He got up and started to pace again.
“And having the ability to control other minds, it sets about to make the world—the Earth—safe for Martians or Venusians or whatever they are. It sees—after a few days of study—that the world is on the brink of destroying itself and needs only a push. So it could give that push.”
“It could get inside a nut and make him assassinate the President, and get caught at it. It could make a Russian shoot his Number 1. It could make a Spaniard shoot the prime minister of England. It could start a bloody riot in the U. N., and make an army man, there to guard it, explode an A-bomb dump. It could—hell, Beautiful, it could push this world into a final war within a week. It practically has done it.”
He walked over to the window and stroked the cat’s sleek fur while he frowned down at the gun emplacements going up under the bright floodlights.
And he’s done it and even if my guess is right I couldn’t stop him because I couldn’t find him. And nobody would believe me, now. He’ll make the world safe for Martians. When the war is over, a lot of little ships like that—or big ones—can land here and take over what’s left ten times as easy as they could.
He lighted a cigarette with hands that shook a little. He said, “The more I think of it, the more—”
He sat down in the chair again. He said, “Beautiful, I’ve got to try. Screwy as that idea is, I’ve got to give it to the authorities, whether they believe it or not. That Major I met was an intelligent guy. So is General Keely. I—”
He started to walk to the phone and then sat down again. “I’ll call both of them, but let’s work it out just a little finer first. See if I can make any intelligent suggestions how they could go about finding the—the being—”
He groaned. “Beautiful, it’s impossible. It wouldn’t even have to be a human being. It could be an animal, anything. It could be you. He’d probably take over whatever nearby type of mind was nearest his own. If he was remotely feline, you’d have been the nearest cat.”
He sat up and stared at her. He said, “I’m going crazy, Beautiful. I’m remembering how you jumped and twisted just after that spaceship blew up its mechanism and went inert. And, listen, Beautiful, you’ve been sleeping twice as much as usual lately. Has your mind been out—”
“Say, that would be why I couldn’t wake you up yesterday to feed you. Beautiful, cats always wake up easily. Cats do.”
Looking dazed, Bill Wheeler got up out of the chair. He said, “Cat, am I crazy, or—”
The Siamese cat looked at him languidly through sleepy eyes. Distinctly it said, “Forget it.”
And halfway between sitting and rising, Bill Wheeler looked even more dazed for a second. He shook his head as though to clear it.
He said, “What was I talking about, Beautiful? I’m getting punchy from not enough sleep.”
He walked over to the window and stared out, gloomily, rubbing the cat’s fur until it purred.
He said, “Hungry, Beautiful? Want some liver?”
The cat jumped down from the windowsill and rubbed itself against his leg affectionately.
It said, “Miaouw.”
The Dome
Kyle Braden sat in his comfortable armchair and stared at the switch in the opposite wall, wondering for the millionth—or was it the billionth?—time whether he was ready to take the risk of pulling it. The millionth or the billionth time in—it would be thirty years today, this afternoon.
It meant probable death and in just what form he didn’t know. Not atomic death certainly—all the bombs would have been used up many many years ago. They’d have lasted long enough to destroy the fabric of civilization, yes. There were more than enough bombs for that. And his careful calculations, thirty years ago, had proven that it would be almost a century before man got really started on a new civilization—what was left of him.
But what went on now, out there, outside the domelike force field that still shielded him from horror? Men as beasts? Or had mankind gone down completely and left the field to the other and less vicious brutes? No, mankind would have survived somewhere; he’d make his way back eventually. And possibly the record of what he had done to himself would remain, at least as legend, to deter him from doing it a second time. Or would it deter him even if full records remained to him?
Thirty years, Braden thought. He sighed at the weary length of them. Yet he’d had and still had everything he really needed and lonesomeness is better than sudden death. Life alone is better than no life at all—with death in some horrible form.
So he had thought thirty years ago, when he had been thirty-seven years old. So he still thought now at sixty-seven. He didn’t regret what he had done, not at all. But he was tired. He wondered, for the millionth—or the billionth?—time whether he wasn’t ready to pull that lever.
Just maybe, out there, they’d have struggled back to some reasonable, if agrarian, form of living. And he could help them, could give them things and knowledge they’d need. He could savor, before he was really old, their gratitude and the good feeling of helping them.
Then too he didn’t want to die alone. He’d lived alone and it had been tolerable most of the time—but dying alone was something else. Somehow dying alone here would be worse than being killed by the neo-barbarians he expected to find out there. The agrarians were really too much to hope for after only thirty years.
And today would be a good day for it. Exactly thirty years, if his chronometers were still accurate, and they wouldn’t be far wrong even in that length of time. A few more hours to make it the same time of day, thirty years to the minute. Yes, irrevocable as it was, he’d do it then. Until now the irrevocability of pulling that switch had stopped him every time he’d considered it.
If only the dome of force could be turned off and then on again the decision would have been easy and he’d have tried it long ago. Perhaps after ten years or fifteen. But it took tremendous power to create the field if very little power to maintain it. There’d still been outside power available when he’d first flashed it on.
Of course the field itself had broken the connection—had broken all connection—once he’d flashed it into being, but the power sources within the building had been enough to supply his own needs and the negligible power required to maintain the field.
Yes, he decided suddenly and definitely, he’d pull that switch today as soon as the few hours were up that would make the time exactly thirty years. Thirty years was long enough to be alone.
He hadn’t wanted to be alone. If only Myra, his secretary, hadn’t walked out on him when… It was too late to think of that—but he thought of it as he had a billion times before. Why had she been so ridiculous about wanting to share the fate of the rest of humanity, to try to help those who were beyond help? And she’d loved him. Aside from that quixotic idea she’d have married him. He’d been too abrupt in explaining the truth—he’d shocked her. But how wonderful it would have been had she stayed with him.
Partly the fault was that the news had come sooner than he’d anticipated. When he’d turned the radio off that morning he’d known there were only hours left. He’d pressed the button that summoned Myra and she’d come in, beautiful, cool, unruffled. You’d think she never listened to the newscasts or read the papers, that she didn’t know what was happening.