The weapon Redleigh carried was now pointed directly at the captain.
“You never will.”
“But if I could!” said Redleigh. “How fine to land back home and go with simple cavemen into a cave, live out a life less a nightmare than all this, lie down with saber-tooths, sweet Christ, and rest awhile.”
“We shall rest, Mr. Redleigh, at the dead heart of the comet.”
“I see,” said Redleigh. “Now I am dead. Let me put away my gun. Here comes Leviathan, to pick my bones. Shall I greet it, Captain, with you?”
There was a great light, an immense sound, a fantastic approaching dazzle and splendor.
And Quell echoed, “To pick my bones.”
Chapter 11
“Sir?”
Quell came to attention as Downs came on deck.
“Sir, your suit is finished.” The engineer held out a suit made of some stiff black material.
“Much thanks,” said Quell. “It is a fine piece of work.”
Downs tapped on the metal carapace. “I am tempted to die and wear the damned thing myself.”
“Stick around,” said Quell. “You may get your wish.”
“Quell!” I said.
Quell stiffened, alert, turning toward me.
“You heard it all.”
“The captain,” I said, “has been given his sight, but is more blind than ever before.”
“And we shall share his blindness,” said Quell. “Look!”
The dazzling storm of light grew behind my eyes, where Quell had placed it. Likewise, it burst on the screens all around the deck.
“All hands!” the captain commanded. “Emergency life-suits on! Ready and stand by emergency life-craft! Redleigh, inside! All hands! All hands!”
The crew ran with eager shouts.
“Oh, yes,” I said to myself. “The comet approaches. And it is a great white holy terror that fills the universe and swallows every star. And look, my God, oh look! The crew! They run like children run at their games.”
“Listen to their thoughts,” Quell said, gesturing at the people rushing madly around us. “I give you leave. The hot blood rushes in their veins. Hear how they truly run!”
He touched my brow and their thoughts flowed into mine. I felt and heard the shriek, the joyous cry, the glorious wail and shout of men running downhill to doom.
The captain appeared among us, and all hands turned to him, faces flushed with anticipation.
“Have you ever seen the like?!” said the captain. “Oh God, that fire, brighter than ten million suns. Everyone to stations.”
“Aye aye, sir!” the crew shouted as one.
“Now,” said the captain by radio to the crew in their suits, “in each and every life-craft ship, know the engines of destruction. Draw on my hunger to devour this thing—make it yours! In each craft is a beam more powerful than any hell-fire laser ever built. Wider, longer, swifter, surer. Use that power! Fret the beast. Lay him waste. Life-craft One under command of crewman Downs?”
“Downs here,” cried the man. “Life-craft One ready!”
“Launch!”
I heard the first craft blast away, carrying Downs and his companion.
“Life-craft Two!” the captain shouted. “Crewman Small!”
“Small here,” a voice replied. “Life-craft Two…ready!”
“Launch!”
Concussion, and Small and his voice and his crewmate were gone.
“Mr. Redleigh,” said the captain, turning to his first mate. “The third craft is yours. Use it well.”
“Sir!” said Redleigh.
“Quell,” said the captain. And I saw that Quell had donned his black suit. “Quell, you go with Redleigh. Ishmael stays with me, here on the main ship. Stand by for launch of Life-craft Three.”
“Quell,” Redleigh said, as the two prepared to leave the main deck. “You wear your suit of death.”
“It fits, Mr. Redleigh, it fits.”
“Will there be room for me?”
“Death,” Quell said, “makes a large coffin. We shall not knock elbows.”
“All right,” said Redleigh. “Then, on the double.”
Quell turned to me before leaving, as if to say something.
“Quell,” I said, “let me go with you. Captain? I must ask—”
But Quell cut in. “No. Stay. And live. You will live, you know, to be very old. I, who sees beyond, tell you this. Be old, Ishmael. Be happy. Dear friend, goodbye.”
“Oh, Quell,” I whispered. “Leave your mind with me, so we may be friends to the end.”
I felt his thoughts, his mind did linger in my ears and in my head.
“My mind is yours,” said Quell as he left. “Yours.”
A few moments later, the captain commanded, “Launch Life-craft Three!”
Redleigh’s voice came over the intercom, “Life-craft Three launching!”
Concussion. Quell and Redleigh catapulted into the universe.
“Ishmael, stand close,” said the captain.
“Sir!” I said.
“They fly,” the captain said. “There, see the life-crafts as they go.”
Watching the computer screen, we saw the craft, already far out beyond us, and heard their voices, mingled. And in those lonely craft, Quell, Redleigh, Small, and Downs. The voices said, “Craft One, full speed. Craft Two, full. Three, on target.”
“Oh, Ishmael, look!” the captain said. “That is the whole Antarctic continent, all white, and somehow hurled upon the universal air to shake our sight! Leviathan!”
“It’s too much!” I cried. “I cannot see!”
“Let it burn your eyes, as it burned mine,” the captain said. “We’ll still have hands to put it out!”
“Quell!” I shouted.
For I was hearing music: the music of Quell’s ancestors, the funeral dirge of his grandfather. It was in Quell’s mind, and somehow it came to me.
Quell’s voice replied, long miles away: “I hear you, young friend.”
“Oh, Quell, that music!”
“Yes,” Quell said. “Leviathan has learned that tune…and plays it well.”
And then the music was playing not only in my head, but coming over the ship’s speakers—loud, crashing, melancholy waves.
Suddenly the captain said, “I’ll stop that sound! I’ll kill that thing! Crafts One and Two—destroy! Craft Three—destroy! Redleigh—destroy!”
And Redleigh’s voice, in concert with the others, echoed back: “Destroy!”
The music crescendoed—immense sounds and vibrations. It swelled and rose and fell away.
“Destroy and be destroyed,” I said to myself, remembering. To the captain, I said, “Oh, sir, our ships are too small. That comet destroys them! I see the men’s bones, as if on an X-ray. The laser-beam weapons they aim are no more than matchstick torches against that great hand of fire that closes in on them like a fist.”
I watched as Life-crafts One, Two, and Three disappeared.
“There,” I whispered. “I faintly see. My vision fades. The ships, one by one, fall, plucked free of skins, their metal skeletons revealed, the men tossed out in millrace radiation. Flashing meteors…all swallowed…vanishing.”
“No, good Ishmael,” came Quell’s faint whisper. “We are gone, but we have each been thrown to a different warp in Time.”
“The men in Life-craft One,” I asked, “their weapons stilled, where do they go?”
Quell’s whisper said, “Our friend Downs is sent to death, perhaps, and burial with Richard, mad lost king, on his green plain, his crown and blood tossed at his feet.”
“The men in Life-craft Two spin further on. They drop, despairing, where?”
“In Illinois. Oh strange,” came Quell’s mute words.
“In Illinois, near the tomb where Lincoln sleeps. And Redleigh? Quell, what of him?”
“Still here. We know not where we go. This comet steers us. Time is its weapon!”
I turned to the captain. “Time,” I said. “The comet has flung them throughout Time. Quell says Time is its weapon.”
“As Time is mine!” said the captain. “My crew dispersed, my weapons gone, yet I have one huge weapon left, aboard this ship. Time! Time is all! So I have made an engine that, like Leviathan, can twist all Time like a spinning top. Now, with my vast machine we’ll use the comet’s power against itself. As in the Orient, we fall and take our killer with us, using all his weight for his defeat.
That mouth which would have swallowed us, we will cause to gape and turn about. What’s larger than Leviathan? Eternity! The void! The dark abyss! The stuff between the stars! That is the mouth I use. My engine will open a seam in space and drop Leviathan in.”
And in that instant, our captain played some keys of the main computer console and the engines of our rocket throbbed to hysteria.
“Leviathan,” cried the captain, “meet Leviathan! Destruction, meet destruction! Comet, see thy mirror image! Annihilation, know annihilation!”
The entire universe around us shook. I heard Quell’s voice as it faded among the stars.
“Oh, Ishmael.”
“Quell!”
The captain’s voice was loud in that last great sound, and in that final moment he shouted, “What? My ship gone, too? Its flesh ripped free? Its bones strewn forth? Am I blind once more? Then blind, I seize on thee! Dead, I grapple with thee. Where is thy heart? Oh there, now there—I’ll stifle it. Oh damned and dread Leviathan, it comes to this!”
There was a final explosion—a great outpouring of shrapneled ship, lost humans, and wild beams. And I, thrown upward, floated in my life-suit above the wreckage, surrounded by mirages, dreams, motes, shadows, stars.
Gone, yes, all gone, I thought. Down the long black mineshaft of the universe, its bridal veil trailing despairs and woes, celebrating itself, a mindless mystery forever in motion, but…wait…now truly gone?
Gone all the ships, men, large, small, sane or mad, the captain with them, madness maddened. Did he open wide the seam, that strange vast hole in eternity he spoke of, and drop Leviathan in? And are they lost forever? Or will, I wonder, Leviathan return? Will he return in thirty years and bring with him all those who would have killed him?
Long years from now, will the monster and my mates slide down the length of the abyss, return as one at last…the hunter and the hunted, the feared and the fearer, the madness and the vaulting dream of madness, together fused forever through centuries yet unborn?
Will it all be here, will it all pass by when Earth is old and looks up to behold Leviathan, our ships, our crew, our captain—an endless cortege to the
