crush them as though I were crushing snails." He reachedout from the ship with rays that seized meteors and flung them like aschoolboy flinging stones at bottles, one by one against the massive,shining domes of the Authority. The domes cracked and split and werecrushed. The atomic bombs broke open with flame that leapt up yellowtongues and grew mushrooms in the sky, and a burning death spread allaround.
Then Thorus was quiet, watching all that he had destroyed.
But suddenly, he became aware of Aria's thought within him, crying out."Destroyer! Murderer! In moments you've set humanity back a hundredthousand years. You're worse than the Authority. There'll never be anypeace for you or for the earth or even the universe after what you'vedone. Other Authorities will come and you'll have to destroy them andothers and others. Destruction for you forever, on and on, until youfill the universe with it...."
In his mind, Thorus saw her among the falling snowflakes and the dropsof cool water and the green, growing atoms; saw her in the transparenttube sink deeper and deeper into the microcosm, away and away like aminnow swimming down into a beautiful lake on a summer's day. Deeper,ever deeper, until there was nothing but the blue, sleepy water.
As Thorus looked upon the earth again and saw the terrible destructionhe had wrought, he trembled. There was the realization in him that,beneath his consciousness, had lain the hope that, after he had wipedclean the earth, Aria's healing power would remake it. But now therewould be no healing, and for thousands of years earth would lie asmoking ruins with the people crawling about its shattered surface likebugs.
He turned from all he saw. He closed his eyes and threw his ship outinto space, threw it away into the fathomless void. He must escape fromthe universe, must flee from the horror that filled him at thedesolation he had wrought. Straight out into space, out into theforever, where earth would cease to exist, where he and his remorsewould be lost.
* * * * *
Gleaming suns and galaxies streaked past yet he seemed within himself tobe hanging motionless in an infinite sea of blackness while he knew thatthe speed of him cracked through the barrier of time and space; knewthat it was a speed beyond any conceived by the mind of man. On intoforgetfulness, escape beyond his memory, faster and farther away thanhis mind, so far away that even earth would disappear in his thought.
As incredible distances stretched almost to breaking between himself andearth, he thought: So this is the end. For all I've been and wanted tobe, this is it. A nothingness beyond the universe.
But as the last word went from his thought, he saw a greenish blue ballof light rush toward him. He watched it inflate in the port. Itenveloped the whole ship. The suns and the galaxies had faded intonothingness. He was aware of sinking into eternal depths but at the sametime he felt himself soaring until sinking and soaring flowed into eachother. After a time, he saw shimmering white crystals encircling hisship. And then the encircling crystals became one snowflake reflectinglight like the moon.
A great wonder filled him and he stared in overwhelming awe. He heardhis own heartbeat in his body and outside the ship, holding the ship inan eternal throbbing; heard the flowing of his own blood like aturbulent river; heard his breathing become the ebb and flow of wind,like the sound of surf. His body too became the soil of earth and itsrock and water and he was deeply conscious of growth all through him. Hewas birth and death and he was both in one and he was the life ofmankind, of animals, of plants.
As he waited in what seemed to be eternity, sunlight broke into hissight and he saw a field of grass forming around his ship. Blue sky swaminto focus above him. White cloud patches formed in the blue as thoughthey had been ordered there by the word of creation. Thorus knew thenthat he was on earth again, that he had come up from deep inside it.
Rising up, like one awakening uncertainly from sleep in a strange room,he opened the ship's hatch and looked out upon the land. A flash oflight caught his eyes then, from above, and he looked up in wonder.
He gasped.
* * * * *
Aria, in the transparent cylinder, sinking down through the blue, like aleaf, settling gently to the earth a hundred feet away.
She crawled out and stood looking across the field of grass at him, astrange, smile on her face.
Thorus leaped from his ship and ran toward her. He ran silently. Sheheld out her hands and he grasped them tenderly, as he would grasp thehands of a child. And all he could say was, "Aria. Aria."
"Thorus," she said, and there was courage and joy in her voice. "We'vecome back."
They stared into each other's eyes for a long moment and then they wereclose, and they held to each other and swayed.
"Do you know what's happened?" she said.
"Yes. You came back through hyper-space while _I_ came back through theatoms." His voice was quiet. "Oh, Lord. Oh good and strange Lord. Weforgot that one of the great men twenty thousand years ago, proved thatspace was curved."
"Yes." She stood away from him now, yet held to his hand. "We couldn'tescape from our place in life or ourselves or the good and the evil thatwe have done. We came back to our earth and now we must do what we haveleft undone."
There was much to be done.
Thorus looked around. He saw in the distance a crushed and smokingruins. "I've destroyed the Authority, but I've destroyed too much. Nowthe people are in chaos."
Aria stood silently awhile, and then moved his arm. "But now you canhelp me to heal them. You've seen in the microcosm, as I have in themacrocosm that all life is one. Now we can show the people that outerand inner space are not separate. We can show them how they existtogether and how there can be no escape in either or from either. Itwill take a long time. But we will do it. And the doing will be grand."She paused. "The beginning and the end, Thorus. The greatness and thesmallness. The light and the darkness. It's all here."
"And all that's in between. That too."
"Yes," she answered quietly. "That too."
They turned to the smoking ruins and arm in arm began walking toward it.
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber Notes:
This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction May 1953.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.
"Obvious punctuation errors repaired."
Page 100 (page 8 of this ebook) baloon spelling corrected to balloon
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