Project Gutenberg's The Last Place on Earth, by James Judson Harmon
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Title: The Last Place on Earth
Author: James Judson Harmon
Release Date: November 9, 2007 [EBook #23426]
Language: English
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Naturally an undertaker will get the last word.
But shouldn't he wait until his clients are dead?
THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH
By JIM HARMON
Illustrated by Gaughan
I
Sam Collins flashed the undertaker a healthy smile, hoping it wouldn't
depress old Candle too much. He saluted. The skeletal figure in endless
black nodded gravely, and took hold of Sam Collins' arm with a death
grip.
"I'm going to bury you, Sam Collins," the undertaker said.
The tall false fronts of Main Street spilled out a lake of shadow, a
canal of liquid heat that soaked through the iron weave of Collins'
jeans and turned into black ink stains. The old window of the hardware
store showed its age in soft wrinkles, ripples that had caught on fire
in the sunset. Collins felt the twilight stealing under the arms of his
tee-shirt. The overdue hair on the back of his rangy neck stood up in
attention. It was a joke, but the first one Collins had ever known Doc
Candle to make.
"In time, I guess you'll bury me all right, Doc."
"In my time, not yours, Earthling."
"Earthling?" Collins repeated the last word.
The old man frowned. His face was a collection of lines. When he
frowned, all the lines pointed to hell, the grave, decay and damnation.
"Earthling," the undertaker repeated. "Earthman? Terrestrial? Solarian?
Space Ranger? _Homo sapiens?_"
Collins decided Candle was sure in a jokey mood. "Kind of makes you
think of it, don't it, Doc? The spaceport going right up outside of
town. Rocketships are going to be out there taking off for the
Satellite, the Moon, places like that. Reminds you that we _are_
Earthlings, like they say in the funnies, all right."
"Not outside town."
"What?"
"Inside. Inside town. Part of the spaceship administration building is
going to go smack in the middle of where your house used to be."
"My house _is_."
"For less time than you will be yourself, Earthling."
"Earthling yourself! What's wrong with you, Doc?"
"No. I am not an Earthling. I am a superhuman alien from outer space. My
mission on Earth is to destroy you."
* * * * *
Collins pulled away gently. When you lived in a town all your life and
knew its people, it wasn't unusual to see some old person snap under the
weight of years.
"You have to destroy the rocketship station, huh, Doc, before it sends
up spaceships?"
"No. I want to kill _you_. That is my mission."
"_Why?_"
"Because," Candle said, "I am a basically evil entity."
The undertaker turned away and went skittering down Main Street, his
lopsided gait limping, sliding, hopping, skipping, at a refined
leisurely pace. He was a collection of dancing, straight black lines.
Collins stared after the old man, shook his head and forgot about him.
He moved into the hardware store. The bell tinkled behind him. The store
was cramped with shadows and the smell of wood and iron. It was lined
off as precisely as a checkerboard, with counters, drawers,
compartments.
Ed Michaels sat behind the counter, smoking a pipe. He was a handsome
man, looking young in the uncertain light, even at fifty.
"Hi, Ed. You closed?"
"Guess not, Sam. What are you looking for?"
"A pound of tenpenny nails."
Michaels stood up.
Sarah Comstock waddled energetically out of the back. Her sweet, angelic
face lit up with a smile. "Sam Collins. Well, I guess _you'll_ want to
help us murder them."
"Murder?" Collins repeated. "Who?"
"Those Air Force men who want to come in here and cause all the
trouble."
"How are you going to murder them, Mrs. Comstock?"
"When they see our petition in Washington, D.C., they'll call those men
back pretty quick."
"Oh," Collins said.
Mrs. Comstock produced the scroll from her voluminous handbag. "You want
to sign, don't you? They're going to put part of the airport on your
place. They'll tear down your house."
"They can't tear it down. I won't sell."
"You know government men. They'll just _take_ it and give you some money
for it. Sign right there at the top of the new column, Sam."
Collins shook his head. "I don't believe in signing things. They can't
take what's mine."
"But Sam, dear, they _will_. They'll come in and push your house down
with those big tractors of theirs. They'll bury it in concrete and set
off those guided missiles of theirs right over it."
"They can't make me get out," Sam said.
* * * * *
Ed Michaels scooped up a pound, one ounce of nails and spilled them onto
his scale. He pinched off the excess, then dropped it back in and fed
the nails into a brown paper bag. He crumpled the top and set it on the
counter. "That's twenty-nine plus one, Sam. Thirty cents."
Collins laid out a quarter and a nickel and picked up the bag.
"Appreciate you doing this after store hours, Ed."
Michaels chuckled. "I wasn't exactly getting ready for the opera, Sam."
Collins turned around and saw Sarah Comstock still waiting, the petition
in her hand.
"Now what's a pretty girl like you doing, wasting her time in politics?"
Collins heard himself ask.
Mrs. Comstock twittered. "I'm old enough to be your mother, Sam
Collins."
"I like mature women."
Collins watched his hand in fascination as it reached out to touch one
of Sarah Comstock's plump cheeks, then dropped to her shoulder and
ripped away the strap-sleeve of her summer print dress.
A plump, rosy shoulder was revealed, splattered with freckles.
Sarah Comstock put her hands over her ears as if to keep from hearing
her own shrill scream. It reached out into pure soprano range.
Sarah Comstock backed away, into the shadows, and Sam Collins followed
her, trying to explain, to apologize.
"Sam! _Sam!_"
The voice cut through to him and he looked up.
Ed Michaels had a double-barreled shotgun aimed at him. Mrs. Michaels'
face was looking over his shoulder in the door to the back, her face a
sick white.
"You get out of here, Sam," Michaels said. "You get out and don't you
come back. Ever."
Collins' hands moved emptily in air. He was always better with his hands
than words, but this time even they seemed inexpressive.
He crumpled the sack of nails in both fists, and turned and left the
hardware store.
II
His house was still there, sitting at the end of Elm Street, at the end
of town, on the edge of the prairie. It was a very old house. It was
decorated with gingerboard, a rusted-out tin rooster-comb running the
peak of the roof and stained glass window transoms; and the top of the
house was joined to the ground floor by lapped fishscales, as though it
was a mermaid instead of a house. The house was a golden house. It had
been painted brown against the dust, but the keening wind, the
relentless sun, the savage rape of the thunderstorms, they had all
bleached the brown paint into a shining pure gold.
Sam stepped inside and leaned back against the front door, the door of
full-length glass with a border of glass emeralds and rubies. He leaned
back and breathed deep.
The house didn't smell old. It smelled new. It smelled like sawdust and
fresh-hewn lumber as bright and blond as a high school senior's
crewcut.
He walked across the flowered carpet. The carpet didn't mind footsteps
or bright sun. It never became worn or faded. It grew brighter with the
years, the roses turning redder, the sunflowers becoming yellower.
The parlor looked the same as it always did, clean and waiting to be
used. The cane-backed sofa and chairs eagerly waiting to be sat upon,
the bead-shaded kerosene lamps ready to burst into light.
Sam went into his workshop. This had once been the ground level master
bedroom, but he had had to make the change. The work table held its
share of radios, toasters, TV sets, an electric train, a spring-wind
Victrola. Sam threw the nails onto the table and crossed the room,
running his fingers along the silent keyboard of the player piano. He
looked out the window. The bulldozers had made the ground rectangular,
level and brown, turning it into a gigantic half-cent stamp. He
remembered the mail and raised the window and reached down into the
mailbox. It was on this side of the house, because only this side was
technically within city limits.
As he came up with the letters, Sam Collins saw a man sighting along a
plumbline towards his house. He shut the window.
Some of the letters didn't have any postage stamps, just a line of
small print about a $300 fine. Government letters. He went over and
forced them into the tightly packed coal stove. All the trash would be
burned out in the cold weather.
Collins sat down and looked through the rest of his mail. A new
catalogue of electronic parts. A bulky envelope with two paperback
novels by Richard S. Prather and Robert Bloch he had ordered. A couple
of letters from hams. He tossed the mail on the table and leaned back.
* * * * *
He thought about what had happened in the hardware store.
It wasn't surprising it had happened to him. Things like that were bound
to happen to him. He had just been lucky that Ed Michaels hadn't called
the sheriff. What had got into him? He had never been a sex maniac
before! But still ... it was hardly unexpected.
Might as well wait to start on those rabbit cages until tomorrow, he
decided. This evening he felt like exploring.
The house was so big, and packed with so many things that he never found
and examined them all. Or if he did, he forgot a lot about the things
between times, so it was like reading a favorite book over again, always
discovering new things in it.
The parlor was red in the fading light, and the hall beyond the sliding
doors was deeply shadowed. In the sewing room, he remembered, in the
drawers of the treadle machine the radio was captured. The rings and
secret manuals of the days when radio had been alive. He hadn't looked
over those things in some little time.
He looked up the shadowed stairway. He remembered the night, a few weeks
before Christmas when he had been twelve and really too old to believe,
his mother had said she was going up to see if Santa Claus had left any
packages around a bit early. They often gave him his presents early,
since they were never quite sure he would live until Christmas.
But his mother had been playing a trick on him. She hadn't been going up
after packages. She had gone up those stairs to murder his father.
She had shot him in the back of the head with his Army Colt .45 from the
first war. Collins never quite understood why the hole in back was so
neat and the one in front where it came out was so messy.
After he went to live with Aunt Amy and the house had been boarded up,
he heard them talking, Aunt Amy and her boy friend, fat Uncle Ralph. And
they had said his mother had murdered his father because he had gone
ahead and made her get pregnant again and she was afraid it would be
another one like Sam.
Sam Collins knew she must have planned it a long time in advance. She
had filled up the bathtub with milk, real milk, and she went in after
she had done it and took a bath in the milk. Then she slit her wrists.
When Sam Collins had run down the stairs, screaming, and barged into the
bathroom, he had found the tub looking like a giant stick of peppermint
candy.
* * * * *
Aunt Amy had been good to him.
Because he didn't talk for about a year after he found the bodies, most
people thought he was simple-minded. But Aunt Amy had always treated him
just like a regular boy. That was embarrassing sometimes, but still it
was better than what he got from the others.
The doctor hadn't wanted to perform the operation on his clubfoot. He
said it would be an unproductive waste of his time and talent, that he
owed it to the world to use them to the very best advantage. Finally he
agreed. The operation took about thirty seconds. He stuck a knife into
Sam's foot and went _snick-snick_. A couple of weeks later, his foot was
healed and it was just like anybody else's. Aunt Amy had paid him $500
in payments, only he returned the money order for the last fifty
dollars and wished them Merry Christmas.
Sam Collins could work after that. When Aunty Amy and Uncle Ralph
disappeared, he opened up the old house and started doing odd jobs for
people who weren't very afraid of him any more.
That first day had been quite a shock, when he discovered that not in
all these years had anybody cleaned the bathtub.
Sometimes, when he was taking his Saturday night soaker he still got
kind of a funny feeling. But he knew it was only rust from the faucets.
Collins sighed. It seemed like a long time since he had seen his mother
coming down those stairs....
He stopped, his throat aching with tightness.
Something was very strange.
His mother was coming down the stairs right now.
She was walking down the stairs, one step, two steps, coming closer to
him.
Collins ran up the stairs, prepared to run through the phantom to prove
it wasn't there.
The figure raised a gun and pointed it at him.
This time, she was going to shoot _him_.
It figured.
He always had bad luck.
"Stop!" the woman on the stairs said. "Stop or I'll shoot, Mr.
Collins!"
* * * * *
Collins stopped, catching to the bannister. He squinted hard, and as a
stereoptic slide lost its depth when you shut one eye, the woman on the
stairs was no longer his mother. She was young, pretty, brunette and
sweet-faced, and the gun she held shrunk from an old Army Colt to a .22
target pistol.
"Who _are_ you?" Collins demanded.
The girl took a grip on the gun with both hands and held it steady on
him.
"I'm Nancy Comstock," she said. "You tried to assault my mother a half
hour ago."
"Oh," he said. "I've never seen you before."
"Yes, you have. I've been away to school a lot, but you've seen me
around. I've had my eye on you. I know about men like you. I know what
has to be done. I came looking for you in your house for this."
The bore of the gun was level with his eye as he stood a few steps below
her. Probably if she fired now, she would kill him. Or more likely he
would only be blinded or paralyzed; that was about his luck.
"Are you going to use that gun?" he asked.
"Not unless I have to. I only brought it along for protection. I came
to help you, Mr. Collins."
"Help me?"
"Yes, Mr. Collins. You're sick. You need help."
He looked the girl over. She was a half-dozen years younger than he was.
In most states, she couldn't even vote yet. But still, maybe she could
help, at that. He didn't know much about girls and their abilities.
"Why don't we go into the kitchen and have some coffee?" Collins
suggested.
III
Nancy sipped her coffee and kept her eyes on his. The gun lay in her
lap. The big kitchen was a place for coffee, brown and black, wood
ceiling and iron stove and pans. Collins sat across the twelve square
feet of table from her, and nursed the smoking mug.
"Sam, I want you to take whatever comfort you can from the fact that I
don't think the same thing about you as the rest of Waraxe."
"What does the rest of the town think about me?"
"They think you are a pathological degenerate who should be lynched. But
I don't believe that."
"Thanks. That's a big comfort."
"I know what you were after when you tore Mom's dress."
In spite of himself, Collins felt his face warming in a blush.
"You were only seeking the mother love you missed as a boy," the girl
said.
Collins chewed on his lip a moment, and considered the idea. Slowly he
shook his head.
"No," he said. "No. I don't think so."
"Then what do you think?"
"I think old Doc Candle _made_ me do it. He said he was going to bury
me. Getting me lynched would be one good way to do it. Ed Michaels
almost blew my head off with his shotgun. It was close. Doc Candle
almost made it. He didn't miss by far with you and that target pistol
either."
"Sam--I may call you 'Sam'?--just try to think calmly and reasonably for
a minute. How could Dr. Candle, the undertaker, possibly make you do a
thing like you did in Mr. Michaels' hardware store?"
"Well ... he _said_ he was a superhuman alien from outer space."
"If he said that, do you believe him, Sam?"
"_Something_ made me do that. It just wasn't my own idea."
"It's easier that way, isn't it, Sam?" Nancy asked. "It's easy to say.
'It wasn't me; some space monster made me do it.' But you really know
better, don't you, Sam? Don't take the easy way out! You'll only get
deeper and deeper into your makebelieve world. It will be like
quicksand. Admit your mistakes--face up to them--_lick them_."
Collins stood up, and came around the end of the table.
"You're too pretty to be so serious all the time," he said.
* * * * *
"Sam, I want to help you. Please don't spoil it by misinterpreting my
intentions."
"You should get a little fun out of life," Collins listened to himself
say.
He came on around the big table towards her.
The first time he hadn't realized what was happening, but this time he
knew. Somebody was pulling strings and making him jump. He had as much
control as Charlie McCarthy.
"Don't come any closer, Sam."
Nancy managed to keep her voice steady, but he could tell she was
frightened.
He took another step.
She threw her coffee in his face.
The liquid was only lukewarm but the sudden dash had given him some
awareness of his own body again, like the first sound of the alarm
faintly pressing through deep layers of sleep.
"Sam, Sam, _please_ don't make me do it! Please, Sam, _don't_!"
Nancy had the gun in her hand, rising from her chair.
His hands wanted to grab her clothes and _tear_.
But that's _suicide_, he screamed at his body.
As his hand went up with the intention of ripping, he deflected it just
enough to shove the barrel of the gun away from him.
The shot went off, but he knew instantly that it had not hit him.
The gun fell to the floor, and with its fall, something else dropped
away and he was in command of himself again.
Nancy sighed, and slumped against him, the left side of her breast
suddenly glossy with blood.
* * * * *
Ed Michaels stared at him. Both eyes unblinking, just staring at _him_.
He had only taken one look at the girl lying on the floor, blood all
over her chest. He hadn't looked back.
"I didn't know who else to call, Ed." Collins said. "Sheriff Thurston
being out of town and all."
"It's okay, Sam. Mike swore me in as a special deputy a couple years
back. The badge is at the store."
"They'll hang me for this, won't they, Ed?"
Michaels put his hand on Collins' shoulder. "No, they won't do that to
you, boy. We know you around here. They'll just put you away for a
while."
"The asylum at Hannah, huh?"
"Damn it, yes! What did you expect? A marksman medal?"
"Okay, Ed, okay. Did you call Doc Van der Lies like I told you when I
phoned?"
Michaels took a folded white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his
square-jawed face. "You sure are taking this calm, Sam. I'm telling you,
Sam, it would look better for you if you at least _acted_ like you were
sorry.... Doc Van der Lies is up in Wisconsin with Mike. I called Doc
Candle."
"He's an undertaker," Collins whispered.
"Don't you expect we need one?" Michaels asked. Then as if he wasn't
sure of the answer to his own question, he said, "Did you examine her to
see if she was dead? I--I don't know much about women. I wouldn't be
able to tell."
It didn't sound like a very good excuse to Collins.
"I guess she's dead," Collins said. "That's the way he must have wanted
it."
"_He?_ Wait a minute, Sam. You mean you've got one of those split
personalities like that girl on TV the other night? There's somebody
else inside you that takes over and makes you do things?"
"I never thought of it just like that before. I guess that's one way to
look at it."
The knock shook the back door before Michaels could say anything. The
door opened and Doc Candle slithered in disjointedly, a rolled-up
stretcher over his shoulder.
"Hello, boys," Candle said. "A terrible accident, it brings sorrow to us
all. Poor Nancy. Has the family been notified?"
"Good gosh, I forgot about it," Michaels said. "But maybe we better wait
until you get her--arranged, huh, Doc?"
* * * * *
"Quite so." The old man laid the canvas stretcher out beside the girl on
the floor and unrolled it. He flipped the body over expertly like a
window demonstrator flipping a pancake over on a griddle.
"Ed, if you'd just take the front, I'll carry the rear. My vehicle is in
the alley."
"Sam, you carry that end for Doc. You're a few years younger."
Collins wanted to say that he couldn't, but he didn't have enough yet to
argue with. He picked up the stretcher and looked down at the white feet
in the Scotch plaid slippers.
Candle opened the door and waited for them to go through.
The girl on the stretcher parted her lips and rolled her head back and
forth, a puzzled expression of pain on her face.
Collins nearly dropped the stretcher, but he made himself hold on
tight.
"Ed! Doc! She moved! She's still _alive_."
"Cut that out now, Sam," Ed Michaels snapped. "Just carry your end."
"She's alive," Collins insisted. "She moved again. Just turn around and
take a look, Ed. That's all I ask."
"I hefted this thing once, and that's enough. You _move_, Sam. I've got
a .38 in my belt, and I went to Rome, Italy, for the Olympics about the
time you were getting yourself born, Sam. I ought to be able to hit a
target as big as you. Just go ahead and do as you're told."
Collins turned desperately towards Candle. Maybe Nancy had been right,
maybe he had been imagining things.
"Doc, you take a look at her," Collins begged.
The old man vibrated over to the stretcher and looked down. The girl
twisted in pain, throwing her head back, spilling her hair over the head
of the stretcher.
"Rigor mortis," Doc Candle diagnosed, with a wink to Collins.
"No, Doc! She needs a doctor, blood transfusions...."
* * * * *
"Nonsense," Candle snapped. "I'll take her in my black wagon up to my
place, put her in the tiled basement. I'll pump out all her blood and
flush it down the commode. Then I'll feed in Formaldi-Forever Number
Zero. Formaldi-Forever, for the Blush of Death. 'When you think of a
Pretty Girl, think of Formaldi-Forever, the Way to Preserve that
Beauty.' Then I'll take a needle and some silk thread and just a few
stitches on the eyelids and around the mouth...."
"Doc, will you...?" Michaels said faintly.
"Of course. I just wanted to show Sam how foolish he was in saying the
Beloved was still alive."
Nancy kicked one leg off the stretcher and Candle picked it up and
tucked it back in.
"Ed, if you'd just turn around and _look_." Collins said.
"I don't want to have to look at your face, you murdering son. You make
me, you say one more word, and I'll turn around and shoot you between
the eyes."
Doc Candle nodded. Collins knew then that Michaels really would shoot
him in the head if he said anything more, so he kept quiet.
Candle held the door. They managed to get the stretcher down the back
steps, and right into the black panel truck. They fitted the stretcher
into the special sockets for it, and Doc Candle closed the double doors
and slapped his dry palm down on the sealing crevice.
Instantly, there was an answering knock from inside the truck, a dull
echo.
* * * * *
"Didn't you hear that?" Collins asked.
"Hear what?" Michaels said.
"What are you hearing now, Sam?" Candle inquired solicitously.
"Oh. Sure," Michaels said. "Kind of a _voice_, wasn't it, Sam? Didn't
understand what it said. Wasn't listening too close, not like you."
_Thud-thud-thump-thud._
"No voice," Collins whispered. "That infernal sound, don't you hear it,
Ed?"
"I must hurry along," the undertaker said. "Must get ready to work on
Nancy, get her ready for her parents to see."
"All right, Doc. I'll take care of Sam."
"Where you going to jail me, Ed?" Collins asked, his eyes on the closed
truck doors. "In your storeroom like you did Hank Petrie?"
Michaels' face suddenly began to work. "Jail? Jail you? Jail's too good
for you. Doc, have you got a tow rope in that truck?"
Ed Michaels was the best shot in town, probably one of the best marksmen
in the world. He had been in the Olympics about thirty years ago. He was
Waraxe's one claim to fame. But he wasn't a cowboy. He wasn't a fast
draw.
Collins put all of his weight behind his left fist and landed it on the
point of Michaels' jaw, just the way he used to do when gangs of boys
jumped onto him.
[Illustration]
Michaels sprawled out, spread-eagled.
Then Collins wanted to take the revolver out of Ed's belt, and press it
into Ed's hand, curling his fingers around the grip and over the
trigger, and then he wanted to shake Ed awake, slap his face and shake
him....
Collins spun around, clawed open the door to the truck cab and threw
himself behind the steering wheel.
He stopped wanting to make Ed Michaels shoot him.
He flipped the ignition switch, levered the floor shift and drove away.
And he was going to drive on and on and on and on.
And on and on and on.
IV
Collins turned onto the old McHenty blacktop, his foot pressed to the
floorboards. Ed Michaels didn't own a car; he would have to borrow one
from somebody. That would take time. Maybe Candle would give him his
hearse to use to follow the Black Rachel.
Trees, fences, barns whizzed past the windows of the cab and then the
steel link-mesh fence took up, the fence surrounding the New Kansas
National Spaceport. Behind it, further from town, some of the concrete
had been poured and the horizon was a remote, sterile gray sweep.
The McHenty Road would soon be closed to civilian traffic. But right now
the government wanted people to drive along and see that the spaceship
was nothing terrible, nothing to fear.
The girl, Nancy Comstock, was alive in the back. He knew that. But he
couldn't stop to prove it or to help her. Candle would make them lynch
him first.
Why hadn't Candle stopped him from getting away?
He had managed to break his control for a second. He had done that
before when he deflected Nancy's aim. But he couldn't resist Candle for
long. Why hadn't Candle made him turn around and come back?
Candle's control of him had seemed to stop when he got inside the cab of
the truck. Could it be that the metal shield of the cab could protect an
Earthling from the strange mental powers of the creature from another
planet which was inhabiting the body of Doc Candle?
Collins shook his head.
More likely Candle was doing this just to get his hopes up. He probably
would seize control of him any time he wanted to. But Collins decided to
go on playing it as if he did have some hope, as if a shield of metal
could protect him from Candle's control. Otherwise ... there was no
otherwise.
* * * * *
Collins suddenly saw an opening.
The steel mesh fence was ruptured by a huge semitrailer truck turned on
its side. Twenty feet of fence on either side was down. This was
restricted government property, but of course spaceships were hardly
prime military secrets any longer. Repairs in the fence had not been
made instantaneously, and the wreckage was not guarded.
Collins swerved the wheel and drove the old wagon across the
waffle-plate obstruction, onto the smooth tarmac beyond.
He raced, raced, raced through the falling night, not sure where he was
headed.
Up above he saw the shelter of shadows from a cluster of half-finished
buildings. He drove into them and parked.
Collins sat still for a moment, then threw open the door and ran around
to the back of the truck, jerking open the handles.
Nancy fell out into his arms.
"What kind of ambulance is this?" she demanded. "It doesn't look like an
ambulance. It doesn't smell like an ambulance. It looks like--looks
like--"
Collins said, "Shut up. Get out of there. We've got to hide."
"Why?"
"They think I murdered you."
"Murdered me? But I'm alive. Can't they see I'm alive?"
Collins shook his head. "I doubt it. I don't know why, but I don't think
it would be that simple. Come with me."
The blood on her breast had dried, and he could see it was only a
shallow groove dug by the bullet. But she flinched in pain as she began
to walk, pulling the muscles.
They stopped and leaned against a half-finished metallic shed.
"Where are we? Where are you taking me?"
"This is the spaceport. Now shut up."
"Let me go."
"No."
"I'm not dead," Nancy insisted. "You know I'm not dead. I won't press
charges against you--just let me go free."
"I told you it wasn't that simple. He wants them to think you're dead,
and that's what they'll think."
Nancy passed fingers across her eyes. "Who? Who are you talking about?"
"Doc Candle. He won't let them know you're alive."
Nancy rubbed her forehead with both hands. "Sam, you don't know what
you're doing. You don't--know what you're getting yourself into. Just
let me show myself to someone. They'll know I'm not dead. Really they
will."
"Okay," he said. "Let's find somebody."
He led her toward a more nearly completed building, showing rectangles
of light. They looked through the windows to see several men in uniforms
bending over blueprints on a desk jury-rigged of sawhorses and planks.
"Sam," Nancy said, "one of those men is Terry Elston. He's a Waraxe boy.
I went to school with him. He'll know me. Let's go in...."
"No," Collins said. "We don't go in."
"But--" Nancy started to protest, but stopped. "Wait. He's coming out."
Collins slid along the wall and stood behind the door. "Tell him who you
are when he comes out. I'll stay here."
They waited. After a few seconds, the door opened.
Nancy stepped into the rectangle of light thrown on the concrete from
the window.
"Terry," she said. "Terry, it's me--Nancy Comstock."
The blue-jawed young man in uniform frowned. "Who did you say you were?
Have you got clearance from this area?"
"It's me, Terry. Nancy. Nancy Comstock."
Terry Elston stepped front and center. "That's not a very good joke. I
knew Nancy. Hell of a way to die, killed by some maniac."
"Terry, _I'm_ Nancy. Don't you recognize me?"
Elston squinted. "You look familiar. You look a little like Nancy. But
you can't be her, because she's dead."
"I'm here, and I tell you I'm _not_ dead."
"Nancy's dead," Elston repeated mechanically. "Say, what are you trying
to pull?"
"Terry, behind you. A maniac!"
"Sure," Elston said. "Sure. There's a maniac _behind_ me."
Collins stepped forward and hit Elston behind the ear. He fell silently.
Nancy stared down at him.
"He refused to recognize me. He acted like I was crazy, pretending to be
Nancy Comstock."
"Come on along," Collins urged. "They'll probably shoot us on sight as
trespassers."
She looked around herself without comprehension.
"Which way?"
"_This way._"
Collins did not say those words.
They were said by the man with the gun in the uniform like the one worn
by Elston. He motioned impatiently.
"This way, this way."
* * * * *
"No priority," Colonel Smith-Boerke said as he paced back and forth, gun
in hand.
From time to time he waved it threateningly at Collins and Nancy who sat
on the couch in Smith-Boerke's office. They had been sitting for close
to two hours. Collins now knew the Colonel did not intend to turn him
over to the authorities. They were being held for reasons of
Smith-Boerke's own.
"They sneak the ship in here, plan for an unscheduled hop from an
uncompleted base--the strictest security we've used in ten or fifteen
years--and now they cancel it. This is bound to get leaked by somebody!
They'll call it off. It'll never fly now."
Collins sat quietly. He had been listening to this all evening.
Smith-Boerke had been drinking, although it wasn't very obvious.
Smith-Boerke turned to Collins.
"I've been waiting for somebody like you. Just waiting for you to come
along. And here you are, a wanted fugitive, completely in my power!
Perfect, _perfect_."
Collins nodded to himself. Of course, Colonel Smith-Boerke had been
waiting for him. And Doc Candle had driven him right to him. It was
inescapable. He had been intended to escape and turn up right here all
along.
"What do you want with me?"
Smith-Boerke's flushed face brightened. "You want to become a hero? A
hero so big that all these trumped-up charges against you will be
dropped? It'll be romantic. Back to Lindbergh-to-Paris. Tell me,
Collins, how would you like to be the first man to travel faster than
light?"
Collins knew there was no way out.
"All right," he said.
Smith-Boerke wiped a hand across his dry mouth.
"Project Silver _has_ to come off. My whole career depends on it. You
don't have anything to do. Everything's cybernetic. Just ride along and
prove a human being can survive. Nothing to it. No hyperdrives, none of
that kind of stuff. We had an engine that could go half lightspeed and
now we've made it twice as efficient and more. No superstitions about
Einstein, I hope? No? Good."
"I'll go," Collins said. "But what if I had said 'no'."
Smith-Boerke put the gun away in a desk drawer.
"Then you could have walked out of here, straight into the MP's."
"Why didn't they come in here after me?"
"They don't have security clearance for this building."
"_Don't_ leave me alone," Nancy said urgently. "I don't understand
what's happening. I feel so helpless. I need help."
"You're asking the wrong man," Collins said briefly.
* * * * *
Collins felt safe when the airlock kissed shut its metal lips.
It was not like the house, but yet he felt safe, surrounded by all the
complicated, expensive electronic equipment. It was big, solid,
sterilely gleaming.
Another thing--he had reason to believe that Doc Candle's power could
not reach him through metal.
"But I'm not outside," Doc Candle said, "I'm in here, with you."
Collins yelled and cursed, he tried to pull off the acceleration webbing
and claw through the airlock. Nobody paid any attention to him. Count
downs had been automated. Smith-Boerke was handling this one himself,
and he cut off the Audio-In switch from the spaceship. Doc Candle said
nothing else for a moment, and the spaceship, almost an entity itself,
went on with its work.
The faster-than-light spaceship took off.
At first it was like any other rocket takeoff.
The glow of its exhaust spread over the field of the spaceport, then
over the hills and valleys, and then the town of Waraxe, spreading
illumination even as far as Sam Collins' silent house.
After a time of being sick, Collins lay back and accepted this too.
"That's right, that's it," Doc Candle said. "Take it and die with it.
That's the ticket."
Collins' eyes settled on a gauge. Three quarters lightspeed. Climbing.
Nothing strange, nothing untoward happened when you reached lightspeed.
It was only an arbitrary number. All else was superstition. Forget it,
forget it, forget it.
_Something_ was telling him that. At first he thought it was Doc Candle
but then he knew it was the ship.
Collins sat back and took it, and what he was taking was death. It was
creeping over him, seeping into his feet, filling him like liquid does a
sponge.
Not will, but curiosity, caused him to turn his head.
He saw Doc Candle.
The old body was dying. He was in the emergency seat, broken, a ribbon
of blood lacing his chin. But Doc Candle continued to laugh triumphantly
in Collins' head.
"Why? Why do you have to kill me?" Collins asked.
"Because I am evil."
"How do you know you're evil?"
"_They told me so!_" Candle shouted back in the thundering silence of
Death's approach. "They were always saying I was bad."
_They._
* * * * *
Collins got a picture of something incredibly old and incredibly wise,
but long unused to the young, clumsy gods. Something that could mar the
molding of a godling and make it mortal.
"But I'm not really so very bad," Doc Candle went on. "I had to
destroy, but I picked someone who really didn't care if he were
destroyed or not. An almost absolutely passive human being, Sam. You."
Collins nodded.
"And even then," said the superhuman alien from outer space, "I could
not just destroy. I have created a work of art."
"Work of art?"
"Yes. I have taken your life and turned it into a horror story, Sam! A
chilling, demonic, black-hearted horror!"
Collins nodded again.
_LIGHTSPEED._
There was finally something human within Sam Collins that he could not
deny. He wanted to live. It wasn't true. He did care what happened.
You do? said somebody.
He does? asked somebody else, surprised, and suddenly he again got the
image of wiser, older creatures, a little ashamed because of what they
had done to the creature named Doc Candle.
He does, chorused several voices, and Sam Collins cried aloud: "I do! I
want to live!" They were just touching lightspeed; he felt it.
This time it was not just a biological response. He really wanted help.
He wanted to stay alive.
From the older, wiser voices he got help, though he never knew how; he
felt the ship move slipwise under him, and then a crash.
And Doc Candle got help too, the only help even the older, wiser ones
could give him.
* * * * *
They pulled him out of the combined wreckage of the spaceship and his
house. Both were demolished.
It was strange how the spaceship Sam Collins was on crashed right into
his house. Ed Michaels recalled a time in a tornado when Sy Baxter's car
was picked up, lifted across town and dropped into his living room.
When the men from the spaceport lifted away tons of rubble, they found
him and said, "He's dead."
No, I'm not, Collins thought. I'm alive.
And then they saw that he really was alive, that he had come through it
alive somehow, and nobody remembered anything like it since the airliner
crash in '59.
A while later, after they found Doc Candle's body and court-martialed
Smith-Boerke, who took drugs, Nancy was nuzzling him on his hospital
bed. It was nice, but he wasn't paying much attention.
I'm free, Collins thought as the girl hugged him. _Free!_ He kissed her.
Well, he thought while she was kissing him back, as free as I want to
be, anyway.
END
[Transcriber's Note:
This e-text was produced from Worlds of If January 1962. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
publication was renewed.]
End of Project Gutenberg's The Last Place on Earth, by James Judson Harmon
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