He saw what looked like land—fantastic fields under cultivation, a settlement of some sort, factories, and— beings. Everything moved with incredible rapidity. He couldn't see one of the inhabitants except as darting pinky- white streaks. Fascinated, he stared for a long minute. A sound behind him made him whirl. It was Kidder, rubbing his hands together briskly. There was a broad smile on his face.
'They did it,' he said happily. 'You see?'
Johansen didn't see until he began to realize that there was a dead silence outside.
He ran to a window. It was night outside—the blackest night—when it should have been dusk. 'What happened?'
'The Neoterics,' said Kidder, and laughed like a child. 'My friends downstairs there. They threw up the impenetrable shield over the whole island. We can't be touched now!'
And at Johansen's amazed questions, he launched into a description of the race of beings below them.
Outside the shell, things happened. Nine airplanes suddenly went dead-stick. Nine pilots glided downward, powerless, and some fell into the sea, and some struck the miraculous gray shell that loomed in place of an island; slid off and sank.
And ashore, a man named Wright sat in a car, half dead with fear, vvhile government men surrounded him, approached cautiously, daring instant death from a now-dead source.
In a room deep in the White House, a high-ranking army officer shrieked, 'I can't stand it any more! I can't!' and leaped up, snatched a red cube off the president's desk, ground it to ineffectual litter under his shining boots.
And in a few days they took a broken old man away from the bank and put him in an asylum, where he died within a week.
The shield, you see, was truly impenetrable. The power plant was untouched and sent out its beams; but the beams could not get out, and anything powered from the plant went dead. The story never became public, although for some years there was heightened naval activity off the New England coast. The navy, so the story went, had a new target range out there—a great hemiovoid of gray material. They bombed it and shelled it and rayed it and blasted all around it, but never even dented its smooth surface.
Kidder and Johansen let it stay there. They were happy enough with their researches and their Neoterics. They did not hear or feel the shelling, for the shield was truly impenetrable. They synthesized their food and their light and air from the materials at hand, and they simply didn't care. They were the only survivors of the bombing, with the exception of three poor maimed devils who died soon afterward.
All this happened many years ago, and Kidder and Johansen may be alive today, and they may be dead. But that doesn't matter too much. The important thing is that the great gray shell will bear watching. Men die, but races live. Some day the Neoterics, after innumerable generations of inconceivable advancement, will take down their shield and come forth. When I think of that I feel frightened.
'If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God!'—
Emerson
Aton 77, director of Saro University, thrust out a belligerent lower lip and glared at the young newspaperman in a hot fury.
Theremon 762 took that fury in his stride. In his earlier days, when his now widely syndicated column was only a mad idea in a cub reporter's mind, he had specialized in 'impossible' interviews. It had cost him bruises, black eyes, and broken bones; but it had given him an ample supply of coolness and self-confidence.
So he lowered the outthrust hand that had been so pointedly ignored and calmly waited for the aged director to get over the worst. Astronomers were queer ducks, anyway, and if Aton's actions of the last two months meant anything, this same Aton was the queer-duckiest of the lot.
Aton 77 found his voice, and though it trembled with restrained emotion, the careful, somewhat pedantic, phraseology, for which the famous astronomer was noted, did not abandon him.
'Sir,' he said, 'you display an infernal gall in coming to me with that impudent proposition of yours.'
The husky telephotographer of the Observatory, Beenay 25, thrust a tongue's tip across dry lips and interposed nervously, 'Now, sir, after all—'
The director turned to him and lifted a white eyebrow. 'Do not interfere, Beenay.
I will credit you with good intentions in bringing this man here; but I will tolerate no insubordination now.'
Theremon decided it was time to take a part. 'Director Aton, if you'll let me finish what I started saying I think—'
'I don't believe, young man,' retorted Aton, 'that anything you could say now would count much as compared with your daily columns of these last two months.
You have led a vast newspaper campaign against the efforts of myself and my colleagues to organize the world against the menace which it is now too late to avert.
You have done your best with your highly personal attacks to make the staff of this Observatory objects of ridicule.'
The director lifted the copy of the Saro City Chronicle on the table and shook it at Theremon furiously. 'Even a person of your well-known impudence should have hesitated before coming to me with a request that he be allowed to cover today's events for his paper. Of all newsmen, you!'
Aton dashed the newspaper to the floor, strode to the window and clasped his arms behind his back.
'You may leave,' he snapped over his shoulder. He stared moodily out at the skyline where Gamma, the brightest of the planet's six suns, was setting. It had already faded and yellowed into the horizon mists, and Aton knew he would never see it again as a sane man.
He whirled. 'No, wait, come here!' He gestured peremptorily. 'I'll give you your story.'
The newsman had made no motion to leave, and now he approached the old man slowly. Aton gestured outward, 'Of the six suns, only Beta is left in the sky. Do you see it?'
The question was rather unnecessary. Beta was almost at zenith; its ruddy light flooding the landscape to an unusual orange as the brilliant rays of setting Gamma died. Beta was at aphelion. It was small; smaller than Theremon had ever seen it before, and for the moment it was undisputed ruler of Lagash's sky.
Lagash's own sun, Alpha, the one about which it revolved, was at the antipodes; as were the two distant companion pairs. The red dwarf Beta—Alpha's immediate companion—was alone, grimly alone.
Aton's upturned face flushed redly in the sunlight. 'In just under four hours,' he said, 'civilization, as we know it, comes to an end. It will do so because, as you see, Beta is the only sun in the sky.' He smiled grimly. 'Print that! There'll be no one to read it.'
'But if it turns out that four hours pass—and another four—and nothing happens?' asked Theremon softly.
'Don't let that worry you. Enough will happen.'
'Granted! And still—if nothing happens?'
For a second time, Beenay 25 spoke, ' 'Sir, I think you ought to listen to him.'
Theremon said, 'Put it to a vote, Director Aton.'
There was a stir among the remaining five members of the Observatory staff, who till now had maintained an attitude of wary neutrality.
'That,' stated Aton flatly, 'is not necessary.' He drew out his pocket watch.
'Since your good friend, Beenay, insists so urgently, I will give you five minutes.
Talk away.'
'Good! Now, just what difference would it make if you allowed me to take down an eyewitness account of what's to come? If your prediction comes true, my presence won't hurt; for in that case my column would never be written. On the other hand, if nothing comes of it, you will just have to expect ridicule or worse. It would be wise to leave that ridicule to friendly hands.'
Aton snorted. 'Do you mean yours when you speak of friendly hands?'
'Certainly!' Theremon sat down and crossed his legs. 'My column may have been a little rough at times, but I
