The reporter was so deferential that Stormgren found it surprising. He had almost forgotten that he was not only an elder statesman but, outside his own country, almost a mythical figure.
“Mr. Stormgren,” the intruder began, “I’m very sorry to bother you, but I wonder if you’d care to comment on something we’ve just heard about the Overlords.”
Stormgren frowned slightly. After all these years, he still shared Karellen’s dislike for that word.
“I do not think,” he said, “that I can add a great deal to what has been written elsewhere.”
The reporter was watching him with a curious intentness.
“I thought that you might. A rather strange story has just come to our notice. It seems that, nearly thirty years ago, one of the Science Bureau’s technicians made some remarkable equipment for you. We wondered if you could tell us anything about it.”
For a moment Stormgren was silent, his mind going back into the past. He was not surprised that the secret had been discovered. Indeed, it was surprising that it had been kept so tong.
He rose to his feet and began to walk back along the jetty, the reporter following a few paces behind.
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“The story,” he said, “contains a certain amount of truth. On my last visit to Karellen’s ship I took some apparatus with
me, in the hope that I might be able to see the Supervisor. It
was rather a foolish thing to do, but-well, I was only sixty at the time.”
He chuckled to himself and then continued.
“It’s not much of a story to have brought you all this way. You see, it didn’t work.”
“You saw nothing ?”
“No, nothing at all. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait-but
after all, there are only twenty years to go!”
Twenty years to go. Yes, Karellen bad been right. By then the world would be ready, as it had not been when he had spoken that same lie to Duval thirty years ago.
Karellen had trusted him, and Stormgren had not betrayed his faith. He was as sure as he could be of anything that the Supervisor had known his plan from the beginning, and had fbreseen every moment of its final act.
Why else had that enormous chair been already empty when the circle of light blazed upon it! In the same moment he had started to swing the beam, fearing that he was too late. The metal door, twice as high as a man, was closing swiftly when he first caught sight of it-closing swiftly, yet not quite swiftly enough.
Yes, Karellen had trusted him, had not wished him to go down into the long evening of his life haunted by a mystery he could never solve. Karellen dared not defy the unknown powers above him (were they of that same race also?) but he had done all that he could. If he had disobeyed them, they could never prove it. It was the final proof, Stormgren. knew, of Karellen’s affection for him. Though it might be the affection of a man for a devoted and intelligent dog, it was none the less sincere for that, and Stormgren’s life had given him few greater satisfactions.
“We have had our failures.”
Yes, Karellen, that was true: and were you the one who failed, before the dawn of human history? It must have been a failure indeed, thought Stormgren, for its echoes to roll down all the ages, to haunt the childhood of every race of man. Even In fifty years, could you overcome the power of all the myths and legends of the world?
Yet Stormgren knew there would be no second failure.
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When the two races met again, the Overlords would have won the trust and friendship of mankind, and not even the shock of recognition could undo that work. They would go together Into the future, and the unknown tragedy that must have darkened the past would be lost forever down the dim corridors of prehistoric time.
And Stormgren hoped that when Karellen was free to walk once more on Earth, he would one day come to these northern forests, and stand beside the grave of the first man to be his friend.
4
55
n
THE GOLDEN AGE
5
“Tins is the day!” whispered the radios in a hundred tongues. “This is the day!” said the headlines of a thousand newspapers. “This is the day!” thought the cameramen as they checked and rechecked the equipment gathered round the vast empty space upon which Karellen’s ship would be descending.
There was only the single ship now, hanging above New York. Indeed, as the world had just discovered, the ships above Man’s other cities had never existed. The day before, the great fleet of the Overlords had dissolved into nothingness, fading like mists beneath the morning dew.
The supply ships, coming and going far out in space, had been real enough; but the silver clouds that had hung for a lifetime above almost all the capitals of Earth had been an illusion. How it had been done, no-one could tell, but it seemed that every one of those ships had been nothing more than an image of Karellen’s own vessel. Yet it had been far more than a matter of playing with light, for radar had also been deceived, and there were still men alive who swore that they had heard the shriek of torn air as the fleet came in through the skies of Earth.
It was not important: all that mattered was that Karellen no longer felt the need for this displayof force. He had thrown away his psychological weapons.
“The ship is moving !” came the word, flashed instantly to every corner of the planet. “It is heading westward!”
At less than a thousand kilometres an hour, falling slowly down from the empty heights of the stratosphere, the ship moved out to the great plains and to its second rendezvous with history. It settled down obediently before the waiting cameras and the packed thousands of spectators, so few of whom coul’~ see as much as the millions gathered round their TV sets.
The ground should have cracked and trembled beneath
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that tremendous weight, but the vessel was still in the grip of whatever forces drove it among the stars. It kissed the earth as gently as a falling snowflake.
The curving wall twenty metres above the ground seemed to flow and shimmer: where there had been a smooth and shining surface, a great opening had appeared. Nothing was visible within it, even to the questing eyes of the camera. It was as dark and shadowed as the entrance to a cave.
Out of the orifice, a wide, glittering gangway extruded itself and drove purposefully towards the ground. It seemed a solid sheet of metal with hand-rails along either side. There were no steps; it was steep and smooth as a toboggan slide and, one would have thought, equally impossible to ascend or descend in any ordinary manner.
The world was watching that dark portal, within which nothing had yet stirred. Then the seldom-heard yet unfor-. gettable voice of Karellen floated softly down from some hidden source. His message could scarcely have been more unexpected
“There are some children by the foot of the gangway. I would like two of them to come up and meet me.”
There was silence for a moment. Then a boy and a girl broke from the crowd and walked, with complete lack of self-consciousness, towards the gangway and into history. Others followed, but stopped when Karellen’s chuckle came from the ship.
“Two will be enough.”
Eagerly anticipating the adventure, the children-they could not have been more than six years old-jumped on to the metal slide. Then the first miracle happened.
Waving cheerfi.illy to the crowds beneath, and to their anxious parents-who, too late, had probably remembered the legend of the Pied Piper-the children began swiftly ascending the steep slope. Yet their legs were motionless, and soon it was clear also that their bodies were tilted at right angles to that peculiar gangway. It possessed a private gravity of its own, one which could ignore that of Earth. The children were still enjoying this novel experience, and wondering what was drawing them upwards, when they disappeared into the ship.
A vast silence lay over the whole world for the space of twenty seconds-though, afterwards, no-one could believe that the time had been so short. Then the darkness of the
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great opening seemed to move forward, and Karellen came forth into the sunlight. The boy was sitting on his left arm, the girl on his right. They were both too busy playing with Karellen’s wings to take any notice of the watching multitude.
It was a tribute to the Overlords’ psychology, and to their careful years of preparation, that only a few people fainted. Yet there could have been fewer still, anywhere in the world, who did not feel the ancient terror brush for one awful instant against their minds before reason banished it forever.