Bronsome Beta - After Worlds Collide Part 6

"We ought to go back now."

"Yes," agreed Eliot, "I suppose so. But how can we?"

Tony was sitting up. "How can we leave?" he agreed. "But also, how can we stay-without letting Cole Hendron and the rest of them know?"

"We can come back, of course," Eliot James reluctantly a.s.sented.

"Or we may find another city or something else."

"By 'something else,' do you mean the place where *they' all went, Tony? G.o.d, Tony, doesn't it get you? Where did they go? Not one of them-nor the bones of one of them! And all this left in order."

He stood at the table and sifted in his fingers the kernels of a strange grain. Not wheat, not corn, not rice nor barley nor rye; but a starchy kernel. They both had tasted it.

"There's millions of bushels of this, Tony. Should we say 'bushels' or, like the Bible, 'measures'? Well, we know there's millions of measures of this that we've already found. If it's food-and what else could it be?-we've solved our problem of provender indefinitely. And it's foolish to have our people improvising shelter and equipment when all we have to do is to move into-this. Here's equipment we never dreamed of!"

"Yes," said Tony. "Yes." But he remembered that contest that already had divided the camp. Did the emigrants from the earth dare to move into the city when found? Also, could the people from the earth sustain themselves on this grain or other supplies left by the vanished people? Though the kernels might have been preserved through the epoch of utter cold, had the vitamins-essential to life-remained?

But that was a matter for the experts of the camp to test and to decide. Tony could not doubt his duty to report the tremendous discovery.

"We'll leave to-day, Tony," Eliot pleaded, "but not until later. Let's look about once more."

And Tony agreed; for he too could not bear yet to abandon the amazements of the Sealed City.

It was later than they had planned, when at last they had loaded their s.h.i.+p with the objects-comprehensible and incomprehensible--which they had chosen to carry back to Hendron and his comrades. The sun-the old sun of the shattered world, the new sun of Bronson Beta-was low when Tony drew down once more the great metal ring which closed again the gate of the Sealed City.

"Let's not fly back to the camp by the path we came," said Eliot James.

"No," agreed Tony. "Let's loop to the south before we cut back to the seacoast."

They were in the air again, supported on the rus.h.i.+ng golden stream of fire that emerged from their rocket-tubes. They flew through the darkness, occasionally casting upon the ground underneath the bright ray of their searchlight, and still more often thrusting it ahead of them into the gloom. There were no lights anywhere beneath them to indicate that people lived or moved or had their being there.

Long after midnight they flew across what they judged to be either a huge lake or a great inland arm of the sea.

Toward morning they were planning to alight and rest before continuing their adventures, when suddenly they were transfixed. Not in the east, where the first gray bars of the rising sun might be expected to appear, but ahead of them, to the south, a single finger of light pointed upward to the sky-the only light except their own, and except the weird inhuman illumination of the great domed city, which they had seen on the surface of the planet.

CHAPTER VI.

SALVATION.

They were approaching the vertical beam of light at a high speed, but no sooner had its unnatural appearance made a mark in Tony's consciousness than his hands leaped for the controls, and the plane slowed as much as was possible-he'd cut down its elevation.

He turned to James: "What do you think it is?"

"It looks like a searchlight pointed straight up in the air."

"There seems to be a ridge between us and where it comes from."

"Right," James shouted back to him. Tony made a gesture which outlined the process of landing the plane, and James nodded.

When they had come upon the great bubble that covered the city, it had been daylight, and there had been no sign of life about it; but light implied an intelligent agency, and besides, it was night, and their sense of caution was stirred by the very primordial influence of darkness.

Now the plane was skimming low over the empty desert, and in the light of their abruptly switched-on beacon, they could make out racing beneath them a flat aridity.

There was no choice of spots on which to land. The thunder of the tubes had been cut off as Tony turned a switch, and his voice sounded very loud when he said: "How about it?"

"Let 'er go!" James answered, and an instant later they were racing over the ground, stirring up a cloud of dust that had been undisturbed for millennia.

They stopped. They stepped out.

The night around them was warm and clear. Its distant darknesses were weaving with the perpetual aurora of Bronson Beta. Far ahead of the waste in which the plane lay, the single finger of light pointed unwavering toward the stars.

"Shall we wait for day?" Tony asked.

Eliot James looked at the illuminated dial of his wrist-watch. "It'll be several hours in coming yet," he said after a pause. He grinned. "I've learned how to tell time by this watch in a mathematical process as complicated as the theory of relativity."

Tony did not smile at James' whimsy. He was staring at the light. "I should say, from the way it spreads, it must come together in some sort of a lens or reflector a couple of hundred feet below the other side of the ridge. If there's anybody around the base of it, I don't think they saw or heard us coming. If they saw anything, it could easily be mistaken for a meteor." He was silent.

James spoke his thoughts in the quiet of the desert night. "It may be four miles away-it may be six. The walking's pretty good; but the point is-shall we leave our s.h.i.+p?"

"I wonder-have we got time to get there and back before it's light?"

"Meaning the top of the ridge?"

"Exactly."

James squinted at the barren black edge of land traced upon the brief width of the light beam. "Plenty."

Tony made no further comment, but started walking through the night. They walked steadily and rapidly. The ground was sandy, and there were no large stones in it, although once or twice their ankles were nearly turned by large pebbles. They said no more. It might have been interesting to their biographers to note also that neither of them had mentioned their safe landing in the hazards of darkness and unknown terrain. That was like each of them. When you had to take a chance, you took it. When you made it, there was nothing more to be said.

They walked for half an hour before the flat plain, the arid waste, began to rise. In the dark they noticed the inclination more by the increase of their breathing than by the change in the strain on their muscles. Presently, however, the upward pitch became steep, and they realized that they were traversing a series of bare undulant ledges. They went more cautiously then, in their imaginings and their fears, not daring to use flashlights, but feeling for each step-sometimes even moving upward with the aid of their hands.

They knew for several minutes precisely when they would reach the top, and they slowed their pace to a crawl.

A breeze fanned their faces. They stepped up over the last rocky surface, and unconsciously moving on tiptoe, crossed it so they could look into the valley beyond.

Because neither of them was conventionally religious, because both of them were thunderstruck by what they saw, they cursed, fluently and sibilantly, in the night on the ridge.

At their feet, not more than a mile away-so close that the purring of machinery was faintly audible-a single searchlight turned its unwinking eye upon the heavens. In the diffused light around the great lamp they were able to see many things. A huge cylinder, a cylinder like their own Ark but larger, lay toppled upon its side, crippled and riven. Near the cylinder was an orderly group of shelters. Standing beside the searchlight, apparently talking to each other, were doll-like figures of human beings.

"It's our Other People!" Tony said, and his voice choked.

Eliot James gripped his arm. "Maybe not."

"But it must be!"

"It's about the same size, but how can you be sure? Those people who flew over a few nights ago and didn't like us, may have come up in it. All the s.h.i.+ps that were built to attempt this flight have looked more or less alike."

"Come on," Tony said.

"Quietly, then."

The minutes were like hours. Both men found themselves slipping down the opposite side of the ridge, holding their breath lest their panting might be overheard in the distance, and trembling whenever a fragment of rock fell. Their thoughts were identical. If the s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p which lay wrecked beyond the searchlight was the carrier of enemies, their presence must never be known. But if it was the s.h.i.+p which had embarked from Michigan with themselves-if that beacon stabbing the night was a signal of distress-and what else could it be?- then- Then they dared not think any further. They were on level ground now, sluicing through the blackness like Indians, alert, ready to run, ready to throw themselves on the ground. They were half a mile from the two figures at the light. Both of them were men; both of them had their backs turned.

At that distance Tony and Eliot could see how horribly the s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p had been mangled when it descended. There was a great scar on the earth where it must have struck first and tipped over. Its forward end had plowed into the ground, cutting a prodigious furrow and piling at its nose a small mountain of earth and stone. The metal of which it had been made was cracked back in accordion-like pleats. Whether they were friends or enemies, their arrival on Bronson Beta had been disastrous.

That quarter-mile was cut to three hundred yards. They could see each other's faces s.h.i.+ning palely in the radiance of the searchlight. They crept forward; the three hundred yards became two.

Suddenly, to the astonishment of Eliot James, Tony emitted a wild bellow which woke echoes from every corner of the night, rose to his feet and rushed across the earth toward the light. Eliot James followed him-and presently understood.

Tony's first shout had been inarticulate, but as he ran now, he called: "Ransdell! Ransdell! Oh, my G.o.d! It's me-Tony! Tony Drake! We've found you at last!"

And Eliot James, running like a deer, saw one of the men at the light turn around, lift his hand, try to say something, fall forward in a faint.

Ten minutes later, only ten minutes, and yet to three hundred and eighteen human souls that ten minutes had marked the beginning of salvation. They were all out now on the bare earth of Bronson Beta. Everyone was awake-all the lights were s.h.i.+ning. The cheers still rose sporadically. Ransdell had come to, and was still rocking in the arms of Tony when he did not unclasp him long enough to embrace Eliot James. The crowd of people, delirious with joy, was trying to touch them and talk to them. All the crowd, that is, except those who had not yet recovered from the terrible smash-up of the landing- and those who would never recover.

Ransdell had fainted for the first time in his life out of pure joy, pure ecstasy, and out of cosmic fatigue. He had scrambled to his feet in time to meet Tony's rush toward him. They had not exchanged many coherent words as yet- just, "Glad to see you," "Great!" "Are you all right?" Things like that. Ransdell had managed to say, "Hendron?" Tony had been able to answer, jubilantly: "Made it all right. Everybody well and safe."

Then Ransdell succeeded in reducing his command to a momentary quiet He said: "Tony has told me that the Ark made the trip and landed safely."

Again the cheering rose and echoed in the night. Again people rushed forward by the score to shake Tony's hand. Jack Little was there, bandaged and grinning. Peter Vanderbilt, apparently calm but blowing his nose in a suspicious manner. Jack Taylor was there too, and Smith and Greve and a hundred other people whose faces had become the faces of friends for Tony and Eliot James in the past two years. Somebody brought from the melae of dunnage that had spilled out of the split-open s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p two tubs. Upon them Tony and Ransdell stood.

By waving their arms and smiling in the flood of light which had been turned on over the encampment, they made it plain the whole night could not be spent in cheering and crying. They made it plain by shouting through their dialogue that they had better trade information.

CHAPTER VII.

REUNION.

Tony felt it utterly useless to attempt to speak to the throng; the people were too hysterical. More than three hundred of them were able-bodied, though many of these still bore bandages that testified to the injuries from which they were recovering. They had thought themselves recuperated from shock; but this intense excitement betrayed them.

Ransdell, restored from his faintness, proved the superior quality of his nerves by attaining composure first. He went to Tony and drew him away from the excited throng which continued to clamor about them.

"Eliot!" shouted Tony to his companion in this flight of exploration. "You try to tell them-as soon as they give you a chance."

"O. K.!" Eliot yelled, and he stepped up on the tub which Tony had quitted. He shouted and made gestures and caught the crowd's attention. Only a few trailed after Tony and their own leader, Ransdell.

Tony could not yet quiet his own inner tumult. He felt an arm about his shoulder, and found Jack Taylor beside him; and he thought how he had traveled on a train along the Hudson, back on the earth, on his way to Cornell University to meet this young man and ask him to become a member of Hendron's party.

On the other side of him walked Peter Vanderbilt; and Tony thought of Fifth Avenue, and its clubs and mansions, so staid, so secure! Or they had felt themselves so. Now where were they?

Reveries of some similar sort were running through Vanderbilt's head. His eyes met Tony's, and he smiled.

"Tony, I woke up laughing, a night or so ago," Peter Vanderbilt said.

"Laughing at what?" Tony inquired. They had pa.s.sed from the noise of the crowd.

"At my dream. I dreamed, you see, Tony, that I was back on earth. Not only that, but I was on earth before the time these delectable Bronson Bodies were reported in the night skies. I was attending the ceremonies of installation of somebody's statue-for the life of me, I can't say whose-in the Hall of the Immortals! After I woke up, a meteor crossed this sky. I couldn't help wondering if it mightn't have been part of that statue!... Well, why not sit here? You can tell us a little more of what happened to you."

So the four friends sat down on the ground close together, seeing each other in the distant radiance of the lights in the camp; and interrupting each other as they told, they traded their experiences in the flight from earth.

The account that Tony heard was far more tragic, of course, than that which he had to tell. The technicians under command of David Ransdell had made their calculations accurately, and the journey through s.p.a.ce had been little more eventful than that of the s.h.i.+p in which Tony and his comrades had traveled. However, the second Ark had been built more hastily, and its greater size increased its difficulties; as it approached Bronson Beta, it become evident to its navigators that the lining of its propulsion-tubes was being rapidly fused. It approached the planet safely, however; and like its sister s.h.i.+p, found itself over the surface of a sea. Fortunately, the coast was not far away, or the great vessel would have dropped into the water and all aboard perished.

The coast which the second Ark approached-the coast upon which it now lay-was fog-bound. "In spite of the fog," Ransdell said to Tony, "we had to land at once. Of course, the jets cleared away the fog below us, but only replaced it with a brilliant cloud of gases. We were flying 'blind,' and had to land by instrument. I ordered everybody to be strapped to the floor, and gave the command to set down the s.h.i.+p under the added pressure of the blast required for the delicate business of landing. Three of our tubes fused almost simultaneously. The s.h.i.+p careened and almost tipped over. In trying to right it, we rose perhaps fifty feet above this desert." He swept his hand toward the surrounding darkness. "And then we crashed."

Tony nodded. Ransdell went on: "Every bit of apparatus that was in the least fragile was, of course, demolished. On top of the crash, one of the jet-tubes burst, and its blast penetrated the storeroom. That might have been much worse; it might have annihilated half our party. Perhaps it did so, indirectly-it fused or destroyed more than half our stores and equipment. Since landing, we have not found it possible to construct even a radio. That is why you have heard no signals from us. We had more than we could do, for the first weeks, taking care of our injured and burying the dead-and salvaging and making usable what supplies were spared, in part. The searchlight you saw to-night was the best effort we accomplished."

Suddenly Ransdell's voice failed him. He cleared his throat and continued very quietly: "To tell the truth, Tony, we wondered whether we should try to communicate with Hendron's party-a.s.suming you had come through safe. We are so without supplies or resources, that we could only be a burden to you. We knew that at best you could barely manage for yourselves. It was that, as much as anything else, which stopped us from making efforts to find you. We decided not to drag you down and perhaps cause you, as well as ourselves, to perish."

"You would," said Tony. "You would decide that-Vanderbilt and Taylor and you, Dave. But thank G.o.d, that point's past. I haven't told you half the news. Eliot James and I didn't come from our camp to you. We came from a city!"

"City?"

"Of the Other People, Dave!"

"Other People?... What Other People?... Where?"

"I mean a city of the old inhabitants of this planet!" Tony cried. "For it was inhabited, as we thought. And by what people! Eliot and I spent three days in one of their cities!"

"But not-with Them?"

"No," agreed Tony. "Not with them! They're gone! They're dead, I suppose-for a million years. But wait till you hear what they left behind them! And what the cold and the dark of s.p.a.ce saved for us! Food, for one thing. Dave! Peter! Jack!" In their excitement, they were all standing up again, and Tony was beating each of them in turn upon the back. "Food- grain and other things saved for us by s.p.a.ce's wonderful refrigerator of absolute cold. Cheer up! Food-something to fill you-no longer's one of our troubles. Their food-if it doesn't kill us all. And it hasn't killed Eliot or me yet.... Listen! What's that?"

For there was shouting in the camp.

"I suspect," said Peter Vanderbilt, "that James has got to that point too. He's been telling them of the food you found. Perhaps now we better rejoin our comrades and-the ladies."

Eliot James had reached that point; and it started a new hysteria; for they believed him, and had faith in the food-supplies he reported. The immediate effect was instinctive and practical; they ordered their own spa.r.s.e supplies distributed more satisfyingly than on any occasion since the terrible landing on this earth.

It was indeed salvation which Tony Drake and Eliot James had brought out of the night-salvation and the end of some of the hards.h.i.+ps heroically borne. Tony did not realize then the extent of those hards.h.i.+ps; but when half an hour later coffee was served for all of them in the improvised dining-hall, he was made to realize it by a simple statement of Ransdell's. "This is the first ration of coffee we have served, except to those in most desperate condition, since the day after we landed."

It was a hilarious midnight picnic in the impromptu dining-hall, where the men and women dared to eat as much as they wanted for the first time since their epochal journey-where they sang hymns, shouted s.n.a.t.c.hes of gay songs from lost days on the vanished earth, wept and laughed again, over-hilariously. Tony found himself compelled to repeat again and again details of the city which Eliot James and he had found; again and again he had to iterate how Hendron and Eve and all their people had fared; and now he told how the three had died from the strange disease.

In return he gained other items from this and that of his companions, who enabled him gradually to piece together a more coherent account of the experience of the second band of Argonauts. Each detail was made vivid by the various narrators. The horrible day of the landing as the fog cleared away, revealing moment by moment the magnitude of the disaster which had overtaken them; the groans of the wounded; the crushed and mangled bodies of the dead; the desperate efforts of the doctors and surgeons among them to save those who were not beyond hope. Hastily constructed operating-tables under a sun which had once shone on the earth, and which now cast its radiance into the greenish-blue skies of Bronson Beta. The gradual emergence of order. The tallying of the lists of stores and tools. The shocking discovery that every one of the seeds so carefully stored on the s.h.i.+p had been burned by the unleashed atomic blast. The necessary destruction of the animals which had survived the crash, and the utilization of them for food. Rationing, then, and hunger. Long and weary expeditions on foot in search of sustenance. Efforts to find vegetation on Bronson Beta for food-efforts which in more than one case had led to illness, and twice had brought about death. The erection of the searchlight. The nights and days of waiting and hoping, complicated by fear to be found, because of the burden their discovery might const.i.tute to those who discovered them.

"For a while," said Jack Taylor, "we believed that n.o.body else-no other s.h.i.+p from earth-got over. We felt that, desperate as our situation was, yet we were the luckiest."

"But two weeks ago-two weeks of these peculiarly prolonged days, not to mention the similarly protracted nights," put in Peter Vanderbilt, "two weeks ago, we began to believe differently."