City at World's End

done that worries me.” And she added with sudden weariness,

“I wish I were a girl of your Middletown, who had never left her world and to whom the stars were just lights in the sky.”

He shook his head. “You’d still have your worries, believe me. Hurled out of your own life into this one—Carol, right now, is more upset than you’ll ever be.”

“Carol? That would be the girl I saw with you?”

He nodded. “Yes. My girl. She was raised in that old town of ours, school and picnics and parties and what hat to wear, and then suddenly—bang! She’s here in this crazy future, and may not even be allowed to stay on Earth!”

Varn Allan said, musingly, “How strange it must be, to have grown up on one little, little planet, to have lived that tiny, circumscribed routine.

In a way, I envy her. And I’m sorry for her.”

She turned to go, and Kenniston held out his hand. “No hard feelings, then?”

She was for a moment completely puzzled by his gesture, then understood and smiled and laid her hand awkwardly in his. But she took it away hastily and went out.

Kenniston stared after her. “Well, I’ll be damned if she isn’t afraid of men!”

His resentful hostility to her was gone, and while he knew she would be in there pitching against him on this evacuation that she thought so necessary, it did not worry him like the matter of Norden Lund.

The more he thought about Lund, the more he worried. Finally, he went to Gorr Holl’s cabin and told the big Capellan.

Gorr Holl instantly looked upset. “That’s bad. Lund could make nasty trouble, if he’s got hold of something. But what could it be?”

“I thought maybe you’d know.”

“Not a thing,” the Capellan denied. “Wait a minute—Piers Eglin has been a little thick with Lund lately. Maybe he’d know.”

Kenniston got up. “Piers always wants to talk to me about the old town. If he knows anything, maybe he’ll spill it.”

But it was not until the next day—the strange dawnless artifical day of starship routine—that he got a chance to talk to the little historian.

He asked Eglin bluntly, “Do you know what Lund’s got up his sleeve for this hearing?”

The question fluttered Piers Eglin badly. He fidgeted, and looked away with a hunted expression, and mumbled, “Why do you ask me? What could I know?”

Kenniston stared at him. “You’re a pretty poor liar, Piers. What do you know?”

Eglin began to babble almost incoherently. “Kenniston, listen—you mustn’t draw me into your troubles! I like you, I wish I could help you—

but I’m a historian, it’s my life, that old town of yours on Earth is like a dream come true to me, and to save it, I would do anything. Anything!”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Kenniston demanded. “What does Middletown have to do with it?”

The little historian said feverishly, “You don’t understand its import-ance. You people from the past will die away, but that city from the far past can be preserved forever, the greatest of historical treasures. I can preserve it, keep it for future study, if I have official backing—”

A light dawned on Kenniston. “And Norden Lund is going to give you that backing? In exchange for what? What have you done to help him?”

Eglin shook his head wretchedly. “I can’t say anything. Honestly, I can’t.”

He was nearly in tears, as he went away. Kenniston looked after him, mystified and deeply troubled.

He told Gorr Holl and the others. Magro looked baffled. “But what could Piers do to help Lund? I don’t get it at all.”

“Maybe he overheard some of our people making threats and wild talk, and reported it?” Kenniston said.

Gorr Holl shook his head. “Just hearsay wouldn’t be worth much. And anyway, Piers wasn’t around your people much after the first—he spent all his time in the old town.”

Lal’lor said slowly, “I do not like it. Try to find out what it is that Piers has done, Kenniston.”

Kenniston, thought, found in the following “days” that Piers Eglin very definitely was avoiding him. He did not even see the little historian again until they made their landing on Vega Four.

He had sat for hours that day in the bridge room of the Thanis, looking with unbelieving wonderment at the alien solar system shaping itself out of the void, the spinning planets sweeping in majestic curves through the brilliant circle of Vega’s light.

The ship was sweeping in toward the fourth planet. Kenniston saw the cloudy globe leap up to meet them, and again he felt the magically tempered pressure. As they hummed downward, he was stricken with a vertiginous fear that they were going to crash.

He glimpsed a vast landscape whose dominant colors were quite unearthly. Cruel, lofty mountains of purple- black rock rose grandly beyond broad blue plains. Then the rushing ship swept over a great expanse of vivid yellow—a golden ocean that flashed back Vega’s brilliance blindingly. And then a city. A white, towering continent of a city that, even viewed from the stratosphere, was enough to take Kenniston’s breath away. There was a huge starship port near it, and the Thanis was dropping smoothly through tangled shipping traffic toward it, making world-fall in its waiting dock with the softest of jars.

Vega Four. He was here. And he could not believe it, not even now.

Gorr Holl unfastened his straps. The Capellan was almost as tense as Kenniston himself.

“Jon Arnol should be here waiting for us,” he said rapidly. “His workshop is on the other side of this planet. Gome along, Kenniston!”

Jon Arnol? Kenniston had almost forgotten about him, in the grip of this strange arrival. In the shivering fascination of being here, he found it hard to keep his mind on why he was here.

He went down with Gorr Holl to the big vestibule inside the entrance port. The lock was open, and strange blue sunlight struck the metal floor, strange air, laden with faintly alien scents, drifted to his nostrils.

Lund and Varn Allan were there, and the woman said to him, “Your quarters will be in Government Center. I can take you there.”

Gorr Holl, looking out at a dark, lean man who was hurrying across the concrete apron toward the Thanis, said hastily, “No, you needn’t bother. We’ll take Kenniston along to his quarters.”

The lean, dark man was coming up the stairs to the lock. He was perhaps ten years older than Kenniston, with a worn face and the eyes of a dreamer, and the unsteady hands of a man who is laboring under great excitement.

Varn Allan’s eyes rested on him, and she said, “I see. Jon Arnol. I thought that’s what you had in mind. But it won’t succeed, Gorr.”

“Maybe it will, this time,” rumbled the Capellan.

Norden Lund, looking at Arnol as he entered, laughed, and then without saying anything went out. Varn Allan looked as though she were going to speak to Kenniston, but didn’t.

She said, “Then you are responsible for his appearance tomorrow, Gorr,” and she left.

Kenniston, looking after her, wished she had not spoken. And he wished that Lund had not laughed quite so smugly. He was worried enough as it was.

Arnol had reached them, was greeting Lal’lor as an old friend, smiling at Magro and Gorr Holl. His smile, his movements, were quick and sharp and only half finished, as though the tense nerves of the body were acting independently of the brain.

“I think we’ve got a chance this time, Lal’lor!” he said eagerly. “By God, I think we do! This Earth business may be just what we’ve waited for, the chance to ram the Arnol process down their throats whether they like it or not! It’s a lucky break!” Gorr Holl told him, “This is Kenniston, of Earth.” Jon Arnol looked a little ashamed as he turned to Kenniston. “I’m sorry if I sounded selfish. I know you’ve got your own terrible problem.

But if you knew how long I’ve sweated and waited and hoped! I’m a scientist, nothing else is important to me, and I’ve seen my whole life’s work and achievement held back by politics—”