Twilight of Reason

by Jonathan Burke

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Time Travel

Synopsis

They had been working for a long time to send a ship out into space, but when the great day came it was essential that the ship should be destroyed. They had looked ambitiously at the Moon and at the planets and stars beyond. Now they stared up in fear... Here is the record of the first onslaught of a strange disease that dropped on mankind from the skies. It is the story of an alien plague that worked too swiftly to be counteracted by human science - a plague that did not so much drive men out of their minds as steal the minds from them.

Release date: March 31, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 101

Sample

Jonathan Burke (1922 – 2011)

Jonathan Burke was the working name of English writer John Frederick Burke, who also wrote SF and fantasy under his own name (particularly his short fiction) as well as J F Burke and Robert Miall.

Burke was born in Rye, Sussex, but soon moved to Liverpool, where his father was a Chief Inspector of Police. He became a prominent science fiction fan in the late 1930s, and with David Mcllwain he jointly edited one of the earliest British fanzines. The Satellite, to which another close friend, Sam Youd, was a leading contributor. All three men would become well-known SF novelists after the war, writing as Jonathan Burke, Charles Eric Maine, and John Christopher, respectively.

During the early 1950s he wrote numerous science fiction adventure novels and his short stories appeared regularly in all of the leading SF magazines, most notably in New Worlds and Authentic Science Fiction. In the mid-1950s he worked in publishing and as a public relations executive for Shell, before being appointed as European Story Editor for 20th Century-Fox Productions in 1963.

His cinematic expertise led to his being commissioned to pen dozens of bestselling novelizations of popular film and TV titles, ranging from such movies as A Hard Day’s Night, Privilege, numerous Hammer Horror films, and The Bill. He also did adaptations of Gerry Anderson’s UFO TV series (as Robert Miall). Burke went on to write more than 150 books in all genres, including work in collaboration with his wife, Jean; and also published non-fiction works on an astonishing variety of subjects, most notably music.

After finally settling in the Scottish countryside. Burke continued to write well into his eighth decade, and in later years many of his best supernatural and macabre short stories were collected and anthologized. He died on 21 September 201l, aged 89, shortly after completing his final novel, a contemporary supernatural thriller The Nightmare Whisperers, which was published posthumously in 2012.

LOOKING BACK, it seems ironical that we were so nearly ready to go. We had been promising ourselves that trip for so long, and now at last the arrangements were nearing completion. We were like people who had been planning for months to make a very special visit—people all dressed up and on the verge of departure when they themselves were confronted by unexpected visitors, so that it became necessary after all to stay at home and cope with the newcomers.

There we were, ready to leave; and there they were, on our doorstep.

Only, of course, they didn’t make themselves known to us right away.

Winslow came back on a hot August afternoon. That was the beginning of it all as far as I was concerned, and as far as the rest of us at the Franklin Sands station were concerned. I remember the heat that came prickling across the desert, and the dusty haze that blotted out the sierra to the south. I remember hearing men cursing the metal that was hot under their hands as they worked. I remember that one of the senior physicists and I had had a quite fruitless discussion over lunch as to whether the freakish heat-wave had anything to do with the strange meteoric showers of a week ago.

And I remember that I was in Winslow’s house, with his wife, when he got back.

I had been saying: “You’ve got to make some sort of decision quickly.”

“How can I? I’m still confused—hopelessly confused.”

“I don’t see why. You don’t owe him anything. He’s gone, and you can’t say you’re sorry. Maybe your pride’s hurt …”

She smiled. “I don’t think I’m a very proud person, Cliff. But I can’t just draw a line and say there, that’s one part of my life ended, let’s start another. I’ve got to have a breathing space.”

I said: “If you take too long, it’ll only make things more difficult.”

“You mean that as I can’t stay here on my own, and as I’ll have to go back to New York, you’re wondering if you might forget me?”

“You’re just being awkward,” I said. “You know I won’t forget you. You know I’ll be here, however long it takes you to sort things out. But for your own sake …”

It was then that we heard the key in the front door. We stared at one another.

Julia said: “No. Oh, no. It couldn’t be.”

She sat with her hands pressed down beside her on the settee. All the colour drained away from her face, so that her auburn hair seemed to glow more richly than ever.

Steve Winslow came in.

He stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at us with that characteristic expression of his—that dark saturnine grin that creased his features so often as to be entirely meaningless.

“Well,” he said. “Well, hello there. Nice to see you again, Cliff.”

I said: “Hello, Steve.”

Julia stood up. She was very small—a small, defiant figure in a green shirt and brown slacks. Propping himself against the wall, Steve still towered over her.

“Hot, isn’t it?” he said.

Julia said: “What have you come back for? I understood … I didn’t expect …”

“Changed my mind,” he said coolly.

“But—”

“Don’t you want me back?” he said.

There was a pause. Then Julia said: “No, I don’t. Why should I?”

Steve glanced at me. “You’re the Welfare Officer here, Cliff. Talk to her: that’s part of your job. I suppose you were consoling her a few minutes ago. Well, now you can tell her to be a good little wife and be thankful everything has worked out for the best. I’m back.

“That’s not part of my job,” I said.

Steve slouched across the room and slumped down on the settee. He patted the place where Julia had been sitting, and indicated that she should come back there.

She went over to the window and looked out, her arms straight by her side, her shoulders tensed.

I said: “How did you get back? The station is closed for a fortnight—nobody in or out. You can’t just walk in.”

“But I did. At least, I had an argument with the men on the north gate, but they knew me. My pass is in order. They haven’t replaced me on the job, and I’m still needed here. I’ve got to report to Security in ten minutes, and tell them if I sold any secrets to bearded spies while I was outside. But I didn’t, so I guess I’ll be back in the shops to-morrow.”

Julia, her back to us, said again: “What have you come back for?”

“This is where I work, honey. That’s good enough.”

“Not to my way of thinking, it’s not,” I said.

He got to his feet with weary insolence, and went over to the window.

The sky seemed faintly red, blurred over by the dust that drifted across the workshops and living quarters Somewhere out there in the haze stood the ship, tilted towards the heavens. Steve Winslow looked out and said:

“I got to thinking that I ought not to leave the job unfinished. Funny the way it gets you, isn’t it? Found I was pretty fond of the ship.”

“I think you’d better go over to Security right away,” I said. “I don’t think you ought to have been let back in.”

“Perhaps you don’t. For security reasons … or personal ones?”

“Look here, Winslow——”

“Don’t get hot about it. Makes you sweat. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t come back, Cliff. I didn’t clear out because I wanted to sell information to a rival power. I ran off with a woman: remember? All right. It didn’t work, so I’ve come back. Nothing to do with Security.”

“It didn’t take you long to get tired of her,” I said. “And now that you’re back, I suppose you’re going to put Julia through all that misery again?”

“Don’t let’s be nasty about it. Why don’t you run along, Cliff, and leave us to our touching reunion?”

There wasn’t anything else I could do. I wanted to smash my fist into his slack, sensual face, but it wouldn’t have looked good for the Welfare Officer to have assaulted a man in the man’s own home. A nice story it would have made: Cliff Glemser, supposedly the guy who sorted out other people’s troubles, involved in a brawl. You could almost hear what they would have said: of course he was in love with Julia Winslow—chances are he’s been crazy about her for ages.

And that was true. I’d wanted Julia for a long time.

At the door I turned and said: “Julia, if anything goes wrong——”

“What should go wrong?” asked Winslow blandly. “I’m here to protect her. But drop in and see us sometime—put us on your routine calling list.”

I went out.

I felt sick inside. Sick with jealousy and frustration. But I couldn’t let that last. This wasn’t a job that allowed you to spend any time on your personal worries. Maybe later on we could straighten things out: maybe when these two tense weeks were over, I could make plans for Julia and myself, and we could get away from this barren, restricted world on the desert.

I trudged across to the canteen. Beyond it loomed the great concrete block of workshops. The steady thump of machinery pounded away, a background to all life and conversation and eating and sleeping in this corner of the station. Away to the left I could just see the three nearest launching ramps, bare and angular, grotesque as some prehistoric monoliths against the sandy distance.

There was so much space—the expanse of flat land and the giddy expanse of sky—and yet one felt shut in. We were all enclosed, imprisoned as though in a concentration camp. Far away to the south, east and west were the barriers, guarded by every warning device known to man. The northern barrier wasn’t far: I could see the squat shape of the guard-house from here. The men who worked here were picked men, conscious of their great task. They had brought their families and settled down to get on with work that would widen mankind’s horizons. But in the world to-day, if you tried to widen mankind’s horizons you had to do it in secrecy, screened by special agents, allowing yourself to be shut in and watched, living according to a set of irritating rules. My job was to make things easy—within limits. I had to organise entertainments, overcome personal resentments and fight against a sort of claustrophobia that became almost an occupational disease. Letting men bring their families here was a good thing in many ways, and in any case it would have caused a hell of an uproar if it had been forbidden, but in other ways it did a lot of harm: a devoted physicist would slave away contentedly all day in the shops and offices with his mind on the stars, but when he got home in the evening he was liable to succumb to the petty irritations of his wife and end up by feeling just as nervy and fidgety as she was. I was kept pretty busy: at times I thought that I played the part of a secular priest, listening to confessions and grouches and offering advice. It was often hard to believe that there was anything beyond the confines of the station. Our only way out was up: everything we did was directed towards the achievement of that escape from Earth, up into the skies.

A week from now, if everything went according to schedule, the first moon rocket would be launched. And after that … well, after that maybe we could go out and see if New York was still there, and if the lights still shone on Broadway, and if there were any human beings left who could talk about something else besides esca. . .