The second massive detonation came. From the waist down she was intact. The rest of her had ceased to exist. There was a pinkish spray on the side of the building, an enormous dished cavity in the door of the convertible. The street was once again at peace.
The people slowly got to their feet. They wore dazed expressions. They licked dry lips and their eyes rolled. Henry sat up, wiped his mouth, stared at Will and began to curse. Jake walked over and picked Martha up. Her eyes opened wide and she struggled.
“It’s all over, baby,” Jake said thickly. “All over. Cry if you want to.”
Amro came to his feet as he sensed the presence outside his door. The mind exuded an odd effluvium of triumph and peace. He stood, awaiting the known fate, as the door was unsealed. It swung open and he saw the Chief standing in the corridor. The Chief’s eyes were odd. For a moment Amro couldn’t understand. Then he remembered having seen children cry. He had never seen a man cry.
The guard, standing at attention in respect for the toga of rank, said, “The orders from Lofta were that the prisoner is to be—”
“I countermand his orders. Amro will come with me.”
Amro walked slowly out of the room, faking calmness, his senses alert, waiting for any chance, no matter how remote.
“Walk beside me,” the Chief said.
Amro did so. The Chief said when they were out of earshot of the guard, “Do not attempt an escape, Amro. I am helping you.”
“What sort of a trick is this?”
“No trick. You told me once that it would be good if I were to walk in the streets of the twin world. And there isn’t much time. I’d like to try it.”
“What do you mean — not much time?”
“Don’t question me, Amro.”
They walked past the corridor guards and the Chief took their salutes without response. Amro saw that the guards looked uncertain. He sensed that they were on the verge of objecting. There was a small cold spot in the small of his back as he passed each of them.
The Chief walked too slowly, he thought. He walked like a man in a strange dream. They reached the ramp and started down. “You will show me the twin world, Amro,” the Chief said. His voice was gentle.
“So you can plan to spoil it.”
“Do you think so?”
“What other reason would you have?”
“That’s right. What other reason would I have?”
On the third landing the guard said, “You cannot pass below this level. No one can pass unless I am told by Lofta to permit it.”
The Chief lost his odd lethargic manner. He straightened and his lips grew thin. His palm cracked off the guard’s cheek. “Take that to Lofta with my compliments. Stand aside.”
The guard hesitated, licked his lips. His cheek was red. He saluted and stood aside. They continued down the ramp.
Hope grew slowly in Amro. Free on Earth he would have a chance. Maybe, if the Earthpeople could be made to believe him, he could help them fight against this thing, this doorway. It would be a losing fight but a good one. For the first time in his life he sensed that something was worth fighting for.
They reached the last corridor, the ground level corridor, stretching to where, at the very end, two agents guarded the switch which controlled the exit to Earth. They studied with interest the two who approached.
“Open the doorway,” the Chief said. It was a tone heavy with the custom of years of command, which did not admit of any possibility of disobedience.
An agent dutifully turned and threw the switch. The blank end of the corridor was suddenly darker than any night. The other agent moved into the center of the corridor. “You’ll wait for Lofta to send orders,” he said.
The Chief was mild. “You know who I am?”
“Of course. But I have known of other agents tested in this manner. And so I shall follow my orders.” The deadly blue tube appeared in his hand.
“You would even kill me?”
“Yes sir. I would kill you should you try to pass me.”
The black doorway was so near. Amro moved a bit to one side. The blue muzzle flicked in his direction and the agent said, “You have no chance, you see.”
It began as a deep heavy vibration, a trembling that was transmitted from the corridor floor to legs and skull. Amro looked quickly at the Chief. The smaller man’s head was cocked to one side and he wore the look of one who listens carefully.
“What is that?” the agent demanded.
“You could call it the end of the world,” the Chief said. And then, almost to himself, “The Center strikes first.”
The vibration became deeper and stronger as though the crust of Strada quivered on the jellied rock underneath. A far-off rumble, like the sound of heavy machines, slowly climbed up through the octaves to a roar, a drone, a whine, a rising, unbearable scream. The whole corridor shook violently, throwing them off their feet. Bits of the wall flaked off, dropped on them as they tried to rise.
And then it was as though a giant’s hands grasped the far end of the corridor floor, snapping it like a rug. A section of the roof fell in yards behind them and the white heat slanted through the opening, destroying vision, crisping exposed skin.
Amro struggled to his feet, getting his balance, remaining upright despite the spasms of the corridor floor which lifted him into the air. One of the agents lay still. The other, thinking blindly of duty even at the obvious end, clawed his way up toward the switch.
His hand was inches from it as Amro plunged toward the black doorway. He thought in mid-stride that he was too late. The whole corridor tilted over at a crazy angle as he lunged through the blackness. There was a great pain in his legs and he tumbled over and over.
They had stood and watched the oblong of blackness which had so startlingly appeared on the sunlit beach. Henry had raced to the sedan and ordered that a fifty-caliber Browning with a field mount be borrowed from the National Guard arsenal and rushed out to the beach. He returned and stood beside Jake and the others, gun drawn, waiting for what might come out of the blackness.
Jake stood with the cold sweat running down his ribs. Martha stood a little behind and twice he turned and told her to take shelter behind the cars. She appeared not to hear him.
Henry said, “If we get time to get that gun set up we can pepper the hell out of anything that tries to come through.”
Jake nodded, sensing the hollowness of Henry’s confidence. It matched his own. He was certain that Henry knew that something could come out of there that would make the machine gun as effective as throwing wild rice at armor plate. But all you can do is try.
All you can do is stand and think of how neat and explicable everything was until all of a sudden you found out that other beings aren’t going to come from the distant stars sometime in the unknown future — but out of an obscene blackness right in your own back yard, here and now. And then you know that no matter what you do you aren’t ready for them — never were — never will be.
The afternoon radio programs were on, the Texas disc jockeys featuring slightly nasal lonesome cowhands. A commentator was speaking in stern voice of the latest Russian veto and in White Sands they were readying another big one of the booster type, proud of their knowledge, not knowing how feeble and primitive it was. There was unrest on Hawaiian docks and critical acclaim for the new Bergman epic and a novelist’s anatomical details banned in Boston...
But here, with the sand yellow-white in the sun, with the porpoises playing in the green water a thousand yards out, with a crab scuttling down toward the breakers, a knot of men and a quiet girl watched the deep and impossible blackness with all the forlorn courage of a Neanderthal village attacking a tank column. Here was the end of a world and its color was black.