One gunner fell, then another. Tie Sixim was beside him, firing at target after target with machine regularity. Someone had seen the muzzle blast of their guns, because weapons were turned on them, bullets tearing into the earth beside them, soldiers running toward them. Mark's gun clicked out of battery, empty of cartridges. He tore the empty clip away, struggled to jam in a full one; the soldier was above him.
Falling to one side with an arrow in his chest. Darker shadows moved, just as a solid wave of Sixim erupted through the open doorway.
That was the beginning of the end. As soon as they were among the soldiers, the slaughter began, no mercy, no quarter. Mark called the Indians to him, to the protection of their own battered Sixim, before they were also cut down. The carnage was brief and complete, and when it was over, a familiar one-eyed figure emerged from the building,
"Arinix," Mark called out, and the man turned and came over, "How did all this happen?"
"They were suspicious; they had been watching us for a long time. That officer we did not kill led them to this building." He said it without malice or regret, a statement of fact. Mark had no answer.
"Is this the last of them? Is the way open now?"
"There are more, but they will be eliminated. You see what happens when others attempt to control the way between the worlds?" He started away, then turned back. "Have you solved the problem with the Indians? Will they settle this world?"
"I think so. I would like to stay with them longer, give them what help I can."
"You do not wish to return to Einstein?"
That was a hard one to answer. Back to New York and the pollution and the life as a lawyer. It suddenly seemed a good deal emptier than it had. "I don't know. Perhaps, perhaps not. Let me finish here first."
Arinix turned away instantly and was gone. Mark went to Great Hawk, who sat cross-legged on' the ground and watched the operation with a great deal of interest. '
"Why did you and the others come to help?" Mark asked.
"It seemed too good a fight to miss. Besides, you said you would show us how to use the noise sticks. You could not do that if you were dead."
The smoke from the dying fires rose up in thin veils against the bright stars in the sky above. In his nostrils the air was cold and clean, its purity emphasized by the smell of wood smoke. Somewhere, not too far away, a wolf howled long and mournfully. This world, so recently empty of life, now had it in abundance, and would soon have human settlers as well, Indians of the Six Nations who would be escaping the fire that would destroy their own world. What sort of world would they make of it?
He had the sudden desire to see what would happen here, even to help in the shaping of it. The cramped life of a lawyer in a crowded world was without appeal. He had friends that he would miss, but he knew that new friends waited for him in the multiplicity of worlds he would soon visit. Really, there was no choice.
Arinix was by the open door issuing orders to the attentive Sixim. Mark called out to him.
The decision had really been an easy one.
Part 3. Earth Destroyed
What if the Universe and Sun are essentially undisturbed, but Earth itself undergoes a battering in a "Catastrophe of the Third Class"?
There have been dangers to Earth that were popular with science fiction writers in decades past but that have never really been in the astronomical cards. The planets of the solar system cannot be so perturbed in their movements that they begin a slow spiral into the Sun-not unless some method is provided for bleeding off their tremendous angular momentum. Nevertheless, it is a colorful possibility that sf hates to abandon ("Requiem" by Edmond Hamilton).
Today the Universe has become much more violent than m the old, old days of thirty years ago. We have learned about not merely exploding stars, but the cores of galaxies-billions of stars-that go up in agony. We deal with collapses into pulsars and black holes and the incredibly luminous quasars, And all of this gives writers the opportunity for dramatic ends indeed to Earth for the violence gives rise to radiation and that- ("At the Core" by Larry Nivenj,
The reverse is also dramatic. What if something happens to deprive us of our Sun altogether and we are threatened with ruin not through excess of energy but utter lack ("A Pail of Air" by Fritz Leiberi.
Nor need we feel we are entirely at the mercy of outside influences. Such is the power of Homo sapiens for evil that we can (and very likely are) ruining ourselves by the simple process of fouling our nest ("'King of the Hill" by Chad Oliver).
Requiem
by Edmond Hamilton
Kellon thought sourly that he wasn't commanding a star-ship, he was running a traveling circus. He had aboard telaudio men with tons of equipment, pontifical commentators who knew the answer to anything, beautiful females who were experts on the woman's angle, pompous bureaucrats after publicity, and entertainment stars who had come along for the same reason.
He had had a good ship and crew, one of the best in the Survey. Had had. They weren't any more. They had been taken off their proper job of pushing astrographical knowledge ever further into the remote regions of the galaxy, and had been sent off with this cargo of costly people on a totally unnecessary mission,
He said bitterly to himself, "Damn all sentimentalists."
He said aloud, "Does its position check with your calculated orbit, Mr. Riney?"
Riney, the Second, a young and serious man who had been fussing with instruments in the astrogation room, came out and said,
"Yes. Right on the nose. Shall we go in and land now?"
Kellon didn't answer for a moment, standing there in the front of the bridge, a middle-aged man, stocky, square-shouldered, and with his tanned, plain face showing none of the resentment he felt. He hated to give the order but he had to.
"All right, take her in."
He looked gloomily through -the filter-windows as they went in. In this fringe-spiral of the galaxy, stars were relatively infrequent, and there were only ragged drifts of them across the darkness. Full ahead shone a small, compact sun like a diamond. It was a white dwarf and had been so for two thousand years, giving forth so little warmth that the planets which circled it had been frozen and ice-locked all that time. They still were, all except the innermost world.
Kellon stared at that planet, a tawny blob. The ice that had sheathed it ever since its primary collapsed into a white dwarf had now melted. Months before, a dark wandering body had passed very close to this lifeless system. Its passing had perturbed the planetary orbits and the inner planets had started to spiral slowly in toward their sun, and the ice had begun to go.
Viresson, one of the junior officers, came into the bridge looking harassed. He said to Kellon,
"They want to see you down below, sir. Especially Mr. Borrodale. He says it's urgent."
Kellon thought wearily, Well, I might as well go down and face the pack of them. Herd's where they really begin.
He nodded to Viresson, and went do'wn below to the main cabin. The sight of it revolted him. Instead of his own men in it, relaxing or chinning, it held a small and noisy mob of overdressed, overloud men and women, all of whom seemed to be talking at once and uttering brittle, nervous laughter.
"Captain Kellon, I want to ask you-"
"Captain, if you please-"
He patiently nodded and smiled and plowed through them to Borrodale He had been given particular instructions to cooperate with Borrodale, the most famous tetaudio commentator in the Federation.