When the Sleepers Woke, Page 3

brain. A wave ofweakness overcame him, and he fell back.

  "Careful," the other spoke soothingly, "you must give the plasma timeto act or you may harm yourself."

  If Allan shut out sight with his eyelids, and listened only to theresonance of Anthony's voice, he could hold his slipping grip onreason. He felt that the cloth of his robe was metal, fine spun andwoven. That was strangely reassuring.

  "How long do you think you have slept?"

  "How long?" Dane murmured. Something told him that he had beenunconscious for a long time. "A week?"

  Anthony sighed. "No. Longer than that, much longer." There wasreluctance in his tone. "You have lain here for twenty years."

  Allan's eyes flew open, and he stared up into the speaker's face.Twenty years! Somehow it did not occur to him to disbelieve thisastounding statement. He struggled hard to realize its implication.Two decades had passed since last he remembered. He had been a youththen. Now he was forty-four.

  Anthony continued. "That may be a shock to you, but this will be agreater. Unless I am greatly mistaken, we seven, we four men and threewomen, are the only living humans left on Earth."

  The words dripped into Allan's consciousness. Beyond them, he couldhear movements, exclamations. But they meant nothing to him. Only theone thought tolled, knell-like, within him. "We seven are the onlyliving humans left on Earth."

  * * * * *

  Dimly he knew that Anthony was talking. "There is a possibility, abare possibility, that somewhere near here there are two others. Thatchance is faint indeed. Otherwise humanity is dead, killed by its ownhand."

  Through a dizzy vertigo that blurred sight and sound Allan heard therounded voice go on and on, telling the story of the doom that Man'sown folly had brought. And intermingled with that tale of a world gonemad there came back to the listener the clear-cut vision of the day ofhorror that to him seemed but yesterday. He remembered the suddenultimatum of the Easterner's, the Western Coalition's stanch defiance.Again he saw a supposedly invincible fleet utterly destroyed, sawcomrades whiffed out of existence in infinitesimal seconds. Again hewatched a city of twenty millions inundated by a muddy yellow gas inwhich no human being, no animal, might live. He waked once more tofind himself helpless with weakness, among living corpses, in a placethat seemed a tomb.

  "All this we saw in our long-distance televisoscope." Anthony gesturedto a blank screen above the apparatus ranged along the opposite wall."Then, just as that last weird battle ended, something happened to theeye-mast outside, and we were isolated." He fell silent, in a broodingreverie, and Allan, recovered somewhat, saw that the other strangeoccupants of the place had risen and were clustered about that cagewhere something fluttered.

  He turned to his mentor. "But I still don't understand. How is it thatwe escaped the holocaust?"

  "Four of us, members of the scientific faculty of the NationalUniversity, having foreseen the inevitable result of the course ofworld events, had joined forces and developed a substance--we calledit nullite--so dense and so inert that no gas could penetrate it orchemical break it down. We offered it to the Western General Staff,and were laughed at for our pains. Then we decided to use it topreserve our families from the danger we foresaw.

  "At first we sheathed one room in each of our own dwellings with thenullite. Later we decided that the deposited gas might last for manyyears, and blasted out this cave, a hundred feet below the summit ofSugar Loaf Mountain, for a common refuge.

  "When the red word flared from the newscast machines, 'War!', we fledhere with our wives, as we had planned. All, that is, save one couple,the youngest of us. They never arrived--I waited for them in theclearing at the entrance to the shaft. At the last moment I saw youdropping in your parachute, saw the death beam just miss you, saw youland at my feet, unconscious, but still breathing. I carried you inwith me. There were two vacant spaces: you could occupy one of them.Then we sealed the last aperture with nullite, and settled to ourvigil. We did not know how long the gas would last, but we hadsufficient concentrated food, and enough air-making chemicals, to lasttwo persons for a century."

  "Two people," Allan interjected. "But there were seven here."

  * * * * *

  Anthony nodded. "We had worked out every detail of our plan. Whenrelease came we needs must be in the full vigor of our prime. From ourloins must spring the new race that will repopulate the Earth; thatwill found a new civilization, better, we hope, and wiser than theone that had died. By injecting a certain compound we suspendedanimation in all but a single couple. Those so treated were to allintents dead, though their bodies did not decay. The two who remainedawake kept watch, making daily tests of the outside atmosphere, drawnthrough tubes of nullite that pierced the seal. At the end of sixmonths they revived another couple by the use of a second injection,and were themselves put to sleep. We exempted you from the watch,since you could have no companion, so that while we have lived aboutseven years in the twenty, you have not aged at all."

  "Not aged at all!" Dane exclaimed. "Why, I have wasted away to a merebagful of bones, and you others also."

  The other smiled wistfully. "Even though life was the merest threadthere was still an infinitely slow using of bodily tissue. But thedrink we partook of as we awoke is a plasma that will very quicklyrestore the lost body elements. In an hour we shall all have beenrejuvenated. You will be again the age you were on that fateful day in2163, and the rest of us but seven years older. Look!" He moved aside,so that Allen could see the others, who had gathered around his couch.They were a curious semicircle of gaunt figures, but he could see thatthey had subtly changed. Still emaciated beyond description, they wereno longer simulacra of death. The contours of their faces wererounding, were filling out, and the faintest tinge of pink wascreeping into the yellow of their skins.

  "Anthony, isn't it time that we opened the seals and went outside?Haven't we been long enough in this prison?" It was a short man whospoke, his voice impatient, and there was an eager murmur from theothers.

  "I am as anxious as you." Anthony's slow words were dubious. "But itmay still be dangerous. The gas may have cleared away only from ourimmediate vicinity. In hollows, or places where the air is stagnant,it may still be toxic. It is my opinion that only one should go atfirst, to investigate."

  A babble of volunteering cries burst out, but Dane's voice cut throughthe others. "Look here," the sentence tumbled from his lips. "I'm anextra here. It doesn't matter whether I live or die--I have no specialknowledge. I cannot even father a family, since I have no wife. I amthe only one to go out as long as there is danger."

  "The young man is right," some one said. "He is the logical choice."

  "Very well," agreed Anthony, who appeared the leader. "He shall be thefirst."

  * * * * *

  His instructions were few. One plane had been preserved, and was inthe shaft. Allan was to make a circuit of the neighborhood. If hedeemed it safe he was to visit the building, described to him, wherethe fourth couple had lived, and see if he could find trace of them.Then he was to return and report his findings.

  All stuffed their ears with cotton wool, and crowded against one endof the chamber. Anthony had the end of a long double wire in his hand,and it curled across the floor to the farther wall. He pressed thebutton of a pear-switch--and there was a concussion that hurled thewatchers against the wall behind them. A great gap appeared in thefarther wall, beyond it a black chasm, and a helicopter that was dimlyillumined by the light from within the room. A quick inspection ofthe flier revealed that its alumino-steeloid had been unaffected bythe passage of time, and Allan climbed into it. A wave of his handsimulated an insouciance he did not feel. Then he was rising throughdarkness. The sun's light struck down and enveloped him, and he was inthe open air. He rose above the trees.

  Desolation spread out beneath him. In all the vastness that unfoldedas the lone 'copter climbed into a clear sky, nothing moved. The air,that from babyhood
Allan had seen crowded with bustling traffic, was aghastly emptiness. Not even a tiny, wheeling speck betrayed thepresence of a bird. And below--the gas that was fatal to animal lifeseemed to have stimulated vegetable growth--an illimitable sea ofgreen rolled untenanted to where the first ramparts of New York roseagainst the sky. Roads, monorail lines, all the countless tracks ofcivilization had disappeared beneath the green tide. Nature had takenback its own.

  Heartsick, he turned south, and followed the silver stream of theHudson. The river, lonely as the sky, seemed to drift oily andsluggish down to plunge beneath the city at the lower end of theTappan Zee. Allan Dane came over New York, gazed down at the ruin ofits soaring towers, at the leaping arabesque of its