My fist struck the control panel and I said with a barren anger: «But so are others. There’s nothing wrong here that men haven’t found, and beaten. The wildlife is worse on Zion, the weight is heavier on Atlas, a full-fledged ice age is under way on Asgard, Lucifer is hotter and has a higher particle count—»
She turned in her seat to face me. Sundown light, streaming through the turret, changed her gold hair to copper against purple shadows. «But none of those were attacked,» she said.
«Not yet,» I said. «At least, as far as we know.»
We should not have mentioned it. The thought had haunted us since we returned from our last voyage and got the news. It dwelt in the back of every mind on Earth. Perhaps it had done so since man first ventured beyond the Solar System. Our few score parsecs of exploring are no trail whatsoever into that wilderness which is the galaxy. Who can doubt that others prowl it, with longer legs and sharper fangs?
Why had they struck? How? Where else? Who’s next?
The Sibyllans did their best to answer Laurie’s questions and mine. But not only were they hard-pressed for time and dull-witted with exhaustion, their information was scant. I had now inspected the ruins, some photographs of ships in flight, eyewitness accounts, compiled histories. The basic narrative was in my brain.
The raiders could not hit everywhere at once. Josiah Brenner, Tom’s father, President in his day, got most population centers evacuated before they went up in fireballs. A majority already lived on isolated farms, it took so many hectares to support one person. For the same reason, the former townsfolk scattered across the whole habitable planet afterward.
The result was that hardly anyone today knew anything that I did not. In fact, my picture of the catastrophe was clearer than most. The ordinary Sibyllan had neither time nor energy for studying the past. The educational level had plummeted; children generally left school to work before they were twelve Earth-years old. Folklore took the place of books.
The books themselves were vague. No real census or scholarship was possible. «Casualties were heavy,» said the chroniclers, and told many tales of suffering and heroism. But the figures they gave were obvious guesswork, often contradicting someone else’s. I believed I could make a better estimate myself on the basis of one fact. The Sibyllan population which the original colonizing scheme had projected for this decade was some two hundred thousand. The actual population was a twentieth of that.
After a while, Laurie and I quit. We could do more good back in Jimstown, helping prepare for the exodus. With facilities as primitive as they were here, that was going to be a harrowing job. Our crew would stay after the Fleet left and search for further clues. Besides, I didn’t fancy traveling after dark.
We had to, though. Passing near a scarp, our car was struck by a boulder when the crust shivered and started a landslide. The damage took hours to fix—in that smoldering light and abominable wind. We could have called for a flitter, but that would have meant leaving the car till dawn. It might be totally wrecked, and it could ill be spared. We drove on.
Cumae went under the mountains. Night thickened as clouds lifted. Presently it was absolute, except where our headlights speared before us, picking out bushes that tossed in the wind and occasional three-eyed animals that slunk between them. The air grew louder, thrusting against the sides, making them quiver and resonate until the noise filled our skulls. Then the rain came, a cloudburst such as Earth has never seen, mixed with hail like knucklebones.
«We’d better take shelter!» I yelled. Laurie could barely hear me through the drumbeat and the howling. «High ground—get away from flash floods—» Lightning blinded me; the whole heaven was incandescent, again and again and again, and thunder picked me up and shook me. I strained over the charts, the inertial navigator, yes, this way, a farmstead…
We could not have made it on wheels. The ground effect held us above mudslides, water avalanches, flattened crops and splintered orchards. Barely, it held us, though the hurricane tried to fling us back into the rising river which had been a valley. I do not know how long it was before we found the cottage, save that it was long indeed.
The house stood. Like most dwellings on Sibylla, it was a fortress, rock walls, shuttered slit windows, ponderous doors, roof held down by cables. In thin air, driven by high temperature differentials and solar irradiations, you must expect murderous weather from time to time. The barns were smashed, there having been insufficient manpower and materials to build them as sturdily, and no doubt the cattle and crops were lost. But the house stood.
I reached its lee, threw out a couple of ground anchors, put the autopilot on standby, and opened the escape hatch. Laurie slipped, the wind caught her, she almost went downhill to her death. I grabbed her, though, got dragged into the mud but hung on somehow. Clinging together, we fought our way through a universe of storm to the house. The door was bolted from within. Our pounding was lost in the racket. I remembered about hurricane doors before the hail beat us unconscious. We found one on the south side, an airlock-type arrangement which could safely admit refugees. At that, I had hell’s own time reclosing and dogging the outer door before we opened the inner.
We stumbled through, into a typical Sibyllan home. One room served for cooking, eating, sleeping, handcrafting, everything. Screens offered some pretense of privacy, but here they stood unused against the sooty, unornamented walls. A brick oven gave reasonable warmth, but the single lantern was guttering and demon-shaped shadows moved in every corner.
A man and his wife sat on a bench by a cradle that he must have made himself. She had her face against his breast, her arms around his neck, and wept, not loudly, only with a despair so complete that she had no strength left to curse God. He held her, murmuring, sometimes stroking her faded hair. With one foot he rocked the cradle.
They didn’t notice us for a moment. Then he let her go and climbed erect, a burly man, his beard flecked with gray, his clothes clean but often patched. She remained seated, staring at us, trying to stop her tears and comprehend what we were.
Wind, rain, thunder invaded the stout walls. I heard the man say, slowly, «You’re from Earth.»
«Yes.» I introduced us. He shook hands in an absentminded fashion and mumbled his own name too low for me to catch.
«You can stay here, sure,» he added. «We got food in the cupboard till the storm passes. Afterward, Jimstown’s walking distance.»
«We can do better than that,» I said, commanding a smile forth, trying to ignore our drowned-rat condition, for they needed whatever comfort was to be gotten. «We have a car.»
Laurie went to the woman. «Don’t cry, please, my dear,» she murmured; somehow I heard her through the noise, and her head shone in the murk. «I know your farm’s wiped out. But you’re leaving soon anyway, and we’ll see you’re taken care of, you and your whole fam—Oh!» She stopped. Her teeth gleamed, catching at her lip.
The woman was not pregnant. But, craning my neck, I too saw that the cradle stood empty.
«I buried her around sundown,» the man said, looking past me. His tone was flat and his face was stiff, but the scarred hands kept twisting together. «A little girl. She lived several weeks. We hoped—And now the rain must’ve washed her out. I did think Sibylla might have let her sleep. We wrapped her up snug, and gave her a doll I’d made, so she wouldn’t be too lonesome after we were gone. But everything’s scattered now, I reckon.»
«I’m sorry,» I groped. «Maybe… later—» Barely in time, I saw Laurie’s furious headshake. «What a terrible thing.»
Laurie sat down by the wife and whispered to her.
Once, on our way home, she told me what had been confided that night, hoping it would influence my report. This was the one child they had had, after five miscarriages. The birth was difficult and the doctor did not think any more were possible.