I was surprised by my own tears and pulled back to see them falling on my numbed palms. I held out my hands to Quell, showing him those tears.
“Quell, look, please look,” I pleaded.
But Quell did not see.
I tried to think what I must do.
And then I turned and stabbed at the radio contact on the console. The far funeral music died.
I stared at Quell and waited. An echo of the music lingered in the room.
“He still hears it,” said Downs.
Suddenly, breaking the silence, a horn, a klaxon, a bell, and a voice: “Red alert! Crew to stations! Red alert!”
I turned and ran, following Downs along the corridor toward the main deck.
Reaching my post, I brought up the lights on the multilevel screen before me. A pattern of atomic light, many-colored, played before my eyes.
“What is that?” I wondered aloud.
Redleigh came to stand behind me, and posed the question, “Leviathan?”
The captain approached with his pulsing electric sound.
“No. The great comet’s beyond, still some distance away. It sends a messenger ahead to warn us off. It fires a storm of gravities, atomic whirlwinds, dust storms of meteors, cosmic bombardments, solar explosions. Pay it no mind. That is but a mere mote of dust compared to Leviathan.”
I tuned into the sensors on my console, and it was as the captain said. Somewhere, nearly out of range, far off but approaching fast, was a behemoth of unimaginable size and power.
Our spacecraft trembled.
Chapter 9
The trembling became more convulsive, the light on the screen more erratic. The sound grew loud, but, we knew, it was not the immense sound Leviathan might make when it arrived.
“Captain,” said Redleigh. “Permission to turn back. We’ll be destroyed.”
“Head on, Mr. Redleigh,” said the captain. “It’s merely testing us.”
The storm on the screen rose and fell and rose again. And then, a sudden silence.
“What?” said Redleigh.
The captain said, “What, what, indeed!”
“It’s gone,” I said, checking my screen again in disbelief. “The storm that ran before the comet is gone. But what of Leviathan itself?”
I ran some more scans, searching the vast expanse around our ship for hostile entities. “The comet! It’s vanished, too! It’s gone from the sensors.”
“No!” said the captain.
“Yes,” I said. “According to the readings, all the space around us is empty.”
“Thank God,” said Redleigh, almost to himself.
“No, I say, no!” the captain yelled. “My eyes see nothing. Yet—it must be there. I can almost touch it. I feel it. It is—”
A familiar voice broke in. “Gone,” Quell said, quietly, staring at the emptiness of space on the computer screen. “Gone.”
“Quell!” I cried. “You’ve come back! Thank God.”
Quell said nothing.
“Quell, what happened,” I asked. “Out there?”
Quell moved forward slowly. “The funeral music—it’s gone. Our traveling burial grounds, gone. The comet, the nightmare, all…gone.”
“Yes,” I said. “But why?”
Quell remained silent.
“Out with it, man!!” cried the captain.
Quell finally turned away from the screen and spoke to us. “That storm has wounded Time. We have turned a corner in Eternity. The very stuff of the void, the abyss has been…turned wrong side out…atom on atom…molecule on molecule…particle on particle reversed…I feel it…so.”
And Quell reached out a hand as if his mind had fled.
“It can’t be!” I heard myself say.
“So say I!” said the captain, disbelieving.
“Space says otherwise,” said Quell, calmly. “The storm has picked us up and thrown us back two thousand years. The past has become our present.”
“If this is now the past,” said Redleigh, “what year is it?”
Quell thought for a few moments. “Before Columbus? Yes, certainly. Before the birth of Christ? Most likely. Before your Caesar built his Roman roads through Britain’s moors, or Plato spoke or Aristotle listened? Maybe. That great star, the beast, it pities us.”
“Pity?” said the captain. “How can you say pity?”
Quell searched through space with eye and mind. “It would not fight with us. Instead, it would hide us deep, so it would not be forced to war against us. It has given us a chance, a path away from it. That, sir, is pity.”
“I will have none!” the captain said.
“Elijah,” I whispered.
“What?” the captain turned toward my voice.
“Elijah. The day before our liftoff from Earth. Elijah said—”
“Said what?” the captain demanded impatiently.
“‘Far out in space, there’ll come a time when you see land where there is no land, find time where there is no time; when ancient kings will reflesh their bones and reseat their crowns…’”
“Is that time now?” asked Redleigh.
And Quell replied, “Yes, now. For look. And…feel.”
I finished the memory of Elijah’s words: “‘Then, oh then, ship, ship’s captain, ship’s men, all, all will be destroyed! All save one.’”
All save one, I thought, as the captain exploded with rage. “Fools, damn fools!” he cried. “We do not take this past, accept these ancient years. We do not hide in pyramids or run from locust plagues to cower, grovel underneath the robes of Christ! We will stand forth.”
He turned and strode toward the lift to the upper reaches. “The airlock, open it! Although blind, I will go forth and find the monster myself!”
Chapter 10
Quell’s mind moved outside the ship to find the captain, alone.
And though I could not see, I heard, and what the captain finally said was this: “What? Nothing? All quiet, gone, spent? Is this the end? No more the hunt, the journey, and the goal? That terrifies me most: No more the goal! From here on then, what is the captain for?
What does he do, if time and circumstance knock all the mountains down to one dull flat and endless plain, one long bleak winter afternoon, not even tea and simple bread to brighten it?
“Oh Christ, the thought of mindless noons that have no ends, or end in maunderings, stale tea leaves in a cup which tell no murders and no blood, and so no life—that breaks my bones. The sound of one leaf turning in a book would crack my spine.
One dust mote burning on a sunlit hearth would smother my soul. The simple things that snug themselves in halls too clean, too quiet, that lie in well-made beds and smile idiot smiles! Oh, turn away. Such peace is a winepress to crush your soul.
“And yet…God, feel…the universe itself fills me this hour with quiet joy. Unseen by me, there one small fire goes out, but yet another freshens itself forth in birth. It is my heart’s midnight, but yet some foundling sun reminds me that somewhere a million light-years on, a boy gets out of bed in cold well-water morn; the circus now arrives, a life’s begun with animals and flags and bunting and bright lights. Would I deny his right, his joy at rising to run forth and greet the show? I would deny, I would!
“But no, ah God, but surely no. It cracks my heart to think of him derelict with age, but would I warn him not to turn the page and let life begin?
“I would! Our very life’s a sin against itself!
“But then again, once more, I’d keep my tongue and let him play. Go, boy, I would advise, on some far world. Start up the day, spin forth your captured joys. O, know delight. Mind not on me. I stay here with my night.”
Suddenly Small was behind me, and reached over my shoulder to adjust some controls on the console. The screen came to life, and we saw the captain out on the hull, tethered to the ship by an airline.
Redleigh, similarly suited for space and tied to the ship by a line, hovered a few yards behind the captain. He had a weapon in his hand, but indecision showed on his face behind his airmask.
Quell’s mind moved, searching, and he touched good Redleigh’s mind and in his thoughts I read: “When he speaks so, what must I do? Destroy or not destroy? And even as he moves back and forth, from light to dark, his madness most inconstant, so my own sanity wavers. I would kill him. But then again, I would not.”
“Leviathan!” yelled the captain at the black emptiness surrounding him. “Stand forth! You must be there!”
I heard his breath rasping in the silent void, as he waited for an answer that would not come.
“Oh, God,” he continued. “Give me, oh give me back just one millionth part of all the visions of my youth. Restore my sight. For just one moment in this long night, give me the strength that vision gives to finish out this thing, see darkness with these eyes, know whiteness then for death, do justice with these hands! Give back, oh I beseech, I humbly ask, I do cry out, I pray!”
At this the captain spun around, as if he was about to fall in the zero gravity of space, as if the weight of all he had said was too much.
“Captain!” Redleigh cried out. “No!”
“But yes…it’s given.” The captain struggled to right himself. “Hold on, it’s given back! My vision is clear. The universe stands right. I can see! The stars! My God, the billion stars, the stars!”
At which the captain wept.
Redleigh, seeing those same stars, spoke to himself. “Oh thank you, God, for miracles which teach. But then, I wonder, will he learn?”
“Who is that?” the captain said. “Redleigh? Is that you? My friend’s face seen at last?”
He reached out and almost touched the faceplate of his first mate’s helmet.
Redleigh responded, “It is the face of a friend. And this friend says, Turn back. There is
