Blackness And Drums

 

"Wildcat."

Symonds tells Herries that:

in one hundred million AD, life is re-evolving on Earth and radioactivity has died down but the atmosphere is not yet breathable;

nuclear explosions will destroy all life "'Approximately one year from the twentieth-century base date we are presently using.'" (p. 71)

Herries' response is Andersonian:

"'One year...from now.' Herries stared upward. Blackness met him. He heard the Jurrasic rain on the tin roof, like drums." (ibid.)

Told of the end of life, he sees blackness. He hears not wind this time but rain like drums and there have been times and places where the sound of drums was a threat, as in Anderson's "The Master Key."

With the benefit of time travel, the characters know what is to come and are doing what can be done about it. Symonds, presumably because he has had enough by now, just wants to return home.