Short Fiction - Fritz Leiber (desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📗

We cannot invite you inside our ships⁠—not for lack of space, but because you could never survive the vast accelerations to which you would be subjected. You would, you see, need very special accommodations, of which we have enough only for a few.

“Those few we will take with us, as the seed from which a new human race may⁠—if we ourselves somehow survive⁠—be born.”

Rosalind and Ivan stared dumbly at each other across the egg-shaped silver room, without apparent entrance or exit, in which they were sprawled. But their thoughts were no longer of thirty-odd mile journeys down through solid earth, or of how cool it was after the heat of the passage, or of how grotesque it was to be trapped here, the fragment of a marriage. They were both listening to the voice that spoke inside their minds.

“In a few minutes your bodies will be separated into layers one atom thick, capable of being shelved or stored in such a way as to endure almost infinite accelerations. Single cells will cover acres of space. But do not be alarmed. The process will be painless and each particle will be catalogued for future assembly. Your consciousness will endure throughout the process.”

Rosalind looked at her gold-shod toes. She was wondering, will they go first, or my head? Or will I be peeled like an apple?

She looked at Ivan and knew he was thinking the same thing.

Up in the committee room, the other Wolvers slumped around the table. Only little Dotty sat straight and staring, speechless and unanswering, quite beyond their reach, like a telephone off the hook and with the connection open, but no voice from the other end.

They had just switched off the TV after listening to a confused medley of denials, prayers, Kometevskyite chatterings, and a few astonishingly realistic comments on the possibility of survival.

These last pointed out that, on the side of the Earth opposite the Pacific, the convulsions would come slowly when the entombed spaceship burst forth⁠—provided, as seemed the case, that it moved without jets or reaction.

It would be as if the Earth’s vast core simply vanished. Gravity would diminish abruptly to a fraction of its former value. The empty envelope of rock and water and air would slowly fall together, though at the same time the air would begin to escape from the debris because there would no longer be the mass required to hold it.

However, there might be definite chances of temporary and even prolonged survival for individuals in strong, hermetically sealed structures, such as submarines and spaceships. The few spaceships on Earth were reported to have blasted off, or be preparing to leave, with as many passengers as could be carried.

But most persons, apparently, could not contemplate action of any sort. They could only sit and think, like the Wolvers.

A faint smile relaxed Celeste’s face. She was thinking, how beautiful! It means the death of the Solar System, which is a horrifying subjective concept. Objectively, though, it would be a more awesome sight than any human being has ever seen or ever could see. It’s an absurd and even brutal thing to wish⁠—but I wish I could see the whole cataclysm from beginning to end. It would make death seem very small, a tiny personal event.

Dotty’s face was losing its blank expression, becoming intent and alarmed.

“We are in contact with our pursuers,” she said in the familiar-unfamiliar voice. “Negotiations are now going on. There seems to be⁠—there is a change in them. Where they were harsh and vindictive before, they now are gentle and conciliatory.” She paused, the alarm on her childish features pinching into anxious uncertainty. “Our pursuers have always been shrewd. The change in them may be false, intended merely to lull us into allowing them to come close enough to destroy us. We must not fall into the trap by growing hopeful⁠ ⁠…”

They leaned forward, clutching hands, watching the little face as though it were a television screen. Celeste had the wild feeling that she was listening to a communique from a war so unthinkably vast and violent, between opponents so astronomically huge and nearly immortal, that she felt like no more than a reasoning ameba⁠ ⁠… and then realized with an explosive urge to laugh that that was exactly the situation.

“No!” said Dotty. Her eyes began to glow. “They have changed! During the eons in which we lay sealed away and hidden from them, knowing nothing of them, they have rebelled against the tyranny of a communal mind to which no thoughts are private⁠ ⁠… the tyranny that we ourselves fled to escape. They come not to destroy us, but to welcome us back to a society that we and they can make truly great!”

Frieda collapsed to a chair, trembling between laughter and hysterical weeping. Theodor looked as blank as Dotty had while waiting for words to speak. Edmund sprang to the picture window, Celeste toward the TV set.

Climbing shakily out of the chair, Frieda stumbled to the picture window and peered out beside Edmund. She saw lights bobbing along the paths with a wild excitement.

On the TV screen, Celeste watched two brightly lit ships spinning in the sky⁠—whether human spaceships or Phobos and Deimos come to help Earth rejoice, she couldn’t tell.

Dotty spoke again, the joy in her strange voice forcing them to turn. “And you, dear children, creatures of our camouflage, we welcome you⁠—whatever your future career on these planets or like ones⁠—into the society of enlightened worlds! You need not feel small and alone and helpless ever again, for we shall always be with you!”

The outer door opened. Ivan and Rosalind reeled in, drunkenly smiling, arm in arm.

“Like rockets,” Rosalind blurted happily. “We came through the durasphere and solid rock⁠ ⁠… shot up right to the surface.”

“They didn’t have to take us along,” Ivan added with a bleary grin. “But you know that already, don’t you? They’re too good to let you live in fear, so they must have told you by now.”

“Yes, we know,” said Theodor.