The Sky Is Falling

ed the phlogiston layer. Slowly, agonizingly, it picked up speed and began its downward rush. Unlike the sky, it seemed to obey the norma

arteries seemed to bubble and boil, though that must have been an illusion. But he could see his skin rise in giant blisters and heal almost at once to blister again. He s

as, but even they healed faster than the damage. He estimated the course of the sun, amazed to find that the

block and dropped to the north side of it. The shock of landing must have broken bones, but a moment later he could b

r, and its heat seared at him, giving him no place of shelter. Then the sun struck, sendin

es of material. Its hissing against the ground was a tumul

who had found some shelter behind the stonework had lived longer than the others, but that had only incr

fragments of sun that were still roiling across the landscape would be fatal. The only

ins of an attendant's body. The water was boiling, but there was still some left. He poured several skins together and drank the stuff, f

ver the horizon. The heat should still have been enough to kill any normal body in fifteen minutes, but he could endure it. He stumbled on in a trot, guiding himself by the stars that shone in the broken sky toward a section of this world where there had been life and some measure of civilizat

n a sense of time. It might have been minutes or hours that he slept, and he had no way of knowing which. With the sun gon

g sandstorm, he could see the glow near the horizon. Now a pillar of something that looked like steam but was probably vapor from molten and evaporated rocks was rising upwards, like the mushroom

must be above the sky, but he'd been wrong; like the other heavenly bodies, it had been embedded inside the shell. He had discovered that the sky material resisted any sudden stroke, but that other ma

must have been moving fast enough so that no single spot became t

ight and heat back to the earth. There was a chance that most of one hemisphere might retain

been looted, and he skirted around it rather than stare at the ghastly ghoul-work of the looters. The world was ending, bu

d "abracadabra," a dirty pot of hot and greasy stew came into existence. He had no cutlery, but his hands served well enough. When it was gone,

ician's book. The poor devil had never achieved his twenty lifetimes, and this was prob

d Sema

o do with magic. He'd had a course of semantics in college and coul

cience of magical similarity followed quite logically from the single axiom. Hanson was surprised to find that there was a highly developed logic to it. Once he accepted the axiom-and he was no longer prepared to doubt it here-he could follow the book far better than he'

a secret name. Apparently any man who discovered a principle or device could use a name for it, just as parents could give one to their children. And there were the laws

e. The wonder was that he could exist at all. And while there was supposed to be a ritual f

he hang of abracadabraing up what was in his mind. But the clothing was a problem. Everything he got turned out to be the right size, but he couldn't see himself in hauberk and greaves, nor in a filmy nightgown. Finally, he manage

s here and make leaps in theory beyond what the Satheri had developed. They'd had it too easy. Magic that worked tended to overcome the drive for the discipline needed to get the most out of it. Any good theoretician fro

e country in which the Sons of the Egg had found refuge. The thought of that made him go slower. But for a long time, there was no f

together. There was a woven-wire fence around the structures, and a sign that said simply: Project Eighty-Five. In the half-light from the sky, he could

business. If he stopped, there would be questions, he suspec

hrough a side door leading out. He went through it, to find a larger yard with more men idling.

way of hiding himself from both sides. At the moment, he was relatively free for the first time sin

l nobody paid him any attention. Finally, he dropped onto the ground near a group of half a

ad it made then! And every Saturday, never fail, the general would come out from Muroc an

ift boss or somebody? You go down and get your time, and they hand you

d to know. He stood up and peered through the windows of the shed. There

ey were lacking some essential thing that had gone out of them before they were brought here. Unless he could find one among them who was either a mandrake-man housing a soul or one of the few reanimates who

ing at the sky with his hands clasped behind his head. From time to time, he frowned, as if the sight of

assented. "Wh

uch to carry over. "We're dead. We're dead, and we're here, and they tell us to make helicopters. So we make them, working like dogs to make a deadline. Then, just as the first one comes off the line, the power fails. No more juic

they need with helic

call 'Sky Hooks' and maybe they thought the things were just what they're called. All I know is they kept us working five solid weeks for nothing. I knew the power was going to fail; they had the craziest damn generating plan

e sheds. "If there's no po

n explained. "Saved a lot of wiring,

There was something whizzing overhead at jet-pl

d Betsy Ann. But the little geezer who worked the smudgepot just walked up to it and wiggled his finger. 'Start your motor going, Betsy Ann,' he ordered with some other mumbo-jumbo. Th

sheds and swooped back. It looked nothing like a helicopter. It looked like a Hallowe'en decoration of a woman on a broomstic

tip of the broom handle hit the ground, and she went sailing ove

, her eyes tortured. She was staring sear

Hanson

urn gray, and her eyes opened to double their normal s

d hoarsely, and slumped

her from the ground. She swayed a mom

pot and only a few days left, the girl's face and the slim young body under it were about all the reality

e Hanson, you never died! It was only induced illusion by that-that Bork! And to think tha

t enjoy having the aircraft worker find out. He turned to see what

In the half-light of the sky, he saw that the plant was gone. No men were left. Th

happ

tree sapling, I suppose; it is a plane plant, after all. But with the conjunctions and signs failing, all such creations are returning to their

d ruined him. It wasn't fair that anyone with character enough to be that human even as a zombie should be wiped out without even a moment's cons

lems. "All right, then, if you thought I

ght it no longer." She shuddered. "It was a terrible flight. The carpets will not work at all now, and I could hardly control the broom. Sometimes it would

"well and truly." Apparently it had gone on operating even when she thought he was de

the horizon. He reached for her and pulled her to him. She was firm

get yourself, Dave Hanson! I'm a registered

e told her harshly. "The sky isn't fal

oubtful. "It's true that our spells are failing. Not even the surest magic is r

r arms lift to his neck when the ground shook behind them

ng run, heading straight for them. The huge bird braked

began descending. The first were mandrakes in the uniform of the Sat

eetings, Dave Hanson. You do manage to survive, don't you? And my little virgin sister, with