the watchman that was why he had to see me-- because he lives on the edge of town."
Johnson, when he came, was a man in the grip of a fear greater than Kenniston had even begun to imagine, and he was almost beyond talking. "I thought you might know," he said to Hubble. "It seems like somebody's got to tell me what's happened, or I'll lose my mind. I've got a cornfield, Mr. Hubble. It's a long field, and then there's a fence row, and my neighbor's barn beyond it."
He began to tremble, and Hubble said, "What about your cornfield?"
"Part of it's gone," said Johnson, "and the fence row, and the barn... Mr. Hubble, they're all gone, everything..."
"Blast effect," said Hubble gently. "A bomb hit here a little while ago, you see."
"No," said Johnson. "I was in London last war, I know what blast can do. This isn't destruction. It's..." He sought for a word, and could not find it. "I thought you might know what it is."
Kenniston's chill premonition, the shapeless growing terror in him, became too evil to be borne. He said, "I'm going out and take a look."
Hubble glanced at him and then nodded, and rose to his feet, slowly, as though he did not want to go but was forcing himself. He said, "We can see everything from the water tower, I think-- that's the highest point in town. You keep trying to get through, Crisci."
Kenniston walked with him out of the Lab grounds, and across Mill Street and the cluttered railroad tracks to the huge, stilt-legged water tower of Middletown. The air had grown colder. The red sunshine had no warmth in it, and when Kenniston took hold of the iron rungs of the ladder to begin the climb, they were like bars of ice. He followed Hubble upward, keeping his eyes fixed on the retreating soles of Hubble's shoes. It was a long climb. They had to stop to rest once. The wind blew harder the higher they got, and it had a dry musty taint in it that