City at Worlds End | Page 6

him again. He looked around the office, and it became suddenly rather horrible, because it had no longer any meaning. He had an urgent wish to get out of it, yet when he rose he stood for some while with his hands on the edge of the desk, going over Hubble's words in his mind, remembering how the Sun had looked, and the stars, and the sad, alien Earth, knowing that it was all impossible but unable to deny it. The long hall of time, and a shattering force... He wanted desperately to run away, but there was no place to run to. Presently he went down the corridor to Hubble's office.
They were all there, the twelve men of the staff, and Johnson. Johnson had gone by himself into a corner. He had seen what lay out there beyond the town, and the others had not. He was trying to understand it, to understand the fact and the explanation of it he had just heard. It was not a pleasant thing, to watch him try. Kenniston glanced at the others. He had worked closely with these men. He had thought he knew them all so well, having seen them under stress, in the moments when their work succeeded and the others when it did not. Now he realized that they were all strangers, to him and to each other, alone and wary with their personal fears.
Old Beitz was saying, almost truculently, "Even if it were true, you can't say exactly how long a time has passed. Not just from the stars."
Hubble said, "I'm not an astronomer, but anyone can figure it from the tables of known star-motions, and the change in the constellations. Not exactly, no. But as close as will ever matter."
"But if the continuum were actually shattered, if this town has actually jumped millions of years..." Beitz' voice trailed off. His mouth began to twitch and he seemed suddenly bewildered by what he was saying, and he, and all of them, stood looking at Hubble in a haunted silence.
Hubble shook his head. "You won't really believe, until you see for yourselves. I don't blame you. But in the meantime, you'll have to accept my statement as a working hypothesis."
Morrow cleared his throat and asked, "What about the people out there-- the town? Are you going to tell them?"
"They'll have to know at least part of it," Hubble said. "It'll get colder, very much colder, by night, and they'll have to be prepared for it. But there must not be any panic. The Mayor and the Chief of Police are on their way here now, and we'll work it out with them."
"Do they know yet, themselves?" asked Kenniston, and Hubble said, "No."
Johnson moved abruptly. He came up to Hubble and said, "I don't get all this scientific talk about space and time. What I want to know is-- is my boy safe?"
Hubble stared at him. "Your boy?"
"He went out to Martinsen's farm early, to borrow a cultivator. It's two miles out the north road. What about him, Mr. Hubble-- is he safe?"
That was the secret agony that had been riding him, the one he had not voiced. Hubble said gently. "I would say that you don't have to worry about him at all, Johnson."
Johnson nodded, but still looked worried. He said, "Thanks, Mr. Hubble. I'd better go back now. I left my wife in hysterics."
A minute or two after he left, Kenniston heard a siren scream outside. It swung into the Lab yard and stopped. "That," said Hubble, "would be the Mayor."
A small and infirm reed to lean upon, thought Kenniston, at a time like this. There was nothing particularly wrong about Mayor Garris. He was no more bumbling, inefficient, or venal than the average mayor of any average small city. He liked banquets and oratory, he worried about the right necktie, and he was said to be a good husband and father. But Kenniston could not, somehow, picture Bertram Garris shepherding his people safely across the end of the world. He thought so even less when Garris came in, his bones well padded with the plump pink flesh of good living, his face the perfect pattern of the successful little man who is pleased with the world and his place in it. Just now he was considerably puzzled and upset, but also rather elated at the prospect of something important going on. Kimer, the Chief of Police, was another matter. He was a large angular man with a face that had seen many grimy things and had learned from them a hard kind of wisdom. Not a brilliant man, Kenniston thought, but one who could get things done. And he was worried, far more worried than the Mayor. Garris turned immediately to Hubble. It was obvious that he