Pebble in the Sky

“What’s this?” he said to the chemist. “Has this always been here?”

“What, sir?” The young man stepped up nervously and glanced at the spot the older man indicated. It was a tiny hole, one that might have been made by a thin nail driven into the wall and withdrawn—but driven through plaster and brick for the full thickness of the building’s wall, since daylight could be seen through it.

The chemist shook his head, “I never saw that before. But I never looked for it, either, sir.”

Dr. Smith said nothing. He stepped back slowly and passed the thermostat, a parallelopiped of a box made out of thin sheet iron. The water in it moved swirlingly as the stirrer turned in motor-driven monomania, while the electric bulbs beneath the water, serving as heaters, flicked on and off distractingly, in time with the clicking of the mercury relay.

“Well, then, was this here?” And Dr. Smith scraped gently with his fingernail at a spot near the top of the wide side of the thermostat. It was a neat, tiny circle drilled through the metal. The water did not quite reach it.

The chemist’s eyes widened. “No, sir, that wasn’t there ever before. I’ll guarantee that.”

“Hmm. Is there one on the other side?”

“Well, I’ll be damned. I mean, yes, sir!”

“All right, come round here and sight through the holes….Shut the thermostat off, please. Now stay there.” He placed his finger on the hole in the wall. “What do you see?” he called out.

“I see your finger, sir. Is that where the hole is?”

Dr. Smith did not answer. He said, with a calmness he was far from feeling, “Sight through in the other direction….Now what do you see?”

“Nothing now.”

“But that’s the place where the crucible with the uranium was standing. You’re looking at the exact place, aren’t you?”

Reluctantly, “I think so, sir.”

Dr. Smith said frostily, with a quick glance at the name plate on the still-open door, “Mr. Jennings, this is absolutely top-secret. I don’t want you ever to speak about this to anyone. Do you understand?”

“Absolutely, sir!”

“Then let’s get out of here. We’ll send in the radiation men to check the place, and you and I will spend a siege in the infirmary.”

“Radiation burns, you mean?” The chemist paled.

“We’ll find out.”

But there were no serious signs of radiation burns in either. Blood counts were normal and a study of the hair roots revealed nothing. The nausea that developed was eventually tabbed as psychosomatic and no other symptoms appeared.

Nor, in all the Institute, was anyone found, either then or in the future, to explain why a crucible of crude uranium, well below critical size, and under no direct neutronic bombardment, should suddenly melt and radiate that deadly and significant corona.

The only conclusion was that nuclear physics had queer and dangerous crannies left in it.

Yet Dr. Smith never brought himself to tell all the truth in the report he eventually prepared. He made no mention of the holes in the laboratory, no mention of the fact that the one nearest the spot where the crucible had been was barely visible, the one on the other side of the thermostat was a trace larger, while the one in the wall, three times as far away from that fearful spot, could have had a nail thrust through it.

A beam expanding in a straight line could travel several miles before the Earth’s curvature made the surface fall away from it sufficiently to prevent further damage, and then it would be ten feet across. After that, flashing emptily into space, expanding and weakening, a queer strain in the fabric of the cosmos.

He never told anyone of that fancy.

He never told anyone that he called for the morning papers next day, while still in the infirmary, and searched the columns with a definite purpose in mind.

But so many people in a giant metropolis disappear every day. And nobody had gone screaming to the police with vague tales of how, before his eyes, a man (or would it be half a man?) had disappeared. At least no such case was reported.

Dr. Smith forced forgetfulness, eventually.

To Joseph Schwartz it had happened between one step and the next. He had lifted his right foot to clear the Raggedy Ann doll and for a moment he had felt dizzy—as though for the merest trifle of time a whirlwind had lifted him and turned him inside out. When he placed his right foot down again, all the breath went out of him in a gasp and he felt himself slowly crumple and slide down to the grass.

He waited a long time with his eyes closed—and then he opened them.

It was true! He was sitting on grass, where previously he had been walking on concrete.

The houses were gone! The white houses, each with its lawn, squatting there, row on row, all gone!

And it was not a lawn he was sitting on, for the grass was growing rank, untended, and there were trees about, many of them, with more on the horizon.

That was when the worst shock of all came, because the leaves on those trees were ruddy, some of them, and in the curve of his hand he felt the dry brittleness of a dead leaf. He was a city man, but he knew autumn when he saw it.

Autumn! Yet when he had lifted his right foot it had been a June day, with everything a fresh and glistening green.

He looked toward his feet automatically as he thought that and, with a sharp cry, reached toward them….The little cloth doll that he had stepped over, a little breath of reality, a—

Well, no! He turned it over in his trembling hands, and it was not whole. Yet it was not mangled; it was sliced. Now wasn’t that queer! Sliced lengthwise very neatly, so that the waste-yarn stuffing wasn’t stirred a hair. It lay there in interrupted threads, ending flatly.

The glitter on his left shoe caught Schwartz’s eye. Still clutching the doll, he forced his foot over his raised knee. The extreme tip of the sole, the part that extended forward past the uppers, was smoothly sliced off. Sliced off as no earthly knife in the hand of an earthly cobbler could have duplicated. The fresh surface gleamed almost liquidly in its unbelievable smoothness.

Schwartz’s confusion had reached up from his spinal cord and touched the cerebrum, where it finally froze him with horror.

At last, because even the sound of his own voice was a soothing element in a world otherwise completely mad, he spoke aloud. The voice he heard was low and tense and panting.

He said, “In the first place, I’m not crazy. I feel inside just the way I’ve always felt….Of course, if maybe I were crazy, I wouldn’t know it, or would I? No—” Inside, he felt the hysteria rise and forced it down. “There must be something else possible.”

He considered, “A dream, maybe? How can I tell if it’s a dream or not?” He pinched himself and felt the nip, but shook his head. “I can always dream I feel a pinch. That’s no proof.”

He looked about him despairingly. Could dreams be so clear, so detailed, so lasting? He had read once that most dreams last not more than five seconds, that they are induced by trifling disturbances to the sleeper, that the apparent length of the dreams is an illusion.

Cold comfort! He shifted the cuff of his shirt upward and stared at his wrist watch. The second hand turned and turned and turned. If it were a dream, the five seconds was going to stretch madly.

He looked away and wiped futilely at the cold dampness of his forehead. “What about amnesia?”

He did not answer himself, but slowly buried his head in both hands.

If he had lifted his foot and, as he did so, his mind had slipped the well-worn and well-oiled tracks it had followed so faithfully for so long…If three months later, in the autumn, or a year and three months later, or ten years and three months later, he had put his foot down in this strange place, just as his mind returned…Why, it would seem a single step, and all this…Then where had he been and what had he done in the interval?

“No!” The word came out in a loud cry. That couldn’t be! Schwartz looked at his shirt. It was the one he had put on that morning, or what should have been that morning, and it was a fresh shirt. He bethought himself, plunged a fist into his jacket pocket, and brought out an apple.

He bit into it wildly. It was fresh and still had a lingering coolness from the refrigerator which had held it two hours earlier—or what should have been two hours.

And the little rag doll, what about that?

He felt himself beginning to go wild. It had to be a dream, or he really was insane.

It struck him that the time of day had changed. It was late afternoon, or at least the shadows were lengthening. The quiet desolation of the place flooded down upon him suddenly and freezingly.

He lurched to his feet. Obviously he would have to find people, any people. And, as obviously, he would have to find a house, and the best way to do that would be to find a road.

Automatically he turned in the direction in which the trees seemed thinnest, and walked.

The slight chill of evening was creeping inside his jacket and the tops of the trees were becoming dim and forbidding when he came upon that straight and impersonal streak of macadam. He lunged toward it with sobbing gratitude and loved the feel of the hardness beneath his feet.

But along either direction was absolute emptiness, and for a moment he felt the cold clutch again. He had hoped for cars. It would have been the easiest thing to wave them down and say—he said it aloud in his eagerness—“Going toward Chicago, maybe?”

What if he was nowhere near Chicago? Well, any large city; anyplace he could reach a telephone line. He had only four dollars and twenty-seven cents in his pocket, but there was always the police…

He was walking along the highway, walking along the middle, watching in both directions. The setting of the sun made no impression upon him, or the fact that the first stars were coming out.

No cars. Nothing! And it was getting to be really dark.

He thought that first dizziness might be coming back, because the horizon at his left glimmered. Through the gaps in the trees there was a cold blue shine. It was not the leaping red he imagined a forest fire would be like, but a faint and creeping glow. And the macadam beneath his feet seemed to sparkle ever so faintly. He bent down to touch it, and it felt normal. But there was that tiny glimmer that caught the edges of his eyes.

He found himself running wildly along the highway, his shoes thudding in blunt and uneven rhythm. He was conscious of the damaged doll in his hand and he tossed it wildly over his head.

Leering, mocking remnant of life…

And then he stopped in a panic. Whatever it was, it was a proof of his sanity. And he needed it! So he felt about in the darkness, crawling on his knees till he found it, a dark patch on the ultra-faint glow. The stuffing was plumping out and, absently, he forced it back.

He was walking again—too miserable to run, he told himself.

He was getting hungry and really, really frightened when he saw that spark to the right.

It was a house, of course!

He shouted wildly and no one answered, but it was a house, a spark of reality blinking at him through the horrible, nameless wilderness of the last hours. He turned off the road and went plunging cross-country, across ditches, around trees, through the underbrush, and over a creek.

Queer thing! Even the creek glowed faintly—phosphorescently! But it was only the tiniest fragment of his mind that noted it.

Then he was there, with his hands reaching out to touch the hard white structure. It was neither brick nor stone nor wood, but he never paid that the least mind. It looked like a dull, strong porcelain, but he didn’t give a hoot. He was just looking for a door, and when he came to it and saw no bell, he kicked at it and yelled like a demon.

He heard the stirring inside and the blessed, lovely sound of a human voice other than his own. He yelled again.

“Hey, in there!”

There was a faint, oiled whir, and the door opened. A woman emerged, a spark of alarm in her eyes. She was tall and wiry, and behind her was the gaunt figure of a hard-faced man in work clothes….No, not work clothes. Actually they were like nothing Schwartz had ever seen, but, in some indefinable way, they looked like the kind of clothes men worked in.

But Schwartz was not analytical. To him they, and their clothes, were beautiful; beautiful only as the sight of friends to a man alone can be beautiful.

The woman spoke and her voice was liquid, but peremptory, and Schwartz reached for the door to keep himself upright. His lips moved, uselessly, and, in a rush, all the clammiest fears he had known returned to choke his windpipe and stifle his heart.

For the woman spoke in no language Schwartz had ever heard.

Loa Maren and her stolid husband, Arbin, played cards in the cool of the same evening, while the older man in the motor-driven wheel chair in the corner rustled his newspaper angrily and called, “Arbin!”

Arbin Maren did not answer at once. He fingered the thin, smooth rectangles carefully as he considered the next play. Then, as he slowly made his decision, he responded with an absent, “What do you want, Grew?”

The grizzled Grew regarded his son-in-law fiercely over the top of the paper and rustled it again. He found noise of that sort a great relief to his feelings. When a man teems with energy and finds himself spiked to a wheel chair with two dead sticks for legs, there must be something, by Space, he can do to express himself. Grew used his newspaper. He rustled it; he gestured with it; when necessary, he swatted at things with it.

Elsewhere than on Earth, Grew knew, they had telenews machines that issued rolls of microfilm as servings of current news. Standard book viewers were used for them. But Grew sneered silently at that. An effete and degenerate custom!

Grew said, “Did you read about the archaeological expedition they’re sending to Earth?”

“No, I haven’t,” said Arbin calmly.

Grew knew that, since nobody but himself had seen the paper yet, and the family had given up their video last year. But then his remark had simply been in the nature of an opening gambit, anyway.

He said, “Well, there’s one coming. And on an Imperial grant, too, and how do you like that?” He began reciting in the queer unevenness of tone that most people somehow assume automatically when reading aloud, “ ‘Bel Arvardan, Senior Research Associate at the Imperial Archaeological Institute, in an interview granted the Galactic Press, spoke hopefully of the expected valuable results of archaeological studies which are being projected upon the planet Earth, located on the outskirts of the Sirius Sector (see map). “Earth,” he said, “with its archaic civilization and its unique environment, offers a freak culture which has been too long neglected by our social scientists, except as a difficult exercise in local government. I have every expectation that the next year or two will bring about revolutionary changes in some of our supposed fundamental concepts of social evolution and human history.” ’ And so on and so on,” he finished with a flourish.

Arbin Maren had been listening with only half an ear. He mumbled, “What does he mean, ‘freak culture’?”

Loa Maren hadn’t been listening at all. She simply said, “It’s your play, Arbin.”

Grew went on, “Well, aren’t you going to ask me why the Tribune printed it? You know they wouldn’t print a Galactic Press release for a million Imperial Credits without a good reason.”

He waited uselessly for an answer, then said, “Because they have an editorial on it. A full-page editorial that blasts the living daylights out of this guy Arvardan. Here’s a fellow wants to come here for scientific purposes and they’re choking themselves purple to keep him out. Look at this piece of rabble-rousing. Look at it!” He shook the paper at them. “Read it, why don’t you?”

Loa Maren put down her cards and clamped her thin lips firmly together. “Father,” she said, “we’ve had a hard day, so let’s not have politics just now. Later, maybe, eh? Please, Father.”

Grew scowled and mimicked, “ ‘Please, Father! Please, Father.’ It appears to me you must be getting pretty tired of your old father when you begrudge him a few quiet words on current events. I’m in your way, I suppose, sitting here in the corner and letting you two work for three….Whose fault is it? I’m strong. I’m willing to work. And you know I could get my legs treated and be as well as ever.” He slapped them as he spoke: hard, savage, ringing slaps, which he heard but did not feel. “The only reason I can’t is because I’m getting too old to make a cure worth their while. Don’t you call that a ‘freak culture’? What else could you call a world where a man can work but they won’t let him? By Space, I think it’s about time we stopped this nonsense about our so-called ‘peculiar institutions.’ They’re not just peculiar; they’re cracked! I think—”

He was waving his arms and angry blood was reddening his face.

But Arbin had risen from his chair, and his grip was strong on the older man’s shoulder. He said, “Now where’s the call to be upset, Grew? When you’re through with the paper, I’ll read the editorial.”

“Sure, but you’ll agree with them, so what’s the use? You young ones are a bunch of milksops; just sponge rubber in the hands of the Ancients.”

And Loa said sharply, “Quiet, Father. Don’t start that.” She sat there listening for a moment. She could not have said exactly what for, but…

Arbin felt that cold little prickle that always came when the Society of Ancients was mentioned. It just wasn’t safe to talk as Grew did, to mock Earth’s ancient culture, to—to—

Why, it was rank Assimilationism. He swallowed earnestly; the word was an ugly one, even when confined to thought.

Of course in Grew’s youth there had been much of this foolish talk of abandoning the old ways, but these were different times. Grew should know that—and he probably did, except that it wasn’t easy to be reasonable and sensible when you were in a wheel-chair prison, just waiting away your days for the next Census.

Grew was perhaps the least affected, but he said no more. And as the moments passed he grew quieter and the print became progressively more difficult to place in focus. He had not yet had time to give the sports pages a detailed and critical perusal when his nodding head lolled slowly down upon his chest. He snored softly, and the paper fell from his fingers with a final, unintentional rustle.

Then Loa spoke, in a worried whisper. “Maybe we’re not being kind to him, Arbin. It’s a hard life for a man like Father. It’s like being dead compared to the life he used to lead.”

“Nothing’s like being dead, Loa. He has his papers and his books. Let him be! A bit of excitement like this peps him up. He’ll be happy and quiet for days now.”

Arbin was beginning to consider his cards again, and as he reached for one the pounding at the door sounded, with hoarse yells that didn’t quite coalesce into words.

Arbin’s hand lurched and stopped. Loa’s eyes grew fearful; she stared at her husband with a trembling lower lip.

Arbin said, “Get Grew out of here. Quickly!”

Loa was at the wheel chair as he spoke. She made soothing sounds with her tongue.

But the sleeping figure gasped, startled awake at the first motion of the chair. He straightened and groped automatically for his paper.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded irritably, and by no means in a whisper.

“Shh. It’s all right,” muttered Loa vaguely, and wheeled the chair into the next room. She closed the door and placed her back against it, thin chest heaving as her eyes sought those of her husband. There was that pounding again.

They stood close to each other as the door opened, almost defensively so, and hostility peeped from them as they faced the short, plump man who smiled faintly at them.

Loa said, “Is there anything we can do for you?” with a ceremonial courtesy, then jumped back as the man gasped and put out a hand to stop himself from falling.

“Is he sick?” asked Arbin bewilderedly. “Here, help me take him inside.”

The hours after that passed, and in the quiet of their bedroom Loa and Arbin prepared slowly for bed.

“Arbin,” said Loa.

“What is it?”

“Is it safe?”

“Safe?” He seemed to avoid her meaning deliberately.

“I mean, taking this man into the house. Who is he?”

“How should I know?” was the irritated response. “But, after all, we can’t refuse shelter to a sick man. Tomorrow, if he lacks identification, we’ll inform the Regional Security Board, and that will be the end of it.” He turned away in an obvious attempt at breaking off the conversation.

But his wife broke the returning silence, her thin voice more urgent. “You don’t think he might be an agent of the Society of Ancients, do you? There’s Grew, you know.”

“You mean because of what he said tonight? That’s past the limit of reason. I won’t argue about it.”

“I don’t mean that, and you know it. I mean that we’ve been keeping Grew illegally now for two years, and you know we’re breaking just about the most serious Custom.”

Arbin muttered, “We’re harming no one. We’re filling our quota, aren’t we, even though it’s set for three people—three workers? And if we are, why should they suspect anything? We don’t even let him out of the house.”

“They might trace the wheel chair. You had to buy the motor and fittings outside.”

“Now don’t start that again, Loa. I’ve explained many times that I’ve bought nothing but standard kitchen equipment for that chair. Besides, it does not make any sense at all to consider him an agent of the Brotherhood. Do you suppose that they would go through such an elaborate trickery for the sake of a poor old man in a wheel chair? Couldn’t they enter by daylight and with legal search warrants? Please, reason this thing out.”

“Well, then, Arbin”—her eyes were suddenly bright and eager—“if you really think so—and I’ve been so hoping you would—he must be an Outsider. He can’t be an Earthman.”

“What do you mean, he can’t be? That’s more ridiculous still. Why should a man of the Empire come here to Earth, of all places?”

“I don’t know why! Yes, I do; maybe he’s committed a crime out there.” She was caught up instantly in her own fancy. “Why not? It makes sense. Earth would be the natural place to come to. Who would ever think of looking for him here?”

“If he’s an Outsider. What evidence do you have for that?”

“He doesn’t speak the language, does he? You’ll have to grant me that. Could you understand a single word? So he must come from some far-off corner of the Galaxy where the dialect is strange. They say the men of Fomalhaut have to learn practically a new language to be understood at the Emperor’s court on Trantor….But don’t you see what all this can mean? If he’s a stranger on Earth, he will have no registration with the Census Board, and he will be only too glad to avoid reporting to them. We can use him on the farm, in the place of Father, and it will be three people again, not two, who will have to meet the quota for three this next season….He could even help with the harvest now.”