In just a moment X minus one. But first, if you're planning to
join the family for this holiday weekend, remember you have a friend who will
keep you company through the long hours on the road. That friend is your
car radio, and it brings you a full weekend of the most stimulating variety
entertainment when you tune in to NBC's Monitor. Yes, you set your dial
just once for hours and hours of refreshing variety news as it happens, sports
coverage everything from baseball to skin diving, interviews with the stars, plus lots
of the relaxing music you like to hear. It's all on Monitor this weekend,
and I'll stay tuned for X minus one on NBC. Come down for
blast off X minus five, four three two X minus one. Fire from
the far horizons of the Unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and
space. These are stories of the future adventures in which you'll live in a
million, could be years, on a thousand, maybe worlds. The National
Broadcasting Company, and cooperation with Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine presents HE minus one to
Night Story A Pale of Air by Fritz liber It was pretty quiet in the
nest. Paul was just sitting by the fire, staring into it like he
does these days. And Ma was asleep. That's why it was so quiet.
Well, I has some pretty bad times when she just screams and screams
and huddles back against the blankets that line the nest chis was looking at herself
in the mirror that hangs next to the bookshelf. I don't know what she
finds to look at so long, but then she's a girl. She just
looks at herself. Saturdays, when Pap puts a couple of extra lumps of
coal on the fire and we take a bath, she looks at herself in
the mirror, and sometimes she cries. I dropped the book I was reading,
and I guess that woke mau hah, what pick up the book?
But I'm sorry, Paus, come back, hasn't it, Afreed, It's
come back? It was just Bud, he dropped his book. Come back.
Wait. It's out there now, isn't it. I feel a lot
warmer now, Ethel. It's up there in the sky, just the way
it always was. I know I had a dream, Alfred. I know,
dear Sis, melt your mother a cup of water. I'm combing my
hair. Sis. Oh, all right, got to get up. I
know it's there. There'll be crocusses and the spring bulbs and daffodils. What
are daffodils? Ma, Well, buddy there. Oh they're a flower and
they're very pretty yellow on a tall green stalk. Oh. I want to
go out. I want to take the children out, all right now,
ethelt here's some water. Come on, children, we'll all go out and
you can play in the sun. Sure, Ma, here drink the water.
Ma, it's cold. You wrap on the pipes and make that super
send up some more. What's a superpa? It doesn't matter, bud.
There aren't any anymore, Oh, Pa. The pails running low. But
you better get into your things and go out and get an extra pail of
air. There are a couple of pails behind the first blankets. Go on,
get into your things. It isn't back, is it. No?
It isn't. There's no sun in the sky, No sun is there?
No? Mo? What was it like? The sun says, don't get
your mobset. The sun was yellow and so bright you couldn't look at it,
burning hot, so hot, But when you stretched out in it made
you feel warm all over tingly warm. It's been so long since I've been
that warm. I was warm last year on my birthday when Pap put all
that extra col on, And then every morning it would come out of the
east, make the clouds all pink and yellow. The mist would rise in
the ground, and then everything would blow warmer, warmer, and then it
would be up there in the sky shining warm. Hurry up, Bud,
I'm almost ready for I want the sun. I want the Sumwhere Alfred get
me the sun, scar Ethel. There's nothing I can do but Christmas on
my birthday. Go ahead, Bud, take the big pail and get it
full this time. There's no sense in taking the trip for only half a
bucket of air. I spilled it the last time. Dog, God,
Dog, go ahead, Bud strapped down the helmet. Well you, says,
stand up straight, Okay, all right, I'll be right back.
Don't hold the blankets open too long, all right, Ethel, They're all
safe. But he'll be right back with another pail of air. It's all
right. I went through the thirty or so blankets Paw hung up to slow
down the air escaping from the nest. Of course, I knew the way.
I've been going out for air since I was a kid. Still I
get a funny crawley feeling every time I go out of the nest. You
got to go up to the fifth floor, which is just above the blanket
of frozen air. You see, when the earth got cold, all the
water in the air froze. First. I made a blanket about ten feet
thick or so, and then down on top of that dropped all the crystals
of frozen air, making another blanket sixty or seventy feet thick. I came
out of the window we use on the fifth floor and started to scoop up
the air into my pail. I had it about full, but when my
fingers are getting pretty cold. But I saw something. Hey, that's a
light, and I kicked over the bucket. There can't be a light moving
around in a window like that. There can't be come on, Pad,
says her back in the nest. I'm up here, and there can't be
anyone else. Everybody on Earth is dead except us. I had an idea
how Ma must feel sometimes, the way she sees things. But there it
was moving around in the building across the way. I stood there shaking,
and I almost froze my feet, I did froust my helmet so solid on
the inside I couldn't see anything. So I hurried up and scooped up another
bucket of air and headed back for the nest as fast as I could.
Pa Pa, I saw something, and hang those outside close up by the
fire, Pa, I saw something, I did. Mother's quiet, Now,
don't upset, Paw. It was a light. Wait till I get
this air next to the fire. Give me the closes, Shall I put
another call on pot? No? No, no, The oxygen from this
bucket will get the fire up when it begins to melt there, Pauh,
I'm trying to tell you I saw something up there. Light. There's lots
of lights stars. I know what stars look like, dope. There are
big, steady white lights in the sky. This was down here in a
building. What is it, Alfred? What is nothing? Nothing? Ef
No? What is this? But well, first I thought it was a
lady, a young lady. I mean it like in one of those old
magazines. I thought I saw it in a window. But then all I
saw was a light. You watched it for some time, long enough work
to pass five windows and go to the next floor. And it didn't look
like stray electricity. No, Pa, I know what that looks like,
or a star refracted through an icicle sometimes if you catch it at the right
angle, at Paw. Honestly, I never saw anything like it before.
All right, I'll go out with you and you show me. No,
no, Alfred, you can't go and leave it alone, not both of
you. It's all right, we'll be right back. Here's she helmet,
Pad. There's something out there. Well, we've known there was something out
there waiting to get it. Hand me my glove. Something that's part of
the cold, hates all warm, wants to destroy the nest and watching us
all this time. Now it's coming after us and it'll get you, and
then it'll come to me. Oh don't go, Alfred, Please don't go.
Everything will be all right, Yes, Pa, you come watch the
fire. Keep an eye on that air too. If it gets too low.
It doesn't seem to be boiling fast enough. Get another bucket behind the
blanket. Oh, don't go, I'll take care of it, Pad.
Could there really be anybody out there? I don't see how we heard the
last radio voices a year before Bud was born. There hasn't been anything since
then then? What could it be? I don't know, Probably just a
reflection, a nice crystal cracking. Come on, buddy, got your helmet
on. It's funny. When I go out alone, I'm not scared or
anything, But when I go out with Pie, I always hang on to
his belt like I used to when I was a little kid. Habit.
I guess it's the same no matter what trip we take. On the fifth
floor, we stopped to rest just before we went out. We were in
the room with the frozen people, the lady sitting looking at the door,
the man holding his hands over that funny metal thing Paul calls a radiator.
It was like a fire, I guess, But I don't see any place
for the cold. We put our helmets together so we could talk. Your
breath, son, pauh. Would it be possible, I mean, for
any of the frozen people to come to life like the ones down in the
basement around the furnace when we go for water. No, they're dead.
They were caught too quickly when it happened. Oh pah, how do we
know we're the only ones? We don't. Well, there's a feeling you
get because it's always night There used to be some of that feeling every night
in the old days, but the sun chased it away every morning. You
wouldn't know about that. You weren't born. When the dark star pulled us
away from the Sun, you wouldn't know, and less you'd see the sun.
I've seen the sun. It's that big start, the end of the
big Dipper. I've seen it. It isn't the same. Come on,
they're wasting time. I don't know what the city looked like in the old
days, but now it's beautiful starlight. Let's you see it pretty well.
We're up on a hill and the plane slopes down away from us. Some
taller buildings push up out of the feathery plane, topped by rounded caps of
air crystals. Some of them are on a slant because a lot of the
buildings are badly twisted by the quakes and everything when a dark star pulled the
earth away from the Sun. That's why Paul can't seal up the nest air
tight. The building's twisted too bad. Besides, we have to keep the
chimney open. We touched our helmets together so we could talk. Is that
where you saw it? Sun? It isn't there anymore. Uh huh,
But it feels different. I mean as if there's something out here waiting.
Bud. If you see something like that again, don't tell the others.
Huh? Why not? Well, you're I sort of nervous these days,
and we owe her all the feeling of safety we can give. A Once,
it was when your sister was born. I was ready to give up
and die, but your mother kept me trying. Another time, she kept
the fire going a whole week all by herself when I was sick. She
couldn't do that now, not the way she is. But you know that
game we sometimes play tossing a ball around, Well, courage is like a
ball. A person can hold it only so long, and when he's got
to toss it to someone else. When it's tossed your way, you've got
to catch it and hold it tight and hope there'll be someone else to toss
it to when you get tired of being brave. Yeah, I guess.
Come on, we'll fill up the pails and get back. But what about
whatever it is out here? We'll just have to wait and see. Come
on, before the helmet's frost over. It's pretty hard to hide your feelings
in the nest. I mean, there's just room for the four of us.
The blanket overhead just touches when Paul stands up straight. The floor is
all covered with thick, wooly rugs. PA says, it's inside a much
bigger room, but I've never seen the real walls or ceiling. Well anyway,
Paul laughed and kidded about what I'd seen. He said, I had
an imagination, but we could tell he took it serious. It was Sunday
morning, by the clocks that Pau kept all wound up on a shelf,
so it was time for the story. We all sat around in a circle,
the way we always do, except I noticed that Pau casually took a
hammer from the shelf and put it beside him. I always liked the story,
of course, listen, I know it by heart, but now I
mean every Sunday since we were kids. But every once in a while Pa
surprises us by telling it a little different or throwing in some extras. It
starts out with the song My used to sing it, but she forgets the
words sometimes and now pass sings it mostly. Oh beauty, for for spacious
guies, for and the waves of grain th Perple Mountain, magious jeez above
the fruited planet. Of course, the words don't mean anything. I mean,
the skies are spacious enough, but there aren't any ways of grain,
and a plane is all covered with a blanket of frozen air. But it's
part of the story ceremony, and Karl likes it, says it reminds me
of the old days. After the song pass starts the story. In the
days of my youth, the sun hung above, golden and warm, and
the earth was fruitful and multiplied, and the fields were green, and the
day was glorious, and the wind blew across the hilltops, and the air
was free and good to breathe. That's the part of the story I liked
best about how it was with the sun nice and warm. It's hard to
believe Rollo's people living without having to worry about cold and air. They were
waking up, sweating and screaming because he dreamed of fire went out. It's
impossible to believe. But Pa was a good storyteller, and he made it
seem real. And then the dark star came rushing out of space. In
the beginning, they tried to keep the news from the people, but when
the floods and the earthquake started, the truth came out. At first they
thought the dark Star would hit the Sun, and then they were afraid it
would strike the Earth itself. But it didn't. It only came close.
Paw tells it like the Sun and the Dark Star fought for the Earth like
two dogs over a bone. I know what he means, because I've seen
a picture of a dog in a magazine. And then the dark Star won
and carried us off, but the Sun kept the moon. There were earthquakes
and floods. Pat says that mountains fell and oceans slopped over oceans. That's
a lot of melted water lying around loose. It's hard to imagine, Paus
says it was. So then came the open question time in the story.
Sis asked a question about what girls wore for clothes, and I asked Pa
how people acted in those days when the earth was twisted and jerked almost apart.
Well, but I was too busy to notice much. A friend of
mine, doctor Wisebroke, and Kelly, the geophysistant, Walter's the astronomer.
We knew what was going to happen, and we were working to fix up
a place with air tight walls and insulation and big supplies of food and bottled
air. But the place got smashed up in the earthquakes and they were all
killed. So I put the nest together at the last minute in the living
room of our apartment. It's a four room apartment. You must have seen
some of the people like the frozen ones downstairs at that time, But I
only thought of one thing, your mother, and survival. If I had
stopped to think, I wouldn't have even tried to make the nest would have
seemed ridiculous. Blankets and a coal fire against the cold and vacuum of space
that I didn't think I survived. I wasn't listening carefully as Paul went on
about the building of the nest. I kept thinking about something else, but
that light ain't seen outsir. I kept asking myself, what if the frozen
people were coming to life? What if they were like the liquid helium that
curls toward heat when it should be frozen solid. What if something were coming
from the dark star to get us, Something making the frozen people move,
not by themselves. That would fit with what I'd seen. A young lady's
face and the moving light. They sat there and shivered, thinking of the
frozen people with minds from the dark star creeping, crawling, snuffing their way,
following the heat to the nest and then over from beyond the blankets,
I thought I heard a tiny noise, so I asked myself, Then,
what's the use of going on? Why prolong a doomed existence of hard work
and cold and loneliness. The human race is done, the earth is done.
Why not give up, I asked myself. And then I did hear
the noise flouder, this time, a kind of shuffling tread, coming closer.
And then I got the answer. The Earth's always been a lonely place,
millions of miles from the next planet. No matter how long the human
race might have lived, the end would have come some night. Those things
don't matter. What matters is that life is good. There's a lovely texture,
like some rich cloth of fur, or the petals of flowers, crocuses,
daffodils, or the fire's glow. And that's as true for the last
man as the first. Still, those steps kept shuffling closer. Pa was
talking, and Ma was dreaming with her eyes closed, and Sis was looking
at herself sideways in the mirror, and I was the only one who heard
the noise, a noise outside. So right then and there, I told
myself that I was going on as if we had all eternity ahead of us.
I'd have children, and I'd teach them all I could. I'd get
them to read books, try to enlarge and seal the nest. I'd try
to keep everything beautiful and alive. I'd keep alive my feeling of wonder,
even at the cold and the dark and the distant stars. Pah, pah,
I hear. I know what is it, Alfred? What is it?
What's going on? I've got to tell me, Pa, I'm scared.
Quiet, but you heard it kind of shuffling coming towards the nest.
Sis. Take care of your mother. I'll take the hammer, you take
the hatchet. What is it, Pa, what is it? I don't
know. Listen, it's closer. Mush, pah, the blanket is moving,
ready with your ex Hello, who's there is? There's somebody in there?
Come in. It's all right. They're alive, alive. Who are
you? Alfred, Alfred Hutchinson, Doctor Alfred Hutchinson. You can take off
your helmets in here, but we have air and we bring it in in
pails. Come on, Ralph, let's take off the helmets. It's impossible.
Where are you from. We thought we were the only ones Los Alamos,
the nuclear laboratory. Yes, that's right. We get our power from
the reactor, using the stockpile of bombs for fuel. Then there are others.
There are there are other men, There are other bird pack Is it
all right? Should I put the acc down? Yes, yes, it's
all right, you can put it down. You mean you come from another
nest. It's a little bigger than this. We've got a small air tight
city with air locks. We generate our electricity food from hydroponics. I can't
believe it. I can't. I can't believe this. It's impossible. You
can't maintain an air supply without hermetic ceiling. It's impossible. No, No,
it's simple, as long as you keep the fire going to melthy air
and enough air boiling to keep the fire burning. How did you come here?
Why? Well, we keep scouting around for survivors. There are a
number of colonies, Brookhaven, oak Ridge and Harwell in England, and the
Argon Lapratory in France. We didn't expect to find anything in this city,
though, but our detectors picked up a heat tray, so we tracked it
down. Alfred, you're forgetting your manners. We have company, of course,
of course, Sis. Throw a handful of coal on the fire.
Pah, a whole handful. It doesn't matter now, and but bring out
another pail of air. It's incredible, and you have laboratories and transport.
We only have a two seated scout. But if we rip out the bulkhead
to the storage compartment, we can make it all right. We can have
you back at Los Alamos in four hours. What's the matter? I guess
we really hadn't thought about it that way, but uh, I wouldn't know
how to act there and decides I haven't any clothes. Just doesn't seem right
to let this fire go out. It's been eighteen years burning every minute.
But you can't stay here, ral But after all, Ralph, oh,
look, doctor Hutchinson. We'll go out of the ship and bring back a
small power heater. I know this is very sudden and upsetting to you.
You need a chance to just we'll be back in a few minutes. It's
incredible. Fucker's here, well, they didn't think the nest smelt so good.
I could tell she had a wave in earlier. Did you see that?
And lipstick? I suppose we have to decide what to do, Pah,
at Lost, Los Alamos and those other places. There will be lots
of people, won't there. Yes, I mean not just your father or
a brother. That's right, boys, I suppose so. But somehow I
feel a little empty of Offred. It's different now that we no others are
alive. You don't have to feel the responsibility for keeping the human race going.
Poh, I'd like to see those rockets and laboratories, wouldn't you,
poor, I suppose. So it won't be easy leaving the nest. I
mean, it's just riding. There's only four of us. It's kind of
a scary idea big place with a lot of strangers. You'll get over that
feeling, son. The trouble with the world was that it kept getting smaller
and smaller till it ended with just the nest. Now it'll be good to
have a real huge world again, the way it was in the beginning.
And so we're gonna leave the nest in the morning. By pause clocks.
We've got the power heater going now. It seems funny to be this warm
when it isn't Christmas or somebody's birthday. But still it's hard for me to
realize that this is the last time I'll go out of the nest, through
all the blankets to get a pail of air. You have just heard X
minus one, presented by the National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Galaxy Science Fiction
magazine. Your announcer, Fred Collins. X minus one was an NBC Radio Network production