IN THE NAME OF THE BEST AMONG US

Dagny walked straight toward the guard who stood at the door of "Project F". Her steps sounded pourposeful, even and open, rining in the silence of the path among the trees. She raised her head to a ra of moonlight, to let him recognize her face.

"Let me in," she said.

"No admittance," he answered in the voice of a robot. "By order or Dr. Ferris."

"I am here by order of Mr. Thompson."

"Huh? . . . I . . . I don't know anything about that."

"I do."

"I mean, Dr. Ferris hasn't told me . . . ma'am."

"I am telling you."

"But I'm not supposed to take any orders from anyone excepting Dr. Ferris."

"Do you wish to disobey Mr. Thompson?"

"Oh, no, ma'am! But . . . but if Dr. Ferris said to let nobody in, that means nobody-" He added uncertainly and pleadingly, "-doesn't it?"

"Do you know that my name is Dagny Taggart and that you've seen my pictures in the papers with Mr. Thompson and all the top leaders of the country?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then decide whether you wish to disobey their orders."

"Oh, no, ma'am! I don't!"

"Then let me in."

"But I can't disobey Dr. Ferris, either!"

"Then choose."

"But I can't choose ma'am! Who am I to choose?"

"You'll have to."

"Look," he said hastily, pulling a key from his pocket and turning to the door, "I'll ask the chief. He-"

"No." she said.

Some quality in the tone of her voice made him whirl back to her: she was holding a gun pointed levelly at his heart.

"Listen carefully," she said. "Either you let me in or I shoot you.

You may try to shoot me first, if you can. You have that choice—and no other. Now decide."

His mouth fell open and the key dropped from his hand.

"Get out of my way," she said.

He shook his head frantically, pressing his back against the door.

"Oh Christ, ma'am!" he gulped in the whine of a desperate plea. "I can't shoot at you, seeing as you come from Mr. Thompson! And I can't let you in against the word of Dr. Ferris! What am I to do? I'm only a little fellow! I'm only obeying orders! It's not up to me!"

"It's your life." she said.

"If you let me ask the chief, he'll tell me, he'll—"

"I won't let you ask anyone."

"But how do I know that you really have an order from Mr. Thompson?"

"You don't. Maybe I haven't. Maybe I'm acting on my own—and you'll be punished for obeying me. Maybe I have—and you'll be thrown in jail for disobeying. Maybe Dr.. Ferris and Mr. Thompson agree about this. Maybe they don't—and you have to defy one or the other. These are the things you have to decide. There is no one to ask, no one to call, no one to tell you. You will have to decide them yourself."

"But I can't decide! Why me?"

"Because it's your body that's barring my way."

"But I can't decide! I'm not supposed to decide!"

"I'll count to three," she said. "Then I’ll shoot."

"Wait! Wait! I haven't said yes or no!" he cried, cringing tighter against the door, as if immobility of mind and body were his best protection, "One—" she counted; she could see his eyes staring at her in terror —"Two—" she could see that the gun held less terror for him than the alternative she offered—"Three."

Calmly and impersonally, she, who would have hesitated to fire at an animal, pulled the trigger and fired straight at the heart of a man who had wanted to exist without the responsibility of consciousness.

Her gun was equipped with a silencer; there was no sound to attract anyone's attention, only the thud of a body falling at her feet.

She picked up the key from the ground—then waited for a few brief moments, as had been agreed upon.

Francisco was first to join her, coming from behind a corner of the building, then Hank Rearden, then Ragnar Danneskjold. There had been four guards posted at intervals among the trees, around the building. They were now disposed of: one was dead, three were left in the brush, bound and gagged.

She handed the key to Francisco without a word. He unlocked the door and went in, alone, leaving the door open to the width of an inch.

The three others waited outside, by that opening.

The hall was lighted by a single naked bulb stuck in the middle of the ceiling. A guard stood at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor.

"Who are you?" he cried at the sight of Francisco entering as if he owned the place. "Nobody's supposed to come in here tonight!"

"I did," said Francisco.

"Why did Rusty let you in?"

"He must have had his reasons."

“He wasn't supposed to!"

"Somebody has changed your suppositions." Francisco's eyes were taking a lightning inventory of the place. A second guard stood on the landing at the turn of the stairs, looking down at them and listening.

"What's your business?"

"Copper-mining."

"Huh? I mean, who are you?"

"The name's too long to tell you. I'll tell it to your chief. Where is he?"

"I'm asking the questions!" But he backed a step away. "Don't . . . don't you act like a big shot or I'll—"

"Hey, Pete, he is!" cried the second guard, paralyzed by Francisco's manner.

The first one was struggling to ignore it; his voice grew louder with the growth of his fear, as he snapped at Francisco, "What are you after?"

"I said IH tell it to your chief. Where is he?"

"I'm asking the questions!"

"I'm not answering them."

"Oh, you're not, are you?" snarled Pete, who had but one recourse when in doubt: his hand jerked to the gun on his hip.

Francisco's hand was too fast for the two men to see its motion, and his gun was too silent. What they saw and heard next was the gun flying out of Pete's hand, along with a splatter of blood from his shattered fingers, and his muffled howl of pain. He collapsed, groaning.

In the instant when the second guard grasped it, he saw that Francisco's gun was aimed at him.

"Don't shoot, mister!" he cried.

"Come down here with your hands up," ordered Francisco, holding his gun aimed with one hand and waving a signal to the crack of the door with the other.

By the time the guard descended the stairs, Rearden was there to disarm him, and Danneskjold to tie his hands and feet. The sight of Dagny seemed to frighten him more than the rest; he could not understand it: the three men wore caps and windbreakers, and, but for their manner, could be taken for a gang of highwaymen; the presence of a lady was inexplicable.

"Now," said Francisco, "where is your chief?"

The guard jerked his head in the direction of the stairs. "Up there."

"How many guards are there in the building?"

"Nine."

"Where are they?"

"One's on the cellar stairs. The others are all up there."

"Where?"

"In the big laboratory. The one with the window."

"All of them?"

"Yes."

"What are these rooms?" He pointed at the doors leading off the hall.

"They're labs, too. They're locked for the night."

"Who's got the key?"

"Him." He jerked his head at Pete.

Rearden and Danneskjold took the key from Pete's pocket and hurried soundlessly to check the rooms, while Francisco continued, "Are there any other men in the building?"

"No."

"Isn't there a prisoner here?"

"Oh . . . yeah, I guess so. There must be, or they wouldn't've kept us all on duty."

"Is he still here?"

"That, I don't know. They'd never tell us,"

"Is Dr. Ferris here?"

"No. He left ten-fifteen minutes ago."

"Now, that laboratory upstairs—does it open right on the stair landing?"

"Yes."

"How many doors are there?”

"Three. It's the one in the middle."

"What are the other rooms?"

"There's the small laboratory on one side and Dr. Ferris' office on the other."

"Are there connecting doors between them?”

"Yes."

Francisco was turning to his companions, when the guard said pleadingly, "Mister, can I ask you a question?"

"Go ahead."

"Who are you?"

He answered in the solemn tone of a drawing-room introduction, "Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia."

He left the guard gaping at him and turned to a brief, whispered consultation with his companions.

In a moment, it was Rearden who went up the stairs—swiftly, soundlessly and alone.

Cages containing rats and guinea pigs were stacked against the walls of the laboratory; they had been put there by the guards who were playing poker on the long laboratory table in the center. Six of them were playing; two were standing in opposite corners, watching the entrance door, guns in hand. It was Rearden's face that saved him from being shot on sight when he entered: his face was too well known to them and too unexpected. He saw eight heads staring at him with recognition and with inability to believe what they were recognizing.

He stood at the door, his hands in the pockets of his trousers, with the casual, confident manner of a business executive.

"Who is in charge here?" he asked in the politely abrupt voice of a man who does not waste time.

"You . . . you're not . . ." stammered a lanky, surly individual at the card table.

"I'm Hank Rearden. Are you the chief?"

"Yeah! But where in blazes do you come from?"

"From New York."

"What are you doing here?"

"Then, I take it, you have not been notified."

"Should I have . . . I mean, about what?" The swift, touchy, resentful suspicion that his superiors had slighted his authority, was obvious in the chief's voice. He was a tall, emaciated man, with jerky movements, a sallow face and the restless, unfocused eyes of a drug addict.

"About my business here."

"You . . . you can't have any business here," he snapped, torn between the fear of a bluff and the fear of having been left out of some important, top-level decision. "Aren't you a traitor and a deserter and a—"

"I see that you're behind the times, my good man.”

The seven others in the room were staring at Rearden with an awed, superstitious uncertainty. The two who held guns still held them aimed at him in the impassive manner of automatons. He did not seem to take notice of them.

"What is it you say is your business here?" snapped the chief.

. "I am here to take charge of the prisoner whom you are to deliver to me."

"If you came from headquarters, you'd know that I'm not supposed to know anything about any prisoner—and that nobody is to touch him!"

"Except me."

The chief leaped to his feet, darted to a telephone and seized the receiver. He had not raised it halfway to his ear when he dropped it abruptly with a gesture that sent a vibration of panic through the room: he had had time to hear that the telephone was dead and to know that the wires were cut.

His look of accusation, as he whirled to Rearden, broke against the faintly contemptuous reproof of Rearden's voice: "That's no way to guard a building—if this is what you allowed to happen. Better let me have the prisoner, before anything happens to him—if you don't want me to report you for negligence, as well as insubordination."

The chief dropped heavily back on his chair, slumped forward across the table and looked up at Rearden with a glance that made his emaciated face resemble the animals that were beginning to stir in the cages.

"Who is the prisoner?" he asked.

"My good man," said Rearden, "if your immediate superiors did not see fit to tell you, I certainly will not."

"They didn't see fit to tell me about your coming here, either!" yelled the chief, his voice confessing the helplessness of anger and broadcasting the vibrations of impotence to his men. "How do I know you're on the level? With the phone out of order, who's going to tell me? How am I to know what to do?"

"That's your problem, not mine."

"I don't believe you!" His cry was too shrill to project conviction, "I don't believe that the government would send you on a mission, when you're one of those vanishing traitors and friends of John Galt who—"

"But haven't you heard?"

"What?"

"John Galt has made a deal with the government and has brought us all back."

"Oh, thank God!" cried one of the guards, the youngest.

"Shut your mouth! You're not to have any political opinions!" snapped the chief, and jerked back to Rearden. "Why hasn't it been announced on the radio?"

"Do you presume to hold opinions on when and how the government should choose to announce its policies?"

In the long moment of silence, they could hear the rustle of the animals clawing at the bars of their cages.

"I think I should remind you," said Rearden, "that your job is not to question orders, but to obey them, that you are not to know or understand the policies of your superiors, that you are not to judge, to choose or to doubt."

"But I don't know whether I'm supposed to obey you!"

"If you refuse, you'll take the consequences."

Crouching against the table, the chief moved his glance slowly, appraisingly, from Rearden's face to the two gunmen in the corners. The gunmen steadied their aim by an almost imperceptible movement. A nervous rustle went through the room. An animal squeaked shrilly in one of the cages.

"I think I should also tell you," said Rearden, his voice faintly harder, "that I am not alone. My friends are waiting outside."

"Where?"

"All around this room."

"How many?"

"You'll find out—one way or the other."

"Say, Chief," moaned a shaky voice from among the guards, "we don't want to tangle with those people, they're—"

"Shut up!" roared the chief, leaping to his feet and brandishing his gun in the direction of the speaker. "You're not going to turn yellow on me, any of you bastards!" He was screaming to ward off the knowledge that they had. He was swaying on the edge of panic, fighting against the realization that something somehow had disarmed his men. "There's nothing to be scared of!" He was screaming it to himself, struggling to recapture the safety of his only sphere: the sphere of violence. "Nothing and nobody! I'll show you'" He whirled around, his hand shaking at the end of his sweeping arm, and fired at Rearden.

Some of them saw Rearden sway, his right hand gripping his left shoulder. Others, in the same instant, saw the gun drop out of the chief's hand and hit the floor in time with his scream and with the spurt of blood from his wrist. Then all of them saw Francisco d'Anconia standing at the door on the left, his soundless gun still aimed at the chief.

All of them were on their feet and had drawn their guns, but they lost that first moment, not daring to fire.

"I wouldn't, if I were you," said Francisco.

"Jesus!" gasped one of the guards, struggling for the memory of a name he could not recapture. "That's . . . that's the guy who blew up all the copper mines in the world!"

"It is," said Rearden.

They had been backing involuntarily away from Francisco—and turned to see that Rearden still stood at the entrance door, with a pointed gun in his right hand and a dark stain spreading on his left shoulder.

"Shoot, you bastards!" screamed the chief to the wavering men.

"What are you waiting for? Shoot them down!" He was leaning with one arm against the table, blood running out of the other. "I'll report any man who doesn't fight! I'll have him sentenced to death for it!"

"Drop your guns," said Rearden.

The seven guards stood frozen for an instant, obeying neither.

"Let me out of here!" screamed the youngest, dashing for the door on the right.

He threw the door open and sprang back: Dagny Taggart stood on the threshold, gun in hand.

The guards were drawing slowly to the center of the room, righting an invisible battle in the fog of their minds, disarmed by a sense of unreality in the presence of the legendary figures they had never expected to see, feeling almost as if they were ordered to fire at ghosts.

"Drop your guns," said Rearden. "You don't know why you're here.

We do. You don't know who your prisoner is. We do. You don't know why your bosses want you to guard him. We know why we want to get him out. You don't know the purpose of your fight. We know the purpose of ours. If you die, you won't know what you're dying for. If we do, we will."

"Don't . . . don't listen to him!" snarled the chief. "Shoot! I order you to shoot!"

One of the guards looked at the chief, dropped his gun and, raising his arms, backed away from the group toward Rearden.

"God damn you!" yelled the chief, seized a gun with his left hand and fired at the deserter.

In time with the fall of the man's body, the window burst into a shower of glass—and from the limb of a tree, as from a catapult, the tall, slender figure of a man flew into the room, landed on its feet and fired at the first guard in reach.

"Who are you?", screamed some terror-blinded voice.

"Ragnar Danneskjold."

Three sounds answered him: a long, swelling moan of panic—the clatter of four guns dropped to the floor—and the bark of the fifth, fired by a guard at the forehead of the chief.

By the time the four survivors of the garrison began to reassemble the pieces of their consciousness, their figures were stretched on the floor, bound and gagged; the fifth one was left standing, his hands tied behind his back.

"Where is the prisoner?" Francisco asked him.

"In the cellar . . . I guess."

"Who has the key?"

"Dr. Ferris."

"Where are the stairs to the cellar?"

"Behind a door in Dr. Ferris' office."

"Lead the way."

As they started, Francisco turned to Rearden. "Are you all right, Hank?"

"Sure."

"Need to rest?"

"Hell, no!"

From the threshold of a door in Ferris' office, they looked down a steep flight of stone stairs and saw a guard on the landing below.

"Come here with your hands up!" ordered Francisco.

The guard saw the silhouette of a resolute stranger and the glint of a gun: It was enough. He obeyed immediately; he seemed relieved to escape from the damp stone crypt. He was left tied on the floor of the office, along with the guard who had led them.

Then the four rescuers were free to fly down the stairs to the locked steel door at the bottom. They had acted and moved with the precision of a controlled discipline. Now, it was as if their inner reins had broken.

Danneskjold had the tools to smash the lock. Francisco was first to enter the cellar, and his arm barred Dagny's way for the fraction of a second—for the length of a look to make certain that the sight was bearable—then he let her rush past him: beyond the tangle of electric wires, he had seen Galt's lifted head and glance of greeting.

She fell down on her knees by the side of the mattress. Galt looked up at her, as he had looked on their first morning in the valley, his smile was like the sound of a laughter that had never been touched by pain, his voice was soft and low: "We never had to take any of it seriously, did we?"

Tears running down her face, but her smile declaring a full, confident, radiant certainty, she answered, "No, we never had to."

Rearden and Danneskjold were cutting his bonds. Francisco held a flask of brandy to Galt's lips. Galt drank, and raised himself to lean on an elbow when his arms were free. "Give me a cigarette," he said.

Francisco produced a package of dollar-sign cigarettes. Galt's hand shook a little, as he held a cigarette to the flame of a lighter, but Francisco's hand shook much more.

Glancing at his eyes over the flame, Galt smiled and said in the tone of an answer to the questions Francisco was not asking, "Yes, it was pretty bad, but bearable—and the kind of voltage they used leaves no damage,”

"I'll find them some day, whoever they were . . ." said Francisco; the tone of his voice, flat, dead and barely audible, said the rest.

"If you do, you'll find that there's nothing left of them to kill."

Galt glanced at the faces around him; he saw the intensity of the relief in their eyes and the violence of the anger in the grimness of their features; he knew in what manner they were now reliving his torture.

"It's over," he said. "Don't make it worse for yourself than it was for me."

Francisco turned his face away. "It's only that it was you . . ." he whispered, "you . . . if it were anyone but you . . ."

"But it had to be me, if they were to try their last, and they've tried, and"—he moved his hand, sweeping the room—and the meaning of those who had made it—into the wastelands of the past—"and that's that."

Francisco nodded, his face still turned away; the violent grip of his fingers clutching Galt's wrist for a moment was his answer.

Galt lifted himself to a sitting posture, slowly regaining control of his muscles. He glanced up at Dagny's face, as her arm shot forward to help him; he saw the struggle of her smile against the tension of her resisted tears; it was the struggle of her knowledge that nothing could matter beside the sight of his naked body and that this body was living —against her knowledge of what it had endured. Holding her glance, he raised his hand and touched the collar of her white sweater with his fingertips, in acknowledgment and in reminder of the only things that were to matter from now on. The faint tremor of her lips, relaxing into a smile, told him that she understood.

Danneskjold found Galt's shirt, slacks and the rest of his clothing, which had been thrown on the floor in a corner of the room. "Do you think you can walk, John?" he asked.

"Sure."

While Francisco and Rearden were helping Galt to dress, Danneskjold proceeded calmly, systematically, with no visible emotion, to demolish the torture machine into splinters.

Galt was not fully steady on his feet, but he could stand, leaning on Francisco's shoulder. The first few steps were hard, but by the time they reached the door, he was able to resume the motions of walking.

His one arm encircled Francisco's shoulders for support; his other arm held Dagny's shoulders, both to gain support and to give it.

They did not speak as they walked down the hill, with the darkness of the trees closing in about them for protection, cutting off the dead glow of the moon and the deader glow in the distance behind them, in the windows of the State Science Institute.

Francisco's airplane was hidden in the brush, on the edge of a meadow beyond the next hill. There were no human habitations for miles around them. There were no eyes to notice or to question the sudden streaks of the airplane's headlights shooting across the desolation of dead weeds, and the violent burst of the motor brought to life by Danneskjold, who took the wheel.

With the sound of the door slamming shut behind them and the forward thrust of the wheels under their feet, Francisco smiled for the first time.

"This is my one and only chance to give you orders," he said, helping Galt to stretch out in a reclining chair. "Now lie still, relax and take it easy . . . You, too," he added, turning to Dagny and pointing at the seat by Galt's side.

The wheels were running faster, as if gaining speed and purpose and lightness, ignoring the impotent obstacles of small jolts from the ruts of the ground. When the motion turned to a long, smooth streak, when they saw the dark shapes of the trees sweeping down and dropping past their windows, Galt leaned silently over and pressed his lips to Dagny's hand: he was leaving the outer world with the one value he had wanted to win from it.

Francisco had produced a first-aid kit and was removing Rearden's shirt to bandage his wound. Galt saw the thin red trickle running from Rearden's shoulder down his chest.

"Thank you, Hank," he said.

Rearden smiled. "I will repeat what you said when I thanked you, on our first meeting: 'If you understand that I acted for my own sake, you know that no gratitude is required.' "

"I will repeat," said Galt, "the answer you gave me: 'That is why I thank you.'"

Dagny noticed that they looked at each other as if their glance were the handshake of a bond too firm to require any statement. Rearden saw her watching them—and the faintest contraction of his eyes was like a smile of sanction, as if his glance were repeating to her the message he had sent her from the valley.

They heard the sudden sound of Danneskjold's voice raised cheerfully in conversation with empty space, and they realized that he was speaking over the plane's radio: "Yes, safe and sound, all of us. . . .

Yes, he's unhurt, just shaken a little, and resting. . . . No, no permanent injury. . . . Yes, we're all here. Hank Rearden got a flesh wound, but"—he glanced over his shoulder—"but he's grinning at me right now. . . . Losses? I think we lost our temper for a few minutes back there, but we're recovering. . . . Don't try to beat me to Galt's Gulch, I'll land first—and I'll help Kay in the restaurant to fix your breakfast."

"Can any outsiders hear him?" asked Dagny.

"No,” said Francisco. "It's a frequency they're not equipped to get."

"Whom is he talking to?" asked Galt.

"To about half the male population of the valley," said Francisco, "or as many as we had space for on every plane available. They are flying behind us right now. Did you think any of them would stay home and leave you in the hands of the looters? We were prepared to get you by open, armed assault on that Institute or on the Wayne-Falkland, if necessary. But we knew that in such case we would run the risk of their killing you when they saw that they were beaten. That's why we decided that the four of us would first try it alone. Had we failed, the others would have proceeded with an open attack. They were waiting, half a mile away. We had men posted among the trees on the hill, who saw us get out and relayed the word to the others. Ellis Wyatt was in charge. Incidentally, He's flying your plane. The reason we couldn't get to New Hampshire as fast as Dr. Ferris, is that we had to get our planes from distant, hidden landing places, while he had the advantage of open airports. Which, incidentally, he won't have much longer."

"No," said Galt, "not much longer."

"That was our only obstacle. The rest was easy. I'll tell you the whole story later. Anyway, the four of us were all that was necessary to beat their garrison."

"One of these centuries," said Danneskjold, turning to them for a moment, "the brutes, private or public, who believe that they can rule their betters by force, will learn the lesson of what happens when brute force encounters mind and force."

"They've learned it," said Galt. "Isn't that the particular lesson you have been teaching them for twelve years?"

"I? Yes. But the semester is over. Tonight was the last act of violence that I'll ever have to perform. It was my reward for the twelve years.

My men have now started to build their homes in the valley. My ship is hidden where no one will find her, until I'm able to sell her for a much more civilized use. She'll be converted into a transatlantic passenger liner—an excellent one, even if of modest size. As for me, I will start getting ready to give a different course of lessons. I think III have to brush up on the works of our teacher's first teacher."

Rearden chuckled. "I'd like to be present at your first lecture on philosophy in a university classroom," he said. "I'd like to see how your students will be able to keep their mind on the subject and how you'll answer the sort of irrelevant questions I won't blame them for wanting to ask you."

"I will tell them that they'll find the answers in the subject."

There were not many lights on the earth below. The countryside was an empty black sheet, with a few occasional flickers in the windows of some government structures, and the trembling glow of candles in the windows of thriftless homes. Most of the rural population had long since been reduced to the life of those ages when artificial light was an exorbitant luxury, and a sunset put an end to human activity. The towns were like scattered puddles, left behind by a receding tide, still holding some precious drops of electricity, but drying out in a desert of rations, quotas, controls and power-conservation rules.

But when the place that had once been the source of the tide—New York City—rose in the distance before them, it was still extending its lights to the sky, still defying the primordial darkness, almost as if, in an ultimate effort, in a final appeal for help, it were now stretching its arms to the plane that was crossing its sky. Involuntarily, they sat up, as if at respectful attention at the deathbed of what had been greatness.

Looking down, they could see the last convulsions: the lights of the cars were darting through the streets, like animals trapped in a maze, frantically seeking an exit, the bridges were jammed with cars, the approaches to the bridges were veins of massed headlights, glittering bottlenecks stopping all motion, and the desperate screaming of sirens reached faintly to the height of the plane. The news of the continent's severed artery had now engulfed the city, men were deserting their posts, trying, in panic, to abandon New York, seeking escape where all roads were cut off and escape was no longer possible.

The plane was above the peaks of the skyscrapers when suddenly, with the abruptness of a shudder, as if the ground had parted to engulf it, the city disappeared from the face of the earth. It took them a moment to realize that the panic had reached the power stations—and that the lights of New York had gone out.

Dagny gasped. "Don't look down!" Galt ordered sharply.

She raised her eyes to his face. His face had that look of austerity with which she had always seen him meet facts.

She remembered the story Francisco had told her: "He had quit the Twentieth Century. He was living in a garret in a slum neighborhood.

He stepped to the window and pointed at the skyscrapers of the city.

He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that our job was done."

She thought of it when she saw the three of them—John Galt, Francisco d'Anconia, Ragnar Danneskjold—look silently at one another for a moment.

She glanced at Rearden; he was not looking down, he was looking ahead, as she had seen him look at an untouched countryside: with a glance appraising the possibilities of action.

When she looked at the darkness ahead, another memory rose in her mind—the moment when, circling above the Afton airport, she had seen the silver body of a plane rise like a phoenix from the darkness of the earth. She knew that now, at this hour, their plane was carrying all that was left of New York City.

She looked ahead. The earth would be as empty as the space where th6ir propeller was cutting an unobstructed path—as empty and as free.

She knew what Nat Taggart had felt at his start and why now, for the first time, she was following him in full loyalty: the confident sense of facing a void and of knowing that one has a continent to build.

She felt the whole struggle of her past rising before her and dropping away, leaving her here, on the height of this moment. She smiled—and the words in her mind, appraising and sealing the past, were the words of courage, pride and dedication, which most men had never understood, the words of a businessman's language: "Price no object."

She did not gasp and she felt no tremor when, in the darkness below, she saw a small string of lighted dots struggling slowly westward through the void, with the long, bright dash of a headlight groping to protect the safety of its way; she felt nothing, even though it was a train and she knew that it had no destination but the void.

She turned to Galt. He was watching her face, as if he had been following her thoughts. She saw the reflection of her smile in his. "It's the end," she said. "It's the beginning," he answered.

Then they lay still, leaning back in their chairs, silently looking at each other. Then their persons filled each other's awareness, as the sum and meaning of the future—but the sum included the knowledge of all that had had to be earned, before the person of another being could come to embody the value of one's existence.

New York was far behind them, when they heard Danneskjold answer a call from the radio: "Yes, he's awake. I don't think he'll sleep tonight. . . . Yes, I think he can." He turned to glance over his shoulder. "John, Dr. Akston would like to speak to you."

"What? Is he on one of those planes behind us?"

"Certainly."

Galt leaped forward to seize the microphone. "Hello, Dr. Akston," he said; the quiet, low tone of his voice was the audible image of a smile transmitted through space.

"Hello, John." The too-conscious steadiness of Hugh Akston's voice confessed at what cost <he had waited to learn whether he would ever pronounce these two words again. "I just wanted to hear your voice . . . just to know that you're all right."

Galt chuckled and—in the tone of a student proudly presenting a completed task of homework as proof of a lesson well learned—he answered, "Of course I am all right, Professor. I had to be. A is A."

The locomotive of the eastbound Comet broke down in the middle of a desert in Arizona. It stopped abruptly, for no visible reason, like a man who had not permitted himself to know that he was bearing too much: some overstrained connection snapped for good.

When Eddie Willers called for the conductor, he waited a long time before the man came in, and he sensed the answer to his question by the look of resignation on the man's face.

"The engineer is trying to find out what's wrong, Mr. Willers," he answered softly, in a tone implying that it was his duty to hope, but that he had held no hope for years.

"He doesn't know?"

"He's working on it." The conductor waited for a polite half-minute and turned to go, but stopped to volunteer an explanation, as if some dim, rational habit told him that any attempt to explain made any unadmitted terror easier to bear. "Those Diesels of ours aren't fit to be sent out on the road, Mr. Willers. They weren't worth repairing long ago."

"I know," said Eddie Willers quietly.

The conductor sensed that his explanation was worse than none: it led to questions that men did not ask these days. He shook his head and went out.

Eddie Willers sat looking at the empty darkness beyond the window.

This was the first eastbound Cornet out of San Francisco in many days: she was the child of his tortured effort to re-establish transcontinental service. He could not tell what the past few days had cost him or what he had done to save the San Francisco terminal from the blind chaos of a civil war that men were fighting with no concept of their goals; there was no way to remember the deals he had made on the basis of the range of every shifting moment. He knew only that he had obtained immunity for the terminal from the leaders of three different warring factions; that he had found a man for the post of terminal manager who did not seem to have given up altogether; that he had started one more Taggart Comet on her eastward run, with the best Diesel engine and the best crew available; and that he had boarded her for his return journey to New York, with no knowledge of how long his achievement would last.

He had never had to work so hard; he had done his job as conscientiously well as he had always done any assignment; but it was as if he had worked in a vacuum, as if his energy had found no transmitters and had run into the sands of . . . of some such desert as the one beyond the window of the Comet. He shuddered: he felt a moment's kinship with the stalled engine of the train.

After a while, he summoned the conductor once more. "How is it going?" he asked.

The conductor shrugged and shook his head.

"Send the fireman to a track phone. Have him tell the Division Headquarters to send us the best mechanic available."

"Yes, sir."

There was nothing to see beyond the window; turning off the light, Eddie Willers could distinguish a gray spread dotted by the black spots of cacti, with no start to it and no end. He wondered how men had ever ventured to cross it, and at what price, in the days when there were no trains. He jerked his head away and snapped on the light.

It was only the fact that the Comet was in exile, he thought, mat gave him this sense of pressing anxiety. She was stalled on an alien rail—on the borrowed track of the Atlantic Southern that ran through Arizona, the track they were using without payment. He had to get her out of here, he thought; he would not feel like this once they returned to their own rail. But the junction suddenly seemed an insurmountable distance away: on the shore of the Mississippi, at the Taggart Bridge.

No, he thought, that was not all. He had to admit to himself what images were nagging him with a sense of uneasiness he could neither grasp nor dispel; they were too meaningless to define and too inexplicable to dismiss. One was the image of a way station they had passed without stopping, more than two hours ago: he had noticed the empty platform and the brightly lighted windows of the small station building; the lights came from empty rooms; he had seen no single human figure, neither in the building nor on the tracks outside. The other image was of the next way station they had passed: its platform was jammed with an agitated mob. Now they were far beyond the reach of the light or sound of any station.

He had to get the Comet out of here, he thought. He wondered why he felt it with such urgency and why it had seemed so crucially important to re-establish the Comet's run. A mere handful of passengers was rattling in her empty cars; men had no place to go and no goals to reach. It was not for their sake that he had struggled; he could not say for whose. Two phrases stood as the answer in his mind, driving him with the vagueness of a prayer and the scalding force of an absolute.

One was: From Ocean to Ocean, forever—the other was: Don't let it go! . . .

The conductor returned an hour later, with the fireman, whose face looked oddly grim.

"Mr. Willers," said the fireman slowly, "Division Headquarters does not answer."

Eddie Willers sat up, his mind refusing to believe it, yet knowing suddenly that for some inexplicable reason this was what he had expected. "It's impossible!" he said, his voice low; the fireman was looking at him, not moving. "The track phone must have been out of order."

"No, Mr. Willers. It was not out of order. The line was alive all right.

The Division Headquarters wasn't. I mean, there was no one there to answer, or else no one who cared to."

"But you know that that's impossible!"

The fireman shrugged; men did not consider any disaster impossible these days.

Eddie Willers leaped to his feet. "Go down the length of the train," he ordered the conductor. "Knock on all the doors—the occupied ones, that is—and see whether there's an electrical engineer aboard."

"Yes, sir."

Eddie knew that they felt, as he felt it, that they would find no such man; not among the lethargic, extinguished faces of the passengers they had seen. "Come on," he ordered, turning to the fireman.

They climbed together aboard the locomotive. The gray-haired engineer was sitting in his chair, staring out at the cacti. The engine's headlight had stayed on and it stretched out into the night, motionless and straight, reaching nothing but the dissolving blur of crossties.

"Let's try to find what's wrong," said Eddie, removing his. coat, his voice half-order, half-plea. "Let's try some more."

"Yes, sir," said the engineer, without resentment or hope.

The engineer had exhausted his meager store of knowledge; he had checked every source of trouble he could think of. He went crawling over and under the machinery, unscrewing its parts and screwing them back again, taking out pieces and replacing them, dismembering the motors at random, like a child taking a clock apart, but without the child's conviction that knowledge is possible.

The fireman kept leaning out of the cab's window, glancing at the black stillness and shivering, as if from the night air that was growing colder.

"Don't worry," said Eddie Willers, assuming a tone of confidence.

"We've got to do our best, but if we fail, they'll send us help sooner or later. They don't abandon trains in the middle of nowhere."

"They didn't used to," said the fireman.

Once in a while, the engineer raised his grease-smeared face to look at the grease-smeared face and shirt of Eddie Willers. "What's the use, Mr. Willers?" he asked.

"We can't let it go!" Eddie answered fiercely; he knew dimly that what he meant was more than the Comet . . . and more than the railroad.

Moving from the cab through the three motor units and back to the cab again, his hands bleeding, his shirt sticking to his back, Eddie Willers was struggling to remember everything he had ever known about engines, anything he had learned in college, and earlier: anything he had picked up in those days when the station agents at Rockdale Station used to chase him off the rungs of their lumbering switch engines.

The pieces connected to nothing; his brain seemed jammed and tight; he knew that motors were not his profession, he knew that he did not know and that it was now a matter of life or death for him to discover the knowledge. He was looking at the cylinders, the blades, the wires, the control panels still winking with lights. He was struggling not to allow into his mind the thought that was pressing against its periphery: What were the chances and how long would it take—according to the mathematical theory of probability—for primitive men, working by rule-of-thumb, to hit the right combination of parts and re-create the motor of this engine?

"What's the use, Mr. Willers?" moaned the engineer.

"We can't let it go!" he cried.

He did not know how many hours had passed when he heard the fireman shout suddenly, "Mr. Willers! Look!"

The fireman was leaning out the window, pointing into the darkness behind them.

Eddie Willers looked. An odd little light was swinging jerkily far in the distance; it seemed to be advancing at an imperceptible rate; it did not look like any sort of light he could identify.

After a while, it seemed to him that he distinguished some large black shapes advancing slowly; they were moving in a line parallel with the track; the spot of light hung low over the ground, swinging; he strained his ears, but heard nothing.

Then he caught a feeble, muffled beat that sounded like the hoofs of horses. The two men beside him were watching the black shapes with a look of growing terror, as if some supernatural apparition were advancing upon them out of the desert night. In the moment when they chuckled suddenly, joyously, recognizing the shapes, it was Eddie's face that froze into a look of terror at the sight of a ghost more frightening than any they could have expected: it was a train of covered wagons.

The swinging lantern jerked to a stop by the side of the engine. "Hey, bud, can I give you a lift?" called a man who seemed to be the leader; he was chuckling. "Stuck, aren't you?"

The passengers of the Comet were peering out of the windows; some were descending the steps and approaching. Women's faces peeked from the wagons, from among the piles of household goods; a baby wailed somewhere at the rear of the caravan.

"Are you crazy?" asked Eddie Willers.

"No, I mean it, brother. We got plenty of room. We'll give you folks a lift—for a price—if you want to get out of here." He was a lanky, nervous man, with loose gestures and an insolent voice, who looked like a side-show barker.

"This is the Taggart Comet," said Eddie Willers, choking.

"The Comet, eh? Looks more like a dead caterpillar to me. What's the matter, brother? You're not going anywhere—and you can't get there any more, even if you tried."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't think you're going to New York, do you?"

"We are going to New York."

"Then . . . then you haven't heard?"

"What?"

"Say, when was the last time you spoke to any of your stations?"

"I don't know! . . . Heard what?"

"That your Taggart Bridge is gone. Gone. Blasted to bits. Sound-ray explosion or something. Nobody knows exactly. Only there ain't any bridge any more to cross the Mississippi. There ain't any New York any more—leastways, not for folks like you and me to reach."

Eddie Willers did not know what happened next; he had fallen back against the side of the engineer's chair, staring at the open door of the motor unit; he did not know how long he stayed there, but when, at last, he turned his head, he saw that he was alone. The engineer and the fireman had left the cab. There was a scramble of voices outside, screams, sobs, shouted questions and the sound of the side-show barker's laughter.

Eddie pulled himself to the window of the cab: the Comet's passengers and crew were crowding around the leader of the caravan and his semi-ragged companions; he was waving his loose arms in gestures of command. Some of the better-dressed ladies from the Comet—whose husbands had apparently been first to make a deal—were climbing aboard the covered wagons, sobbing and clutching their delicate makeup cases.

"Step right up, folks, step right up!" the barker was yelling cheerfully.

"We'll make room for everybody! A bit crowded, but moving—better than being left here for coyote fodder! The day of the iron horse is past! All we got is plain, old-fashioned horse! Slow, but sure!"

Eddie Willers climbed halfway down the ladder on the side of the engine, to see the crowd and to be heard. He waved one arm, hanging onto the rungs with the other. "You're not going, are you?" he cried to his passengers. "You're not abandoning the Comet?"

They drew a little away from him, as if they did not want to look at him or answer. They did not want to hear questions their minds were incapable of weighing. He saw the blind faces of panic.

"What's the matter with the grease-monkey?" asked the barker, pointing at Eddie.

"Mr. Willers," said the conductor softly, "it's no use . . ."

"Don't abandon the Comet!" cried Eddie Willers. "Don't let it go! Oh God, don't let it go!"

"Are you crazy?" cried the barker. "You've no idea what's going on at your railroad stations and headquarters! They're running around like a pack of chickens with their heads cut off! I don't think there's going to be a railroad left in business this side of the Mississippi, by tomorrow morning!"

"Better come along, Mr. Willers," said the conductor.

"No!" cried Eddie, clutching the metal rung as if he wanted his hand to grow fast to it.

The barker shrugged. "Well, it's your funeral!"

"Which way are you going?" asked the engineer, not looking at Eddie.

"Just going, brother! Just looking for some place to stop . . . somewhere. We're from Imperial Valley, California. The 'People's Party' crowd grabbed the crops and any food we had in the cellars. Hoarding, they called it. So we just picked up and went. Got to travel by night, on account of the Washington crowd. . . . We're just looking for some place to live. . . . You're welcome to come along, buddy, if you've got no home—or else we can drop you off closer to some town or another."

The men of that caravan—thought Eddie indifferently—looked too mean-minded to become the founders of a secret, free settlement, and not mean-minded enough to become a gang of raiders; they had no more destination to find than the motionless beam of the headlight; and, like that beam, they would dissolve somewhere in the empty stretches of the country.

He stayed on the ladder, looking up at the beam. He did not watch while the last men ever to ride the Taggart Comet were transferred to the covered wagons.

The conductor went last. "Mr. Willers!" he called desperately.

"Come along!"

"No," said Eddie.

The side-show barker waved his arm in an upward sweep at Eddie's figure on the side of the engine above their heads. "I hope you know what you're doing!" he cried, his voice half-threat, half-plea. "Maybe somebody will come this way to pick you up—next week or next month! Maybe! Who's going to, these days?"

"Get away from here," said Eddie Willers.

He climbed back into the cab—when the wagons jerked forward and went swaying and creaking off into the night. He sat in the engineer's chair of a motionless engine, his forehead pressed to the useless throttle.

He felt like the captain of an ocean liner in distress, who preferred to go down with his ship rather than be saved by the canoe of savages taunting him with the superiority of their craft.

Then, suddenly, he felt the blinding surge of a desperate, righteous anger. He leaped to his feet, seizing the throttle. He had to start this train; in the name of some victory that he could not name, he had to start the engine, moving, Past the stage of thinking, calculation or fear, moved by some righteous defiance, he was pulling levers at random, he was jerking the throttle back and forth, he was stepping on the dead man's pedal, which was dead, he was groping to distinguish the form of some vision that seemed both distant and close, knowing only that his desperate battle was fed by that vision and was fought for its sake.

Don't let it go! his mind was crying—while he was seeing the streets of New York—Don't let it go!—while he was seeing the lights of railroad signals—Don't let it go!—while he was seeing the smoke rising proudly from factory chimneys, while he was struggling to cut through the smoke and reach the vision at the root of these visions.

He was pulling at coils of wire, he was linking them and tearing them apart—while the sudden sense of sunrays and pine trees kept pulling at the corners of his mind. Dagny!—he heard himself crying soundlessly—Dagny, in the name of the best within us! . . . He was jerking at futile levers and at a throttle that had nothing to move. . . . Dagny!—he was crying to a twelve-year-old girl in a sunlit clearing of the woods—in the name of the best within us, I must now start this train! . . . Dagny, that is what it was . . . and you knew it, then, but I didn't . . . you knew it when you turned to look at the rails. . . . I said, "not business or earning a living" . . . but, Dagny, business and earning a living and that in man which makes it possible—that is the best within us, that was the thing to defend . . . in the name of saving it, Dagny, I must now start this train. . . .

When he found that he had collapsed on the floor of the cab and knew that there was nothing he could do here any longer, he rose and he climbed down the ladder, thinking dimly of the engine's wheels, even though he knew that the engineer had checked them. He felt the crunch of the desert dust under his feet when he let himself drop to the ground. He stood still and, in the enormous silence, he heard the rustle of tumbleweeds stirring in the darkness, like the chuckle of an invisible army made free to move when the Comet was not. He heard a sharper rustle close by—and he saw the small gray shape of a rabbit rise on its haunches to sniff at the steps of a car of the Taggart Comet. With a jolt of murderous fury, he lunged in the direction of the rabbit, as if he could defeat the advance of the enemy in the person of that tiny gray form. The rabbit darted off into the darkness—but he knew that the advance was not to be defeated.

He stepped to the front of the engine and looked up at the letters TT. Then he collapsed across the rail and lay sobbing at the foot of the engine, with the beam of a motionless headlight above him going off into a limitless night.

The music of Richard Halley's Fifth Concerto streamed from his keyboard, past the glass of the window, and spread through the air, over the lights of the valley. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.

The lights of the valley fell in glowing patches on the snow still covering the ground. There were shelves of snow on the granite ledges and on the heavy limbs of the pines. But the naked branches of the birch trees had a faintly upward thrust, as if in confident promise of the coming leaves of spring.

The rectangle of light on the side of a mountain was the window of Mulligan's study. Midas Mulligan sat at his desk, with a map and a column of figures before him. He was listing the assets of his bank and working on a plan of projected investments. He was noting down the locations he was choosing: "New York—Cleveland—Chicago . . . New York—Philadelphia . . . New York . . . New York . . . New York . . ."

The rectangle of light at the bottom of the valley was the window of Danneskjold's home. Kay Ludlow sat before a mirror, thoughtfully studying the shades of film make-up, spread open in a battered case.

Ragnar Danneskjold lay stretched on a couch, reading a volume of the works of Aristotle: ". . . for these truths hold good for everything that is, and not for some special genus apart from others. And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being. . . . For a principle which every one must have who understands anything that is, is not a hypothesis. . . . Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not bel

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 514