He left the sentence unfinished and switched on the video screen. He had to try a dozen channels before he found one that was still casting. When every gram of a man’s energy goes to drawing his next breath, he cannot tend his machine.
At last he picked up a Nyork newscast. The announcer was sneezing badly (“The older literature,” Vyrko observed, “found that comic but still contriving to speak, and somewhere a group of technicians must have had partial control of themselves.
“Four hundred and seventy-two planes have crashed,” the announcer said, “in the past forty-eight hours. Civil authorities have forbidden further plane travel indefinitely because of the danger of spasms at the controls, and it is rumored that all vehicular transport whatsoever is to come under the same ban. No Rock-lipper has arrived from Lunn for over a week, and it is thirty-six hours since we have made contact with the Lunn telestation. Urope has been silent for over two days, and Asia for almost a week.
‘“The most serious threat of this epidemic,’ the head of the Academy has said in an authorized statement, ‘is the complete disruption of the systems of communication upon which world civilization is based. When man becomes physically incapable of governing his machines . . .”’
It was then that they saw the first of the yellow bands.
It was just that: a band of bright yellow some thirty centimeters wide, about five meters long, and so thin as to seem insubstantial, a mere stripe of color. It came underneath the back drop behind the announcer. It streaked about the casting room with questing sinuosity. No features, no appendages relieved its yellow blankness.
Then with a deft whipping motion it wrapped itself around the announcer. It held him only an instant. His hideously shriveled body plunged toward the camera as the screen went dead.
That was the start of the horror.
Vyrko was never to learn the origin of the yellow bands. Even Kirth-Labbery could offer no more than conjectures. From another planet, another system, another galaxy, another universe . . .
It did not matter. Kirth-Labbery was almost as indifferent to the problem as was Lavra; precise knowledge had now lost its importance. What signified was that they were alien, and that they were rapidly and precisely completing the destruction of mankind begun by the agnoton.
“Their arrival immediately after the epidemic,” Kirth-Labbery concluded, “cannot be coincidence. You will observe that they function freely in an agnoton-laden atmosphere.”
“It would be interesting,” Vyrko commented, “to visualize a band sneezing . . .”
“It’s possible,” the scientist went on, “that the agnoton was a poison-gas barrage laid down to soften the Earth for their coming; but is it likely that they could know that a gas harmless to them would be lethal to other life? It’s more probable that they learned from spectroscopic analysis that the atmosphere of this Earth lacked an element essential to them, which they supplied before invading.”
Vyrko considered the problem while Lavra sliced a peach with delicate grace . . . then was unable to resist licking the rich juice from her fingers. “Then if the agnoton,” he ventured, “is something that they imported, is it possible that their supply might run short?”
Kirth-Labbery fiddled with the dials under the screen. It was still possible to pick up occasional glimpses from remote sectors, though by now the heart sickened in advance at the knowledge of the inevitable end of the cast.
“It is possible, Vyrko. It is the only hope. The three of us here, where the agnoton and the yellow bands are alike helpless to enter, may continue our self-sufficient existence long enough to outlast the invaders. Perhaps somewhere on earth there are other such nuclei; but I doubt it. We are the whole of the future—and I am old.”
Vyrko frowned. He resented the terrible weight of a burden that he did not want but could not reject. He felt himself at once oppressed and ennobled. Lavra went on eating her peach.
The video screen sprang into light. A young man with the tense lined face of premature age spoke hastily, urgently, “To all of you, if there are any of you . . . I have heard no answer for two days now . . . It is chance that I am here. But watch, all of you! I have found how the yellow bands came here. I am going to turn the camera on it now—watch!”
The field of vision panned to something that was for a moment totally incomprehensible. “This is their ship,” the old young man gasped. It was a set of bars of a metal almost exactly the color of the bands themselves, and it looked in the first instant like a three-dimensional projection of a tesseract. Then as you looked at it your eye seemed to follow strange new angles. Possibilities of vision opened up beyond your capacities. For a moment you seemed to see what the human eye was not framed to grasp.
“They come,” the voice panted on, “from—”
The voice and the screen went dead at once. Vyrko covered his eyes with his hands. Darkness was infinite relief. A minute passed before he felt that he could endure once more even the normal exercise of the optic nerve. He opened his eyes sharply at a little scream from Lavra.
He opened them to see how still Kirth-Labbery sat. The human heart, too, is framed to endure only so much; and, as the scientist had said, he was old.
It was three days after Kirth-Labbery’s death before Vyrko had brought his prose and verse record up to date. Nothing more had appeared on the video, even after the most patient hours of knob-twirling. Now Vyrko leaned back from the keyboard and contemplated his completed record—and then sat forward with
