Cities in Flight

Hazleton had not reported in. Grumbling, Amalfi went about the business of organizing the work of the city—the work for which it had gone aloft, but which it found so seldom. It disturbed him that there was no official work contract between the city and Utopia; it was not customary, and if Utopia should turn out, as so many ideals-ridden planets had turned out, to be willing to cheat on an astronomical scale for the sake of its obsession, there would be no recourse under the Earth laws. People with Ends in view were quick to justify all kinds of Means, and the city, which was nothing but Means made concrete and visible, had learned to beware of short cuts.

Hazleton, it appeared, was off somewhere on a short cut. Amalfi could only hope that he—and the city—would survive it.

The Earth police did not wait for Hazleton, either. Amalfi was mildly appalled to see how rapidly the Earth forces reformed and were reinforced. Their logistics had been much improved since the city had last seen them in action. The sky sparkled with ships driving in on the Hruntan planet.

That was bad. Amalfi had expected to have several months at least to build up a food reserve on Utopia before making the run to the Hruntan planet that Hazleton’s strategy called for. Evidently, however, the Hruntan world would be completely blockaded by that time.

The mayor sent out an emergency warning at once. The thin resistance which the spindizzy field had offered to Utopia’s atmosphere became a solid, hard-driven wall. The spindizzies screamed into the highest level of activity they could maintain without snapping the gravitational thread between the city and Utopia. Around the perimeter of that once-invisible field, a flicker of polarization thickened to translucence. Drive-fields were building, and only a few light rays, most of them those to which the human eye was least sensitive, got through the fields and out again. To Utopian onlookers the city went dark blood-color and became frighteningly indistinct.

Calls began to come in at once. Amalfi ignored them; his flight board, a compressed analog of the banks in the control tower, was alive with alarm signals, and all the speakers were chattering at once.

“Mr. Mayor, we’ve just made a strike in that old till; it’s lousy with oil-bearing shale—”

“Stow what you have and make it tight.”

“Amalfi! how can we get any thorium out of—”

“More where we’re going. Damp your stock on the double.”

“Com Room. Still no word from Mr. Hazleton—”

“Keep trying.”

“Calling the flying city! Is there something wrong? Calling the flying—”

Amalfi cut them all off with a brutal swipe at the toggles. “Did you think we’d stay here forever? Stand by!”

The spindizzies screamed. The sparkling of the ships coming to invest the Hruntan planet became brighter by the minute. It would be a near thing.

“Whoop it up there on Forty-second Street! What d’you think you’re doing, warming up tea? You’ve got ninety seconds to get that machine to take-off pitch!”

“Take-off? Mr. Mayor, it’ll take at least four minutes—”

“You’re kidding me. I can tell. Dead men don’t kid. Move!”

“Calling the flying city —”

The sparks spread over the sky like a Catherine wheel whirling into life. The watery quivering of the single point of light that was the Hruntan planet dimmed among them, shivered, blended into the general glitter. From Astronomy, Jake added his voice to the general complaint.

“Thirty seconds,” Amalfi said.

From the speaker which had been broadcasting the puzzled, fearful inquiries of the Utopians, Hazleton’s voice said calmly, “Amalfi, are you out of your mind?”

“No,” Amalfi said. “It’s your plan, Mark. I’m just following through. Twenty-five seconds.”

“I’m not pleading for myself. I like it here, I think. I’ve found something here that the city doesn’t have. The city needs it—”

“Do you want off, too?”

“No, hell no,” Hazleton said. “I’m not asking for it. But if I had to take it anyhow, I’d take it here—”

A brief constriction made Amalfi’s big frame knot up tightly. Nothing emotional—no, nothing to do with Hazleton; probably some spindizzy operator was hurrying things. He staggered to his feet and threw up in the little washstand. Hazleton went on talking, but Amalfi could hardly hear him. The clock grinned and rushed on.

“Ten seconds,” Amalfi gasped, a little late.

“Amalfi, listen to me!”

“Mark,” Amalfi said, choking, “Mark, I haven’t time. You made your choice. I … five seconds … I can’t do anything about that. If you like it there, go ahead and stay. I wish you, I wish you everything, Mark, believe me. But I have to think of—”

The clock brought its thin palms together piously.

“… the city—”

“Amalfi—”

“Spin!”

The city vaulted skyward. The sparks whirled in around it.

CHAPTER TWO: Gort