Wales saw men around him become savage beasts, shooting, looting, killing in frantic hysteria. Men without hope, they awaited the-- Last Call For Doomsday! By S. M. Tenneshaw [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy December 1956 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] A deep shudder shook Jay Wales. He wished now he hadn't had to come back here to Earth this last time. He wanted to remember the old world of man as it had been, not as it was now in its dying hour. "It seems impossible that it will really happen," said Hollenberg, the docket captain. He wasn't looking at Earth. He was looking beyond it at the glittering stars. Wales looked too. He knew where to look. He saw the faint little spark of light far across the Solar System. A spark, a pinpoint, an insignificant ray upon the optic nerves--that was all it was. That--and the hand of God reaching athwart the universe. "It'll happen," said Wales, without turning. "September 27th, 1997. Four months from now. It'll happen." The rocket-ship was suddenly convulsed through all its vast fabric by the racking roar of brake-jets letting go. Both men exhaled and lay back in their recoil-chairs. The thundering and quivering soon ceased. "People," said Hollenberg, then, "are wondering if it really will. Happen, I mean." For the first time, Wales looked at him sharply. "People where?" Hollenberg nodded toward the window. "On Earth. Every run we make, we hear it. They say--" And here it was again, Wales thought, the rumors, the whispers, that had been coming out to Mars, stronger and more insistent each week. There in the crowded new prefab cities on Mars, where hundreds of millions of Earth-folk were already settling into their new life, with millions more supposed to arrive each month, the rumors were always the same. "_Something's wrong, back on Earth. The Evacuation isn't going right. The ships aren't on schedule--_" Wales hadn't worried much about it, at first. He had his own job. Fitting the arriving millions into a crowded new planet, a new, hard way of life, was work enough. He was fourth in command at Resettlement Bureau, and that meant a job that never ended. Even when the Secretary called him in to the new UN capital on Mars, he'd only expected a beef about resettlement progress. He hadn't expected what he got. The Secretary, an ordinarily quiet, relaxed man, had been worn thin and gray and nervous by a load bigger than any man had ever carried before. He had wasted no time at all on amenities when Wales was shown in. "You knew Kendrick personally?" There was no need to use first names. Since five years before, there was only one Kendrick in the world who mattered.