The sky turned dark.

Incredulous, Wade Frazer said, “Good God, Morley; what have you done with your—question?” He gestured in a seizure of motor-spasms. “This place is breaking up!”

The man was correct. Fissions had appeared everywhere now; in a few moments there would be no safe spot to stand on. The squib, Seth Morley realized. We’ve got to get back to it. “Babble,” he said hoarsely, “get us all into the squib.” But Babble had gone. Looking around in the turbulent gloom, Seth Morley saw no sign of him—nor of the others.

They’re in the squib already, he told himself. As best he could he made his way in that direction. Even Mary, he realized. The bastards. He falteringly reached the hatch of the squib; it hung open.

A fast-widening crack in the ground, almost six feet wide, appeared crashingly beside him; it burgeoned as he stood there. Now he found himself looking into the orifice. At the bottom something undulated. A slimy thing, very large, without eyes; it swam in a dark, stinking liquid and ignored him.

“Babble,” he croaked, and managed to make the first step that led up into the squib. Now he could see in; he clambered clumsily up, using only his good arm.

No one was in the squib.

I’m Christ-awful alone, he said to himself. Now the squib shuddered and bucked as the ground beneath it heaved. Rain had begun; he felt hot, dark drops on him, acrid rain, as if it was not water but some other, less-pleasant substance. The drops seared his skin; he scrambled into the squib, stood wheezing and choking, wondering frantically where the others had gone. No sign of them. He hobbled to the squib’s viewscreen… the squib heaved; its hull shuddered and became unstable. It’s being pulled under, he said to himself. I’ve got to take off; I can’t spend any more time searching for them. He jabbed at a button and turned on the squib’s engine. Tugging on the control ball he sent the squib—with himself inside, alone—up into the dark and ugly sky… a sky obviously ominous to all life. He could hear the rain beating against the hull; the rain of what? he wondered. Like an acid. Maybe, he thought, it will eat its way through the hull and destroy both the squib and me.

Seating himself, he clicked on the viewscreen to greatest magnification; he rotated it, simultaneously sending the squib into a rotating orbit.

On the viewscreen appeared the Building. The river, swollen and mud-colored, angrily lapped at it. The Building, faced with its last danger, had thrown a temporary bridge across the river and, Seth Morley saw, men and women were crossing the bridge, crossing thereby the river, and going on into the Building.

They were all old. Gray and fragile, like wounded mice, they huddled together and advanced step by step in the direction of the Building. They’re not going to make it, he realized. Who are they?

Peering into the viewscreen he recognized his wife. But old, like the others. Hunched over, tottering, afraid… and then he made out Susie Smart. And Dr. Babble. Now he could distinquish them all. Russell, Ben Tallchief, Glen Belsnor, Wade Frazer, Betty Jo Berm, Tony Dunkelwelt, Babble, Ignatz Thugg, Maggie Walsh, old Bert Kosler—he had not changed, he had already been old—and Roberta Rockingham, and, at the end, Mary.

The Form Destroyer has seized them, Seth Morley realized. And done this to them. And now they are on their way back to where they came from. Forever. To die there.

The squib, around him, vibrated. Its hull clanged, again and again. Something hard and metallic was pinging off the hull. He sent the squib higher and the noise abated. What had done it? he wondered, again inspecting the viewscreen.

And then he saw.

The Building had begun to disintegrate. Parts of it, chunks of plastic and alloy bonded together, hurled as if in a giant wind up into the sky. The delicate bridge across the river broke, and as it fell it carried those crossing it to their death: they fell with the fragments of the bridge into the snarling, muddy water and vanished. But it made no difference; the Building was dying, too. They would not have been safe in it anyhow.

I’m the only one who survived, he said to himself. Moaning with grief he revolved the control ball and the ship puttputted out of its orbit and on a tangent leading back to the settlement.

The engine of the squib died into silence.

He heard nothing, now, but the slap-slap of rain against its hull. The squib sailed in a great arc, dropping lower each moment.

He shut his eyes. I did what I could throughout, he said to himself. There was nothing more possible for me. I tried.

The squib hit, bounced, threw him from his chair onto the floor. Sections of the hull broke off, ripped away; he felt the acrid, acid-like rain pour in on him, drenching him. Opening his pain-glazed eyes he saw that the downpour had burned holes in his clothing; it was devouring his body. He perceived that in a fragment of a second—time seemed to have stopped as the squib rolled over and over, skated on its top across the terrain … he felt nothing, no fear, no grief, no pain any longer; he merely experienced the death of his ship—and of himself—as a kind of detached observer.

The ship skidded, at last, to a halt. Silence, except for the drip-drip of the rain of acid on him. He lay half-buried in collapsed junk: portions of the control board and viewscreen, all shattered. Jesus, he thought. Nothing is left, and presently the earth will swallow the squib and me. But it does not matter, he thought, because I am dying. In emptiness, meaninglessness and solitude. Like all the others, who have gone before this fragment of the one-time group. Intercessor, he thought, intercede for me. Replace me; die for me.

He waited. And heard only the tap-tap of the rain.

15

Glen Belsnor removed the polyencephalic cylinder from his aching head, set it carefully down, rose unsteadily to a standing position. He rubbed his forehead and experienced pain. That was a bad one, he said to himself. We did not do well this time at all.

Going unsteadily to the dining hail of the ship he poured himself a glass of tepid, bottled water. He then rummaged in his pockets until he found his powerful analgesic tablet, popped it into his mouth, swallowed it with more of the reprocessed water.

Now, in their cubicles, the others stirred. Wade Frazer tugged at the cylinder which enclosed his brain and skull and scalp and, a few cubicles off, Sue Smart, too, appeared to be returning to active awareness of a homoencephalic kind.

As he helped Sue Smart off with her heavy cylinder he heard a groan. A lament, telling of deep suffering. It was Seth Morley, he discovered. “Okay,” Belsnor said. “I’ll get to you as soon as I can.”

All of them were coming out of it, now. Ignatz Thugg yanked violently at his cylinder, managed to detach it from its screw-lock base at his chin… he sat up, his eyes swollen, an expression of displeasure and hostility on his wan, narrow face.

“Give me a hand,” Belsnor said. “I think Morley is in shock. Maybe you better get Dr. Babble up.”

“Morley’ll be all right,” Thugg said huskily; he rubbed his eyes, grimacing as if nauseated. “He always is.”

“But he’s in shock—his death must have been a bad one.” Thugg stood up, nodding dully. “Whatever you say, captain.”

“Get them warm,” Belsnor said. “Set up the standby heat to a higher notch.” He bent over the prone Dr. Milton Babble. “Come on, Milt,” he said emphatically as he removed Babble’s cylinder.

Here and there others of the crew sat up. Groaned.

Loudly, to them all, Captain Belsnor said, “You are all right now. This one turned out to be a fiasco, but you are going—as always—to be fine. Despite what you’ve gone through. Dr. Babble will give you a shot of something to ease the transition from polyencephalic fusion to normal homoencephalic functioning.” He waited a moment, then repeated what he had said.