city?”
Crisci answered softly, “No. There was nobody there. Not a soul. It was dead, and it had been dead a long time.”
McLain added, “It’s true. We saw no sign of life anywhere, except a few little animals on the plains.”
Carol turned a pale face toward Kenniston. “Then there’s no one else? Then we are the last?”
A sick silence had fallen on the crowd. They looked at each other numbly. And then Bertram Garris displayed unsuspected capacities of leadership. He got up on one of the half-tracks and spoke cheerfully.
“Now, folks, no use to let this news get you down! McLain’s party only covered a few hundred miles, and Earth is a mighty big place. Remember that Mr. Kenniston’s radio calls are going out, every hour.” He rattled on with loud heartiness. “We’ve all been working hard, and we need some recreation. So tonight we’re going to have a big get-together in the plaza—a town party. Tell everybody to come!”
The crowd of Middletowners brightened a little. But as they went away, Kenniston saw that most of them still looked back soberly. He told Garris, “That was a good idea, to take their minds off things.”
The Mayor looked pleased. “Sure. They’re just too impatient. They don’t realize it may take the other people a good while to answer those calls of yours.”
Kenniston realized that Garris’ confidence had not been assumed. Despite the shattering new revelation, the Mayor still had faith that there were other people.
But Hubble was somber when he heard the news. “Another dead city? Then there’s no further doubt in my mind. Earth must be lifeless.”
“Shall I keep sending out the radio call?” Hubble hesitated. “Yes, Ken—for a while. We don’t want to spoil their party tonight.”
The town party in the plaza that night had the unusual luxury of electric lights, powered by a portable generator. There was a swing band on a platform, and a big space had been roped off for dancing. Kenniston threaded through the crowd with Carol, for Beitz had offered to stand his trick. Everyone knew him now and greeted him, but he noticed a significant difference in the greetings. They did not ask him now whether his calls had had an answer.
“They’re giving up hope,” he said to Carol. “They’re afraid there are no other people, and they don’t want to think about it.”
Yet the party went well, until Mayor Garris blundered. He had been cheerily backslapping his way through the crowd all evening, admiring babies, exchanging familiar greetings, obviously enjoying this relapse in-to the arts of politicianship. Flushed and happy, he got up on the band platform and called through the loudspeaker to the crowd.
“Come on, folks, how about a little community singing? I’ll lead you with my famous tenor. How about ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’?”
They laughed, and sang, as the band struck up the tune and the pudgy Mayor cheerfully waved his hand like a conductor. The old songs not heard on Earth for millions of years echoed off the tall white buildings and the great shimmering dome overhead.
But as they sang, as they sang “Banks of the Wabash” and “Old Kentucky Home,” voices and faces lost their brightness. Kenniston saw the haunting yearning that came into the gathered thousands of faces, and the mistiness in Carol’s eyes.
The swell of voices dropped a little. The singers seemed to hesitate.
And then with an hysterical cry, a woman in the crowd sank sobbing to the ground.
The singing and the music stopped, and there was nothing but the racking sobs of the woman, whom a man vainly tried to comfort. Kenniston heard her crying out, “It’s all gone forever—our whole world and all its people! There’s only us, alone on a dead world!”
“Let’s not get downhearted, folks!” pleaded the Mayor, but it was too late for that. The spell was broken. The people of Middletown were at last confronted with their awful aloneness.
The party was over. The crowd silently dispersed, not speaking to each other, each man going back to his own home, his own thoughts.
Kenniston tried to find words of comfort for Carol when he left her, but he could not. There was no comfort for anyone, not now. They all had to face it, the certainty that they were the last on Earth.
He walked slowly back through the silent, empty streets, to relieve Beitz. The Moon had risen now, and through the great dome it poured coppery light upon the deserted plaza. Then, suddenly, he stopped and turned as he heard a voice and running feet pursuing him.
“Hey! Hey, Mr. Kenniston!”
He recognized Bud Martin, who had owned the garage in old Middletown. Bud’s lean young face was excited, and the words came tumbling out of him so fast as to be almost incoherent.
“Mr. Kenniston, I thought I just saw a plane going over the dome, high up! Only it looked more like a big submarine than a plane. But I saw it, I know I did!”
Kenniston thought that he might have expected this. In their reaction of bitter disappointment, many of the Middletowners might be expected now to “see” the other people they so longed to see.
He said, “I didn’t hear anything, Bud.”
“Neither did I. It went quiet and fast, high up there. I got just a glimpse of it.”
Kenniston looked up with him. They stared for moments, but the moonlit sky was cold and empty. He lowered his gaze. “It must have been a cloud shadow, Bud. There’s nothing there.”
Bud Martin swore, and then said earnestly, “Listen, Mr. Kenniston, I’m not an hysterical woman. I saw something.”
It gave Kenniston pause. For a moment, his heart quickened. Was it possible..? He stared again, for long minutes. The sky remained empty, and yet his throb of excitement persisted.
He said abruptly, “We’ll get Hubble. But don’t say anything to anyone else. Stirring up false hopes now would be disastrous.”
Hubble was with McLain and Crisci in a candlelit room, listening to their account of that other dead city they had found. He heard Bud Martin’s eager tale, and then looked at Kenniston.
“I saw nothing,” Kenniston admitted. “But through the dome, anything would be hard to see except when it was dead overhead.”
Hubble rose. “Perhaps we’d better have a look from outside. Get your coats on.”
Heavily wrapped, the five of them went along the silent streets to the portal, and through it into the outer night. They walked a hundred yards out from the portal, along the sand-drifted highway, and then stopped and scanned the sky. The cold was intense. The big Moon shone with a hard, coppery brilliance that washed the looming dome of New Middletown with light.
Kenniston’s gaze swept the blazing chains of stars. The old groups were much changed by the ages but a few he could still vaguely recognize—the time-distorted Great Bear warding the north, the warped and altered star- pattern of the Lyre. And individual stars still burned in unmistakable splendor—the blue-white, flaring beacon of Vega, the somber, smoky red magnificence of Antares, the throbbing gold of Altair.
“People are going to be seeing plenty of things,” said McLain skeptic-ally. “We might as well…”
“Listen!” said Hubble sharply, holding up his hand. Kenniston heard only the whisper of the bitter wind. Then, faintly, he caught a thrumming sound that rose and fell and rose again.
“It’s from the north,” Crisci said suddenly. “And it’s coming back around toward us.”
All five of them were suddenly rigid, held in the grip of an emotion too big for utterance, as they peered at the starry sky. The thrumming deepened.
“That’s no plane motor!” McLain exclaimed.
It wasn’t, Kenniston knew. It was neither the staccato roar of combustion engines nor the scream of jets, but a deep bass humming that seemed to fill the sky. He was aware that his heart was pounding.
Crisci shouted and flung up his hand. They saw it almost at once, an elongated black mass cutting rapidly down across the stars.
Bud Martin yelled. “It’s coming right down on us!”
The thing, in a heartbeat, had become an enormous dark bulk rushing down upon them, looming like a thundercloud. They ran back toward the portal, their feet slipping on the loose sand.
“Look!” cried Crisci. “Look at it!”
