City at Worlds End | Page 7

had a great respect for him and was proud to be on an equal footing with such an important person as one of the nation's top atomic scientists. "Is there any news yet, Doctor Hubble? We haven't been able to get a word from outside, and the wildest rumors are going around. I was afraid at first that you might have had an explosion here in the laboratory, but..."
Kimer interrupted him. "Talk is going around that an atomic bomb hit here, Doctor Hubble. Some of the people are getting scared. If enough of them get to believe it, we'll have a panic on our hands. I've got our officers on the streets soothing 'em down, but I'd like to have a straight story they'll believe."
"Atomic bomb!" said Mayor Garris. "Preposterous. We're all alive, and there's been no damage. Doctor Hubble will tell you that atomic bombs..."
For the second time he was cut short. Hubble broke in sharply. "We're not dealing with an ordinary bomb. And the rumors are true, as far as they go." He paused, and went on more slowly, making every word distinct, "A super-atomic was exploded an hour ago, for the first time in history, right here."
He let that sink in. It was a lingering and painful process, and while it was going on Kenniston looked away, up through the window at the dusky sky and the sullen red Sun, and felt the knot in his stomach tighten. We were warned, he thought. We were all warned for years that we were playing with forces too big for us.
"It didn't destroy us," Hubble was saying. "We're lucky that way. But it did have certain-- effects."
"I don't understand," said the Mayor piteously. "I simply don't-- Certain effects? What?"
Hubble told him, with quiet bluntness.
The Mayor and the Chief of Police of Middletown, normal men of a normal city, adjusted to life in a normal world, listening to the incredible. Listening, trying to comprehend-- trying, and failing, and rejecting it utterly.
"That's insane," said Garris angrily. "Middletown thrown into the future? Why, the very sound of it... What are you trying to do, Doctor Hubble?"
He said a great deal more than that. So did Kimer. But Hubble wore them down. Quietly, implacably, he pointed to the alien landscape around the town, the deepening cold, the red, aged Sun, the ceasing of all wire and radio communication from outside. He explained, sketchily, the nature of time and space, and how they might be shattered. His scientific points they could not understand. But those they took on faith, the faith which the people of the Twentieth Century had come to have in the interpreters of the complex sciences they themselves were unable to comprehend. The physical facts they understood well enough. Too well, once they were forced to it.
It got home at last. Mayor Garris sank down into a chair, and his face was no longer pink, and the flesh sagged on it. His voice was no more than a whimper when finally he asked, "What are we going to do?"
Hubble had an answer ready, to a part of that question, at least. "We can't afford a panic. The people of Middletown will have to learn the truth slowly. That means that none of them must go outside the town yet-- or they'd learn at once. I'd suggest you announce the area outside town is possibly radioactive contaminated, and forbid anyone to leave."
Police Chief Kimer grasped with pathetic eagerness at the necessity of coping with a problem he could comprehend. "I can put men and barricades at all the street-ends, to see to that."
"And our local National Guard company is assembling now at the Armory," put in Mayor Garris. His voice was shaky, his eyes still stunned.
Hubble asked, "What about the city's utilities?"
"Everything seems to be working-- power, gas and water," the Mayor answered.
They would, Kenniston thought. Middletown's coal-steam electric generation plant, and its big watertower, and its artificial gas plant, had all come through time with them.
"They, and all food and fuel, must be rationed," Hubble was saying. "Proclaim it as an emergency measure."
Mayor Garris seemed to feel a little better at being told what to do. "Yes. We'll do that at once." Then he asked, timidly, "Isn't there any way of getting in touch with the rest of the country?"
"The rest of the country," Hubble reminded him, "is some millions of years in the dead past. You'll have to keep remembering that."
"Yes-- of course. I keep forgetting," said the Mayor. He shivered, and then took refuge in the task set him. "We'll get busy at once."
When the car had borne the two away, Hubble looked haggardly at his silent colleagues.
"They'll talk, of course. But if the news spreads slowly, it won't be so bad. It'll give us a chance to find