“They were starting to loot the coal piles,” Hubble said. “Poor devils, it was summer and they didn’t have much fuel. Some of them burned their furniture last night to keep alive.”
Borchard said anxiously, “We don’t want to have to kill anyone. And right now, they’ll believe you scientists before anyone else.”
Hubble nodded. “You talk to them, Ken. You’ve gotten to know them better than I have, and they’ll trust you more.”
Kenniston said, “The hell they will. And anyway, what’ll I say to them? ‘Go home and freeze to death quietly, like gentlefolk, and let’s not have any nasty scenes.’ They’ll love that.”
“Maybe they don’t have to freeze,” said Hubble. “Maybe there’s an answer to that.”
The half-formed thought in the back of Kenniston’s mind leaped forward. He looked at Hubble, and he knew that the older man had had that same thought, but sooner and clearer. A small flicker of hope began to stir again in Kenniston.
“The domed city,” he said.
Hubble nodded. “Yes. It retains heat to a considerable degree, at night.
We saw that. That’s why the dome was built—how long ago? No matter.
It’s our only half-warm refuge. We have to go there, Ken, all of us. And soon! We can’t go through many more nights here!”
“But will they go? And if they do, what’ll happen when they see that city and realize Earth is a dead world?”
Hubble made an impatient gesture. “We’ll have to take care of that when it comes. The thing now is to give these people some hope. Tell them to wait in their homes, that soon they’ll be safe. Tell them anything you like, but make them go!”
Kenniston scrambled up a black ridge of coal, to stand above the crowd. From outside the cordon they snarled at him when he began. But he shouted them down, calling out the names of the ones he knew, ordering them to listen—being masterful, while his heart pounded with the same dread that drove the men and women in the street.
“Don’t talk to us about law when it’s the end of the world!” yelled a hard-faced woman.
“It’s the end of nothing unless you lose your heads,” Kenniston hammered. “The Mayor is arranging now to give you what you want—an answer to how you’re going to live and be safe. Your lives and the lives of your families depend on how you cooperate. Go home to your radios and wait for the orders.”
“Will they give us coal?” shouted a burly mill-hand.
“Coal, food, everything you need. Nobody’s going to cheat anyone.
We’re all in the same boat. We’ll stay in, or get out, together. Now go home and keep your families together and wait.”
He called suddenly to the men on guard, “You, too! Get out of here and report back to your headquarters! The orders coming up are more important than this coal!”
He climbed back down from the black heap, wondering whether his feeble attempt at psychology would work. Borchard started angry re-monstrance about dismissal of the guards, but Hubble shut him up.
“It worked,” he said. “Look, they’re going.” As the crowd dispersed, Chief of Police Kimer arrived. His unshaven face was gray from lack of sleep, his eyes red-rimmed. He did not seem to be much excited by the trouble at the coal yard.
“We’ve had a lot more than this on our hands, during the night,” he said.
Kenniston learned then what had gone on in Middletown since the Mayor had finished speaking—the deaths from shock, the scattering of suicides, the outbreaks of looting in the downtown streets, quickly checked. A dozen people, mostly drunks, had died of cold.
“But the barricades at the edge of town were the worst,” Kimer said tiredly. “You know, a good number of people from outside Middletown were trapped here by this thing. They, and some of our own people gone panicky, tried to stampede out of town.” He added, as he turned back to his car, “They tell me more than two thousand people were baptized last night.”
“We’ll go with you to City Hall,” Hubble told him. “Yes, you too, Ken.
I’ll need your help with the Mayor.”
It seemed impossible that the pudgy little Mayor could be a problem.
He had been so docile, so pathetically eager to take advice and follow orders. But when, in City Hall, Hubble confronted him with the plan to evacuate Middletown, Mayor Garris’ face took on a mulish look.
“It’s crazy,” he said. “Take up a whole city of fifty thousand people and transport them to another place we don’t know anything about? It’s insane!”
“There are enough cars, buses and trucks to transport the population and supplies. There’s enough gasoline to run them.”
“But this other city—what do we know about it? Nothing. There might be any kind of danger there. No. I was born in Middletown. I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve worked hard to get where I am. I just spent five thousand dollars to redecorate my house, and I’m not going to leave it.”
He glared at them, and his plump body trembled. Hubble said gently,
“We’re all afraid, Mr. Garris. It’s a hard thing to do. People have their roots, and they can’t break them easily all at once. But we must go. We must seek shelter, or die.”
The Mayor shook his head. “My wife and daughter—they’ve been hysterical all night, pleading with me to do something, to make things go as they always have. This has been an awful shock to them. I don’t think they could stand any more.”
“Slap their faces, Mr. Garris,” Hubble said brutally. “This has been a shock to all of us. Now what are you going to do? Will you call in the City Council or won’t you?”
“I can’t, not on that proposal.” Garris’ face crinkled like that of a child about to cry. “Honestly, gentlemen, I can’t.”
Kenniston thought of Carol shivering in her fur coat, struggling with the last shovels of coal, and the thought made him grasp Garris savagely by the shirtfront.
“All right, don’t,” he snapped. “The people are waiting for an announcement from you, but I’ll make one myself. I’ll tell them that there’s a way to save them, but that Mayor Garris won’t hear of it. I’ll tell them they must die of cold because their Mayor won’t give up his big fine house with its cellarful of coal. Would you like me to tell them that, Mr. Garris?”
Kenniston thought he had never seen a man turn so white. “They’d tear me to pieces,” whispered Garris. “No. No, don’t.” He looked piteously from one to the other, and then he said, “I’ll call in the Council.”
The men of the Council reacted, at first, very much as the Mayor had done. Kenniston did not entirely blame them. The difficulties of uprooting a population of fifty thousand and moving it bodily in a short space of time to a place it had never seen nor heard of were enough to daunt anybody. But Hubble’s arguments were unanswerable. It was move or die, and they knew it, and in the end the decision was made. A crushed, frightened little man, Mayor Garris went to make his announcement.
On the way to the broadcasting station, Kenniston looked at Middletown. The big houses, standing lordly on the North Side. The little houses, in close-set rows, with their tiny gardens. It was going to be hard, very hard. The people who lived in those houses would not want to leave them.
In a low, tired voice, bereft now of pomposity and guile, the Mayor spoke to the people of Middletown.
“So we must leave Middletown, temporarily,” he concluded. And he repeated the word. “Temporarily. The domed city out there will be a little cold too, but not so cold as unprotected Middletown. We can live there, until— until things clear up. Stay by your radios. You will be given instructions. Please cooperate, to save all our lives. Please—”
Chapter 6
CARAVAN INTO TOMORROW
Kenniston lost track of his own emotions very quickly in the rush of urgent tasks. City Hall became the nerve
