The End is Coming

Chapter Thirty-nine

The Womb had been reformed now, to suit the needs of Rozhdestvenskiy’s orders—and his plans. It was no longer recognizable as NORAD Head-quarters.

What had once been offices had been converted into a huge laboratory, and Rozhdestvenskiy, the conversion complete, did not this time supervise or observe from behind glass. He stood in the lab-oratory.

He watched the bluish glow of the almost lumi-nescent gas that filled one of the twelve American chambers he had found.

He turned to Professor Zlovski, saying, “How long before we will know, doctor?”

“You must realize, comrade colonel—we can never know with full certainty until the actual event takes place. But the serum seems to have produced the desired effect. Yet, certain of the types of serum with which Soviet scientists experi-mented initially at least seemed to have the desired effect as well. It was not until the period of the ex-periment was concluded that we realized the serum had failed in its purpose in one aspect or another.”

“So there is no certainty?”

“According to the data you have provided, com-rade, it would seem that scientists both inside and outside the NASA establishment worked with the serum and that the desired results were achieved. And I do not doubt the validity of these reports and the sincerity of the research, but you must ap-preciate something—” and Zlovski, gray-haired, stroked his small, gray-black spade beard, his dark eyes staring past Rozhdestvenskiy, then tak-ing on a peculiar light as he walked away, toward the nearest of the chambers, the one that had been activated. “An example, comrade colonel. Do you smoke—cigarettes?

You do, I believe?”

“Yes—I smoke cigarettes—”

“That is excellent—not for your health, cer-tainly, but for the sake of understanding my ex-ample—and this will illustrate the scientific dilemma in which we find ourselves. Now—at the earliest stages of research to discover a link be-tween cigarette smoking and certain diseases. You can appreciate a critical factor—time. If pro-longed smoking—say for a period of twenty years—is needed to produce symptoms in some or many cases, what is a scientist to do? We have no time machines, we have no way of bending time to our will. So, the process of cigarette smoking in laboratory animals was accelerated, to approxi-mate the effect of time. With our experiment,” and he stroked the top of the blue glowing chamber, “there was not even the possibility of acceleration. We are at the mercy of real time here—and there is no way to give positive results that will ease your mind, comrade, until the actual experiment has been performed. So, we either won’t know for five hundred years, approximately, or, on the other hand,” and his dark eyes gleamed, their corners crinkling with something Rozhdestvenskiy could only interpret as possible laughter, “we will never know.”

Rozhdestvenskiy studied the glowing chamber, the swirling gases contained inside. “And what of the volunteer—when shall we know something?”

“The longer we can wait, the greater fraction of experimental validity we shall have—I can termi-nate the experiment now, after only a few hours. I can wait for days—the results might well be a bit more meaningful after a few days’ duration than only a few hours. He is a volunteer, knew what he was volunteering to do.”

“Regardless of the outcome, he shall receive decoration as a hero of the Soviet Union.”

And it was laughter this time—Rozhdestvenskiy could not mistake it as he watched Professor Zlovski. “I have serious doubts, comrade colonel, whether the receipt of such an honor will impress our volunteer greatly, if at all, should the experi-ment prove to be unsuccessful. But do not de-spair—for I understand in discussions with some of my colleagues in the scientific establishment here that in the event of failure, The Womb can be hermetically sealed—”

“It will be, at any event,” Rozhdestvenskiy inter-rupted, realizing his palms were sweating—ner-vousness.

“Quite—and with the hydroponic gardens that have been planted, oxygen/carbon-dioxide inter-change would be of sufficient volume. So, we shall endure regardless.”

“To live like moles?” Rozhdestvenskiy asked rhetorically, turning away from Zlovski, lighting a cigarette. Cigarette smoking was forbidden in the laboratory—it was why he lit it. “To live less than human existences? What does it matter to be mas-ters of a lifeless world? Hmm? To never see the sun?”

“But comrade colonel—there are other avenues of endeavor besides the acquisition of power—are there not?”

“Yes,” and Rozhdestvenskiy turned to face Zlovski. “The preservation of power.”

He dropped his cigarette to the laboratory floor, heeling it out on the tiles there. All he could hear as he walked away was the clicking of his heels and the faint mechanical hum of the chamber.

If he had not denounced all belief in God, he would have prayed then for the experiment to suc-ceed.