The Sky Is Falling
L >> Lester del Rey >> The Sky Is FallingTHE SKY IS FALLING
By
LESTER DEL REY
[Illustration: THE SKY IS FALLING
WHEN MEN RULED THE STARS--AND THE STARS RULED MEN!]
Transcriber note: Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.
* * * * *
Dave stared around the office. He went to the window and stared
upwards at the crazy patchwork of the sky. For all he knew, in
such a sky there might be cracks. In fact, as he looked, he
could make out a rift, and beyond that a ... hole ... a small
patch where there was no color, and yet the sky there was not
black. There were no stars there, though points of light were
clustered around the edges, apparently retreating.
* * * * *
THE SKY
IS FALLING
By
LESTER DEL REY
ace books
A Division of Charter Communications Inc.
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10036
Copyright (C) 1954, 1963 by Galaxy Publishing Corp.
A shorter and earlier version of this story appeared as "No More Stars"
under the pseudonym of Charles Satterfield in _Beyond Fantasy Fiction_
for July, 1954
_First Ace printing: January, 1973_
* * * * *
THE SKY IS FALLING
I
"Dave Hanson! By the power of the true name be summoned cells and
humors, ka and id, self and--"
Dave Hanson! The name came swimming through utter blackness, sucking at
him, pulling him together out of nothingness. Then, abruptly, he was
aware of being alive, and surprised. He sucked in on the air around him,
and the breath burned in his lungs. He was one of the dead--there should
be no quickening of breath within him!
He caught a grip on himself, fighting the fantasies of his mind, and
took another breath of air. This time it burned less, and he could force
an awareness of the smells around him. But there was none of the pungent
odor of the hospital he had expected. Instead, his nostrils were
scorched with a noxious odor of sulfur, burned hair and cloying incense.
He gagged on it. His diaphragm tautened with the sharp pain of
long-unused muscles, and he sneezed.
"A good sign," a man's voice said. "The followers have accepted and are
leaving. Only a true being can sneeze. But unless the salamander works,
his chances are only slight."
There was a mutter of agreement from others, before an older voice broke
in. "It takes a deeper fire than most salamanders can stir, Ser Perth.
We might aid it with high-frequency radiation, but I distrust the
effects on the prepsyche. If we tried a tamed succubus--"
"The things are untrustworthy," the first voice answered. "And with the
sky falling, we dare not trust one."
The words blurred off in a fog of semiconsciousness and half-thoughts.
The sky was falling? Who killed Foxy Loxy? I, said the spider, who sat
down insider, I went boomp in the night and the bull jumped over the
moon....
"Bull," he croaked. "The bull sleeper!"
"Delirious," the first voice muttered.
"I mean--bull pusher!" That was wrong, too, and he tried again, forcing
his reluctant tongue around the syllables. "Bull _dosser_!"
Damn it, couldn't he even pronounce simple Engaliss?
The language wasn't English, however. Nor was it Canadian French, the
only other speech he could make any sense of. Yet he understood it--had
even spoken it, he realized. There was nothing wrong with his command of
whatever language it was, but there seemed to be no word for bulldozer.
He struggled to get his eyes open.
The room seemed normal enough, in spite of the odd smells. He lay on a
high bed, surrounded by prim white walls, and there was even a chart of
some kind at the bottom of the bedframe. He focused his eyes slowly on
what must be the doctors and nurses there, and their faces looked back
with the proper professional worry. But the varicolored gowns they wore
in place of proper clothing were covered with odd designs, stars,
crescents and things that might have been symbols for astronomy or
chemistry.
He tried to reach for his glasses to adjust them. There were no glasses!
That hit him harder than any other discovery. He must be delirious and
imagining the room. Dave Hanson was so nearsighted that he couldn't
have seen the men, much less the clothing, without corrective lenses.
The middle-aged man with the small mustache bent over the chart near his
feet. "Hmm," the man said in the voice of the first speaker. "Mars
trines Neptune. And with Scorpio so altered ... hmm. Better add two cc.
of cortisone to the transfusion."
Hanson tried to sit up, but his arms refused to bear his weight. He
opened his mouth. A slim hand came to his lips, and he looked up into
soothing blue eyes. The nurse's face was framed in copper-red hair. She
had the transparent skin and classic features that occur once in a
million times but which still keep the legend of redheaded enchantresses
alive. "Shh," she said.
He began to struggle against her hand, but she shook her head gently.
Her other hand began a series of complicated motions that had a
ritualistic look about them.
"Shh," she repeated. "Rest. Relax and sleep, Dave Hanson, and remember
when you were alive."
There was a sharp sound from the doctor, but it began to blur out before
Hanson could understand it. He fought to remember what he'd heard the
nurse say--something about when he was alive--as if he'd been dead a
long time.... He couldn't hold the thought. At a final rapid motion of
the girl's hand his eyes closed, the smell faded from his nose and all
sounds vanished. Once there was a stinging sensation, as if he were
receiving the transfusion. Then he was alone in his mind with his
memories--mostly of the last day when he'd still been alive. He seemed
to be reliving the events, rethinking the thoughts he'd had then.
It began with the sight of his uncle's face leering at him. Uncle David
Arnold Hanson looked like every man's dream of himself and every woman's
dreams of manliness. But at the moment, to Dave, he looked more like a
personal demon. His head was tilted back and nasty laughter was booming
through the air of the little office.
"So your girl writes that your little farewell activity didn't fare so
well, eh?" he chortled. "And you come crawling here to tell me you want
to do the honorable thing, is that it? All right, my beloved nephew,
you'll do the honorable thing! You'll stick to your contract with me."
"But--" Dave began.
"But if you don't, you'd better read it again. You don't get one cent
except on completion of your year with me. That's what it says, and
that's what happens." He paused, letting the fact that he meant it sink
in. He was enjoying the whole business, and in no hurry to end it. "And
I happen to know, Dave, that you don't even have fare to Saskatchewan
left. You quit and I'll see you never get another job. I promised my
sister I'd make a man of you and, by jumping Jupiter, I intend to do
just that. And in my book, that doesn't mean you run back with your tail
between your legs just because some silly young girl pulls that old
chestnut on you. Why, when I was your age, I already had...."
Dave wasn't listening any longer. In futile anger, he'd swung out of the
office and gone stumbling back toward the computer building. Then, in a
further burst of anger, he swung off the trail. To hell with his work
and blast his uncle! He'd go on into town, and he'd--he'd do whatever he
pleased.
The worst part of it was that Uncle David could make good on his threat
of seeing that Dave got no more work anywhere. David Arnold Hanson was a
power to reckon with. No other man on Earth could have persuaded anyone
to let him try his scheme of building a great deflection wall across
northern Canada to change the weather patterns. And no other man could
have accomplished the impossible task, even after twelve countries
pooled their resources to give him the job. But he was doing it, and it
was already beginning to work. Dave had noticed that the last winter in
Chicago had definitely shown that Uncle David's predictions were coming
true.
Like most of the world, Dave had regarded the big man who was his uncle
with something close to worship. He'd jumped at the chance to work under
Uncle David. And he'd been a fool. He'd been doing all right in Chicago.
Repairing computers didn't pay a fortune, but it was a good living, and
he was good at it. And there was Bertha--maybe not a movie doll, but a
sort of pretty girl who was also a darned good cook. For a man of thirty
who'd always been a scrawny, shy runt like the one in the "before"
pictures, he'd been doing all right.
Then came the letter from his uncle, offering him triple salary as a
maintenance man on the computers used for the construction job. There
was nothing said about romance and beauteous Indian maids, but Dave
filled that in himself. He would need the money when he and Bertha got
married, too, and all that healthy outdoor living was just what the
doctor would have ordered.
The Indian maids, of course, turned out to be a few fat old squaws who
knew all about white men. The outdoor living developed into five months
of rain, hail, sleet, blizzard, fog and constant freezing in tractors
while breathing the healthy fumes of diesels. Uncle David turned out to
be a construction genius, all right, but his interest in Dave seemed to
lie in the fact that he was tired of being Simon Legree to strangers
and wanted to take it out on one of his own family. And the easy job
turned into hell when the regular computer-man couldn't take any more
and quit, leaving Dave to do everything, including making the field
tests to gain the needed data.
Now Bertha was writing frantic letters, telling him how much he'd better
come back and marry her immediately. And Uncle David thought it was a
joke!
Dave paid no attention to where his feet were leading him, only vaguely
aware that he was heading down a gully below the current construction
job. He heard the tractors and bulldozers moving along the narrow cliff
above him, but he was used to the sound. He heard frantic yelling from
above, too, but paid no attention to it; in any Hanson construction
program, somebody was always yelling about something that had to be done
day before yesterday. It wasn't until he finally became aware of his own
name being shouted that he looked up. Then he froze in horror.
The bulldozer was teetering at the edge of the cliff as he saw it, right
above him. And the cliff was crumbling from under it, while the tread
spun idiotically out of control. As Dave's eyes took in the whole
situation, the cliff crumbled completely, and the dozer came lunging
over the edge, plunging straight for him. His shout was drowned in the
roar of the motor. He tried to force his legs to jump, but they were
frozen in terror. The heavy mass came straight for him, its treads
churning like great teeth reaching for him.
Then it hit, squarely on top of him. Something ripped and splattered and
blacked out in an unbearable welter of agony.
Dave Hanson came awake trying to scream and thrusting at the bed with
arms too weak to raise him. The dream of the past was already fading.
The horror he had thought was death lay somewhere in the past.
Now he was here--wherever here was.
The obvious answer was that he was in a normal hospital, somehow still
alive, being patched up. The things he seemed to remember from his other
waking must be a mixture of fact and delirium. Besides, how was he to
judge what was normal in extreme cases of surgery?
He managed to struggle up to a sitting position in the bed, trying to
make out more of his surroundings. But the room was dark now. As his
eyes adjusted, he made out a small brazier there, with a cadaverous old
man in a dark robe spotted with looped crosses. On his head was
something like a miter, carrying a coiled brass snake in front of it.
The old man's white goatee bobbed as he mouthed something silently and
made passes over the flame, which shot up prismatically. Clouds of white
fire belched up.
Dave reached to adjust his glasses, and found again that he wasn't
wearing them. But he'd never seen so clearly before.
At that moment, a chanting voice broke into his puzzled thoughts. It
sounded like Ser Perth. Dave turned his head weakly. The motion set sick
waves of nausea running through him, but he could see the doctor
kneeling on the floor in some sort of pantomime. The words of the chant
were meaningless.
A hand closed over Dave's eyes, and the voice of the nurse whispered in
his ear. "Shh, Dave Hanson. It's the Sather Karf, so don't interrupt.
There may be a conjunction."
He fell back, panting, his heart fluttering. Whatever was going on, he
was in no shape to interrupt anything. But he knew that this was no
delirium. He didn't have that kind of imagination.
The chant changed, after a long moment of silence. Dave's heart had
picked up speed, but now it missed again, and he felt cold. He shivered.
Hell or heaven weren't like this, either. It was like something out of
some picture--something about Cagliostro, the ancient mystic. But he was
sure the language he somehow spoke wasn't an ancient one. It had words
for electron, penicillin and calculus, for he found them in his own
mind.
The chant picked up again, and now the brazier flamed a dull red,
showing the Sather Karf's face changing from some kind of disappointment
to a businesslike steadiness. The red glow grew white in the center, and
a fat, worm-like shape of flame came into being. The old man picked it
up in his hand, petted it and carried it toward Dave. It flowed toward
his chest.
He pulled himself back, but Ser Perth and the nurse leaped forward to
hold him. The thing started to grow brighter. It shone now like a tiny
bit of white-hot metal; but the older man touched it, and it snuggled
down into Dave's chest, dimming its glow and somehow purring. Warmth
seemed to flow from it into Dave. The two men watched for a moment, then
picked up their apparatus and turned to go. The Sather Karf lifted the
fire from the brazier in his bare hand, moved it into the air and said a
soft word. It vanished, and the two men were also gone.
"Magic!" Dave said. He'd seen such illusions created on the stage, but
there was something different here. And there was no fakery about the
warmth from the thing over his chest. Abruptly he remembered that he'd
come across something like it, called a salamander, in fiction once;
the thing was supposed to be a spirit of fire, and dangerously
destructive.
The girl nodded in the soft glow coming from Dave's chest. "Naturally,"
she told him. "How else does one produce and control a salamander,
except by magic? Without, magic, how can we thaw a frozen soul? Or
didn't your world have any sciences, Dave Hanson?"
Either the five months under his uncle had toughened him, or the sight
of the bulldozer falling had knocked him beyond any strong reaction. The
girl had practically told him he wasn't in his own world. He waited for
some emotion, felt none, and shrugged. The action sent pain running
through him, but he stood it somehow. The salamander ceased its purring,
then resumed.
"Where in hell am I?" he asked. "Or when?"
She shook her head. "Hell? No, I don't think so. Some say it's Earth and
some call it Terah, but nobody calls it Hell. It's--well, it's a
long--time, I guess--from when you were. I don't know. In such matters,
only the Satheri know. The Dual is closed even to the Seri. Anyhow, it's
not your space-time, though some say it's your world."
"You mean dimensional travel?" Dave asked. He'd seen something about
that on a science-fiction television program. It made even time travel
seem simple. At any event, however, this wasn't a hospital in any sane
and normal section of Canada during his time, on Earth.
"Something like that," she agreed doubtfully. "But go to sleep now.
Shh." Her hands came up in complicated gestures. "Sleep and grow well."
"None of that hypnotism again!" he protested.
She went on making passes, but smiled on him kindly. "Don't be
superstitious--hypnotism is silly. Now go to sleep. For me, Dave
Hanson. I want you well and true when you awake."
Against his will, his eyes closed, and his lips refused to obey his
desire to protest. Fatigue dulled his thoughts. But for a moment, he
went on pondering. Somebody from the future--this could never be the
past--had somehow pulled him out just ahead of the accident, apparently;
or else he'd been deep frozen somehow to wait for medical knowledge
beyond that of his own time. He'd heard it might be possible to do that.
It was a cockeyed future, if this were the future. Still, if scientists
had to set up some, sort of a religious mumbo-jumbo....
Sickness thickened in him, until he could feel his face wet with
perspiration. But with it had come a paralysis that left him unable to
move or groan. He screamed inside himself.
"Poor mandrake-man," the girl said softly. "Go back to Lethe. But don't
cross over. We need you sorely."
Then he passed out again.
II
Whatever they had done to patch him up hadn't been very successful,
apparently. He spent most of the time in a delirium; sometimes he was
dead, and there was an ultimate coldness like the universe long after
the entropy death. At other times, he was wandering into fantasies that
were all horrible. And at all times, even in unconsciousness, he seemed
to be fighting desperately to keep from falling apart painfully within
himself.
When he was awake, the girl was always beside him. He learned that her
name was Nema. Usually there was also the stout figure of Ser Perth.
Sometimes he saw Sather Karf or some other older man working with
strange equipment, or with things that looked like familiar hypodermics
and medical equipment. Once they had an iron lung around him and there
was a thin wisp over his face.
He started to brush it aside, but Nema's hand restrained him. "Don't
disturb the sylph," she ordered.
Another semirational period occurred during some excitement or danger
that centered around him. He was still half delirious, but he could see
men working frantically to build a net of something around his bed,
while a wet, thick thing flopped and drooled beyond the door, apparently
immune to the attacks of the hospital staff. There were shouting orders
involving the undine. The salamander in Dave's chest crept deeper and
seemed to bleat at each cry of the monstrous thing beyond the door.
Sather Karf sat hunched over what seemed to be a bowl of water, paying
no attention to the struggle. Something that he seemed to see there held
his attention. Then he screamed suddenly.
"The Sons of the Egg. It's their sending!"
He reached for a brazier beside him, caught up the fire and plunged it
deep into the bowl of water, screaming something. There was the sound of
an explosion from far away as he drew his hands out, unwet by the water.
Abruptly the undine began a slow retreat. In Dave's chest, the
salamander began purring again, and he drifted back into his coma.
He tried to ask Nema about it later when she was feeding him, but she
brushed it aside.
"An orderly let out the news that you are here," she said. "But don't
worry. We've sent out a doppelganger to fool the Sons, and the orderly
has been sentenced to slavery under the pyramid builder for twenty
lifetimes. I hate my brother! How dare he fight us with the sky
falling?"
Later, the delirium seemed to pass completely, but Dave took no comfort
from that. In its place came a feeling of gloom and apathy. He slept
most of the time, as if not daring to use his little strength even to
think.
Ser Perth stayed near him most of the time now. The man was obviously
worried, but tried not to show it. "We've managed to get some
testosterone from a blond homunculus," he reported. "That should put you
on your feet in no time. Don't worry, young man we'll keep you vivified
somehow until the Sign changes." But he didn't sound convincing.
"Everyone is chanting for you," Nema told him. "All over the world, the
chants go up."
It meant nothing to him, but it sounded friendly. A whole world hoping
for him to get well! He cheered up a bit at that until he found out that
the chants were compulsory, and had nothing to do with goodwill.
The iron lung was back the next time he came to, and he was being tugged
toward it. He noticed this time that there was no sylph, and his
breathing seemed to be no worse than usual. But the sight of the two
orderlies and the man in medical uniform beside the lung reassured him.
Whatever their methods, he was convinced that they were doing their best
for him here.
He tried to help them get him into the lung, and one of the men nodded
encouragingly. But Dave was too weak to give much assistance. He glanced
about for Nema, but she was out on one of her infrequent other duties.
He sighed, wishing desperately that she were with him. She was a lot
more proficient than the orderlies.
The man in medical robe turned toward him sharply. "Stop that!" he
ordered.
Before Dave could ask what he was to stop, Nema came rushing into the
room. Her face paled as she saw the three men, and she gasped, throwing
up her hand in a protective gesture.
The two orderlies jumped for her, one grabbing her and the other closing
his hands over her mouth. She struggled violently, but the men were too
strong for her.
The man in doctor's robes shoved the iron lung aside violently and
reached into his clothing. From it, he drew a strange, double-bladed
knife. He swung toward Dave, raising the knife into striking position
and aiming it at Dave's heart.
"The Egg breaks," he intoned hollowly. It was a cultured voice, and
there was a refinement to his face that registered on Dave's mind even
over the horror of the weapon. "The fools cannot hold the shell. But
neither shall they delay its breaking. Dead you were, mandrake son, and
dead you shall be again. But since the fault is only theirs, may no ill
dreams follow you beyond Lethe!"
The knife started down, just as Nema managed to break free. She shrieked
out a phrase of keening command. The salamander suddenly broke from
Dave's chest, glowing brighter as it rose toward the face of the
attacker. It was like a bit from the center of a star. The man jumped
back, beginning a frantic ritual. He was too late. The salamander hit
him, sank into him and shone through him. Then he slumped, steamed ...
and was nothing but dust falling toward the carpet. The salamander
turned, heading toward the others. But it was to Nema it went, rather
than the two men. She was trying something desperately, but fear was
thick on her face, and her hands were unsure.
Abruptly, Sather Karf was in the doorway. His hand lifted, his fingers
dancing. Words hissed from his lips in a stream of sibilants too quick
for Dave to catch. The salamander paused and began to shrink doubtfully.
Sather Karf turned, and again his hands writhed in the air. One hand
darted back and forward, as if he were throwing something. Again he made
the gesture. With each throw, one of the false orderlies dropped to the
floor, clutching at a neck where the skin showed marks of constriction
as if a steel cord were tightening. They died slowly, their eyes bulging
and faces turning blue. Now the salamander moved toward them, directed
apparently by slight motions from Sather Karf. In a few moments, there
was no sign of them.
The old man sighed, his face slumping into lines of fatigue and age. He
caught his breath. He held out a hand to the salamander, petted it to a
gentle glow and put it back over Dave's chest.
"Good work, Nema," he said wearily. "You're too weak to control the
salamander, but this was done well in the emergency. I saw them in the
pool, but I was almost too late. The damned fanatics. Superstition in
this day and age!"
He swung to face Dave, whose vocal cords were still taut with the shock
of the sight of the knife. "Don't worry, Dave Hanson. From now on, every
Ser and Sather will protect you with the lower and the upper magic. The
House changes tomorrow, if the sky permits, and we shall shield you
until then. We didn't bring you back from the dead, piecing your
scattered atoms together with your scattered revenant particle by
particle, to have you killed again. Somehow, we'll incarnate you fully!
You have my word for that."
"Dead?" Dave had grown numbed to his past during the long illness, but
that brought it back afresh. "Then I was killed? I wasn't just frozen
and brought here by some time machine?"
Sather Karf stared at him blankly. "Time machine? Impossible. Of course
not. After the tractor killed you, and you were buried, what good would
such fantasies be, even if they existed? No, we simply reincarnated you
by pooling our magic. Though it was a hazardous and parlous thing, with
the sky falling...."
He sighed and went out, while Dave went back to his delirium.
III
There was no delirium when he awoke in the morning. Instead, there was
only a feeling of buoyant health. In fact, Dave Hanson had never felt
that good in his life--or his former life. He reconsidered his belief
that there was no delirium, wondering if the feeling were not itself a
form of hallucination. But it was too genuine. He knew without question
that he was well.