When A got back home one day, he looked for the largest pair of scissors he could find and laid them ready for the morrow.
And when B got home, he too set aside the biggest pair of scissors he possessed.
Next day, when the two friends met, they brandished their scissors and flew at each other’s heads, paying no attention to their girl friends’ protesting cries. Before you could say snip, there they were, standing horrified at the sight of each other’s bald head, and gingerly feeling the place where their own hair had been.
While the two girl friends said: “I could never love a man with a bald head”—and ran off down the road as fast as they could go.
OCTOBER 1
My story was broadcast this morning. People liked it. It went down well with the other side too, and they broadcast a humorous retort: “Buy yourself a wig, bald fellow!”
My reply was: “There are no wigs to be had underground. We shall have to stay bald.”
No, not everything that is gone can be replaced. A bald head is bald—even with a wig. A destroyed world is destroyed.
OCTOBER 2
Now our ex-enemy’s broadcasts have stopped. Maybe it is just a technical hitch. But maybe—no, it is better not to think about it. Let us wait and see.
X-107m and P seem to get along well. I do not see P often, as I prefer not to go to the lounge, while she seldom visits her husband in our room. But X-107m appears very satisfied with his lot.
He does not keep me company in quite the way he did before. I listen to music more now, even though the tape has repeated itself many times since our arrival here. The same thing every twelve days. But, even so, there is something about a piece of quality which enables you to listen to it again and again.
OCTOBER 3
They are silent. They must have died. Suddenly, like Level 6. Perhaps from the same cause—the unknown one. We shall never know it, unless we perish the same way. And if we do, we shall not know it for long.
People on Level 7 are distressed, deeply distressed. I see around me the same long faces that marked the first days of our seclusion in these dungeons. People look quite as unhappy as they did before they became adjusted.
They feel lonely again. Not because of the seclusion, but because they are alone in the world. There is no longer even an ex-enemy to communicate with.
Also they are afraid. They fear gamma rays and neutrons, alpha particles and beta particles. They are afraid to eat and to drink and to breathe. But perhaps most of all they are afraid of the unknown. The fact that they do not know how and when they may be struck down makes them nervous. They are afraid to sleep, for they may never wake.
Spiritually, radiation is already active on Level 7. It spreads panic without even being here. This might be the most powerful form of psychological warfare. And the most effortless: nobody does anything, and the fear is universal. The idea of radiation enters the mind imperceptibly, just as the real radiation invisibly penetrates the body.
OCTOBER 4
The ex-enemy has been given up for dead. We are alone now, literally and absolutely alone.
How long shall we last? Shall we survive down here?
Raise families? Keep humanity alive until one day man creeps out of these miserable holes?
Or shall we perish as the other levels did? And will we know what has hit us or not? Shall we be hit suddenly and unawares, or shall we have to watch death spreading all around us? Who knows?
The atomic reactor which supplies our energy has to undergo some repair work, so everything will come to a halt for an hour. I intend to stop writing and go to bed before they switch off the lighting. It will not inconvenience many people to be without light at this time of night. I expect most of them are asleep anyway. The others can discover what it is like to be as blind as real moles, which should be quite interesting.
OCTOBER 5
I was asleep last night long before the reactor was repaired. This morning I was told that the job took not one hour but three, and that there was an accident: one of the atomic energy officers working on it, AE-307m, suffered a very strong overdose of radiation and died before morning.
Like X-117, AE-307m was given a short obituary over the general loudspeaker system. “He gave his life to ensure our survival,” the speaker said, and his praise of the dead man seemed to me quite fair. With no reactor we should last a very short time indeed!
It is a sad business, this. Everybody feels sorry for AE-307m. And for his widow.
OCTOBER 6
The two AE officers who helped AE-307m repair the reactor have died too.
Moreover, I saw somebody vomiting today at lunch. Quite a few others left the dining-room hurriedly during the meal.
Has it started?
OCTOBER 7
It has finally reached us. We shall not get away with it.
Sickness and death are all around. Some people die with hardly a struggle. Others only vomit to start with, and manage to keep going. Slight nausea is all I have felt so far.
And the funny part about it is that it is the reactor—our own atomic reactor—which is killing us. The source of life down here, our man-made sun, now sends its death-dealing rays through Level 7.
Before long we shall all be gone. This is the beginning of the end.
OCTOBER 8
This morning the loudspeaker gave some official information about the source of trouble.
Something went wrong with the reactor. If it had happened on the surface the reactor could have been stopped, isolated and repaired at leisure. If necessary, people could have been moved to a safe distance. But here on Level 7 there was no choice. The reactor had to be repaired where it was, and quickly, even with the danger of lethal radiation. Without light, the plants would have stopped supplying oxygen; and we would soon have died.
So the AE officers risked their lives and partly succeeded: the energy supply will continue. Unfortunately, so will the lethal radiation. The reactor will go on working simultaneously as a source of life and a source of death.
Precisely how and why, I do not know. And I do not care. There are some ‘technical reasons’. That is enough explanation for me. It seems to be enough for others too.
OCTOBER 9
This death is quick. We must be getting powerful doses of those rays or particles—whatever is killing us.
People are dying all round like flies. Yesterday some attempt was still being made to remove the corpses, but today nobody seems to be bothering, and the bodies lie where they fall. Perhaps there is no one from the medical department left to take them away, or nobody strong enough. Most people do not come out of their rooms even for meals. I only went out for lunch today, and the sight of half a dozen corpses in the dining-room very nearly stopped me eating. Quite two thirds of the meals on the moving band were left untouched.
Although I do not feel as bad as the others, I know it cannot last. Death is in me.
X-107m has just come into the room. He looks very pale, and has flopped down on his bed.
He has just told me that P died about half an hour ago. He was with her at the end, and he says she mentioned me. He is not sure whether she was conscious or delirious.
“She was a fine woman,” he says.