Chapter II: The Red Sky

The girl turned from the window, where the bright sky silhouetted her slender figure.

"How do I know where he is?" she snapped.

"Now look, Virginia," objected one of the men in the room, "there's no point in getting angry. We must know."

"I know you must, Peter," she returned. "I agree. But I don't know. Do you understand that? I don't know!"

Peter Moray shrugged. "Anybody capable of building a space resonator must have enough training to have known about it in the first place."

John Cauldron spoke sharply, "You went out to the corner as suggested?"

"I did. He did not appear. After I returned I watched at regular intervals. No one came. Also I listened carefully as you suggested. He hasn't been calling--hasn't called since about eleven o'clock this morning."

Peter Moray smiled. "Yesterday morning," he corrected.

"Don't be funny. You're the ones that have kept me up all night asking fool questions over and over."

"They're not fool questions, Virginia."

"Any question repeated too often becomes a fool question," she replied.

Cauldron spoke heavily. "We're not cross-examining you, Virginia. Please believe that. We ask and ask and ask because it may be that something might have been said that sounds trivial, but may make large sense."

The girl shrugged. "You're entitled to try," she said. She passed a hand across her face wearily. "You've heard and reheard our conversation as verbatim as I recall it. And it was an experience I will not forget easily."

"Agreed," said Moray, walking to the west window and looking out. "I guess we're all overkeyed."

Cauldron grumbled a bit. "There have been a lot of strange things happening," he said. "This isn't the first."

Virginia smiled wanly but it was Cauldron who spoke next after a short pause. "And at five-thirty in the morning, everything begins to get somewhat distorted from a mental standpoint."

Moray turned from the brightness of the sky and mumbled something about life's lowest ebb occurring just before dawn.

Then he added, "Why did this mess have to happen? Blast it, everybody that knew swore up and down that the possibility was nil."

"Not nil enough," said Cauldron.

"No," agreed Virginia. "But that's life."

Moray slammed his fist down on the window-sill and swore. "That's life," he echoed in a mocking tone. "Well, I don't like it!"

"Who does?" demanded Cauldron quietly.

"Can't you face facts?" snapped Moray. "Do you realize that we haven't much time left? And what are we doing about it? Where are we? Nowhere, or no further along than we were thirty years ago--exactly thirty years ago. It's July sixteenth right now, and that's--"

"You're talking like a fool, Moray," said Virginia. "Have you ever stopped to think that those of us who do not rant and rave and worry ourselves into ulcers may have faced the fact, and find it ungood? Well, there are those of us who will do what we can. There's little sense in worrying about conditions--all it does is remove you from your highest efficiency.

"When something is awry you do something to correct it if you can. If you cannot you pigeonhole it until such a time as you can solve it. Not forget it, never for a moment. But there's no sense in dragging a worry back and forth across the floor until it is draining your life's blood. As for that out there, I didn't do it."

"Good for you, Virginia," applauded Cauldron.

"No," snapped Moray. "You didn't. You were not born at that time. But you can't fold your hands and accept it--nor can you say that it is none of your business!"

"There's always suicide," said Virginia Carlson.

* * * * *

A clock in the lower part of the house chimed once, marking the hour of five-thirty.

Moray returned to the window and looked at the sky, west. "At five-thirty in the morning of July sixteenth," he said, "one hundred and twenty miles southeast of Albuquerque, in a remote section of the Alamogordo air base, a group of scientists released the first atomic fire. Thirty years later," he finished bitterly, "we have a perpetual sunrise!"

On the laboratory table, the receiver rattled loudly. They turned, as one.

"Look," snapped Cauldron quickly, "if that is this Ed Bronson character, get in touch with him. We can use any technician we can get our hands on. Any man with a brain might well hold the key to that living cancer out there that is burning up the very earth."

"I'll put my chances on a space rocket," replied Peter Moray.

"I'd rather stop that fire out there."

"Why?" demanded Moray.

"Where would you go?" snapped Cauldron angrily. "There isn't a planet fit for human occupation and you know it. You'll either put it out or we'll all die. Not a chance for escape in any other way."

"I--"

"Shut up, while Virginia answers Bronson. He's having interference trouble--you'll make it no easier."

From the speaker was coming Ed Bronson's voice, calling for Miss Carlson and requesting an answer, for he had filters installed that eliminated the whistlings.

Cauldron jabbed Moray with an elbow. "He's a right bright fellow," he observed in a whisper.

Virginia Carlson spoke into the microphone. "You're right on the big moment," she told Bronson.

"Big moment?" he replied.

"Sure. Thirty years ago today--this moment."

"Yeah?" drawled Bronson. "And what happened?"

Peter Moray looked at John Cauldron. "Tell me," he snapped, "what kind of man could live to maturity and not know Alamogordo?"

"I don't know. I can't imagine," replied John Cauldron. "But maybe--just maybe--it is the answer we've been seeking."

* * * * *

Ed Bronson shook his head though he knew that the girl could not see him. He had not heard Moray or Cauldron mention Alamogordo. He repeated his query.

"And what happened?"

Virginia Carlson told him, "Thirty years ago, at Alamogordo, the scientists first released the energy from the atom."

"Oh," he replied. "I didn't know it was marked on the calendar as a holiday."

"Holiday?" exploded Virginia.

"Well?"

"That atomic fire is still burning!" snapped Virginia.

"Oh, no!"

"Well, I'm within a hundred and thirty miles of it," she replied, "and I can see it out of the window."

"Where the dickens are you?" he asked.

"You know my address," she replied.

"Yes," he agreed. "And I went there and got pushed in the face for my trouble."

"And the people who live at your address are named Carrington, not Bronson."

"How old are you?" asked Bronson.

"Twenty-five--why?"

"Look," he said, "if that atomic fire is running out there, then how did the World War Two end?"

"They brought high officials over to see the awful pillar of fire. They didn't tell them that the atomic flame would eventually eat the earth--so surrender was a matter of expediency. Once the shooting was over all the earth turned at once to the job of putting it out. You know that."

"Nope," he replied. "It worked--as did the others at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and two at Bikini Atoll."

"Hiro--and what was at Bikini Atoll?" demanded the girl.

"Tests--Operation Crossroads."

"_Tests!_" exploded Virginia. "And none of them started atomic fires in the earth itself?"

"Nope."

"Then you tell me what happened?"

"I don't know."

"You're not psycho?" asked Virginia.

"Not that I know of," he replied with a chuckle. "Though--as Pontius Pilate is credited with having said--'What is truth?'"

"Hmmm. I cannot deny your right to state truth as you see it, Bronson, but be it remembered that practically every human born since the atomic fire is a mutation of some sort or another."

"So what does that make me?"

"You might be some sort of brain mutation--don't ask what kind--one who does not recognize the truth."

"All I know is what I read in the papers, what I see in the moving pictures, and how I feel at the moment. Also, I am no mutation. I was exactly one year old when Alamogordo took place, even supposing that it did take off with radiations that might have mutated the germ plasm."

"Well, it did."

"According to you it did," replied Bronson.

"May I repeat your own statement to yourself?" she told him. "All I know--et cetera."

"Okay," he said. "And granting that our separate tales are true, then what?"

Virginia mentioned a few items of history. Both then got their own history books and started to compare closely. They agreed on everything up to the moment of the atomic bomb at Alamogordo.

And at that moment, the histories diverged.

"Nature," said Ed Bronson, "must have been perplexed. So she took both roadways. One in which the earth is engulfed with atomic flame and one in which the thing worked."

"What do we do next?" asked Virginia.

"We get in touch with the respective authorities of our worlds," said Bronson. "Alone we can do little. Together we can do something to aid you."

"Tomorrow night at seven, then?" asked Virginia.

"Right."

The contact was broken.

"And there," said Peter Moray, "is our answer!"