Philip Wylie - After Worlds Collide

by After Worlds Collide(Lit)

  "You might imagine one lion-man doing that, but you couldn't imagine all lion-men so restrained. You know they would have cleaned up the neighborhood, just to show they could, and then fought among themselves to the finish of many of them.

  "That is the nature we brought with us from the world; it is too much to expect it to desert us all here. It couldn't; it didn't."

  "That's certainly clear," Williamson agreed.

  "That element in our nature," the biologist proceeded, "scarcely had opportunity to reassert itself because of our difficulties in merely maintaining ourselves. The enemy- the party that attacked us-solved their difficulties, evidently, by moving into one of the Other People's cities. From what Tony told us of the city he examined, their city probably supplied them with everything they lacked, and with more equipment and appliances of various sorts than they dreamed existed.

  "They found themselves with nothing to do; they found already built for them dwellings, offices and palaces; they found machinery-even substances for food. They were first in possession of the amazing powers of the original people of this planet. They learned of our presence, and decided to dominate us.

  "I have come to believe that probably they would not have killed us; but they wanted us all under their control."

  Eve returned to the group. She did not speak, and in the dim light of the stars she was indistinguishable from the other girls; yet Tony knew, as she approached him, that it was Eve.

  She halted a few steps away, and he went to her.

  "Father asks for you, Tony," she said in a voice so constrained that he prickled with fear.

  "He's weaker?" said Tony.

  "Come and see," she whispered; and he seized her hand, and she his at the same time, and together through the dark they went to the cabin where lay the stricken leader.

  A cloth covered the doorway so when the door opened it let out no shaft of light to betray the camp to any hovering airman of the enemy. Tony closed the door behind him and Eve, thrust aside the cloth and faced Hendron, who was seated upright in bed, his hair white as the cover of his pillow.

  His eyes, large and restless, gazed at his daughter and at his lieutenant; and his thin white hands plucked at the blanket over him.

  "Have they come again, Tony?" he challenged. "Have they come again?"

  "No, sir."

  "Those that came, they are all dead?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And none of us?"

  "No, sir."

  "Arm some of yourselves unto the war, Tony."

  "What, sir?"

  " 'Arm some of yourselves unto the war,' Tony! 'For the Lord spake unto Moses, saying:

  " 'Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites; afterwards shalt thou be gathered unto thy people.

  " 'And Moses spake unto the people, saying, Arm some of yourselves unto the war, and let them go against the Midianites.'

  "How many of the Midianites have you slain, Tony?"

  "More than fifty, sir," said Tony.

  "There might be five hundred more. We don't know the size of their ship; we don't know how many came. It's clear they have taken possession of one of the cities of the Other People."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then we must move into another. You must lead my people into the city you found, Tony-the city I shall never see."

  "You shall see it, sir!" Tony cried.

  "Don't speak to me as if to a child 1" Hendron rebuked him. "I know better. I shall see the city; but I shall never enter it. I am like Moses, Tony; I can lead you to the wilderness of this world, but not to its promised places. Do you remember your Bible, Tony? Or did you never learn it?

  "I learned whole chapters of it, Tony, when I was a boy, nearly sixty years ago, in a little white house beside a little white church in Iowa. My father was a minister. So I knew the fate of the leader.

  " 'And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold, thy days approach that thou must die: call Joshua'-that is you, Tony- 'and present yourselves, that I may give him a charge.

  " 'Charge Joshua and encourage him, and strengthen him; for he shall go over before this people, and he shall cause them to inherit the land which thou shalt see.' Joshua-my Joshua, Tony, we must move, move, move to-night. Move into one of their cities. Thou art to pass over Jordan this day,' Tony, 'to cities great and fenced up to heaven.'"

  Hendron stopped speaking and fell back on his pillow. His eyes closed.

  "Yes, sir," Tony said softly.

  "The cities I shall never see!" Hendron murmured with infinite regret.

  "But, Father-" Eve whispered.

  The old man leaned forward again. "Go, Tony! I throw the torch to you. Your place is the place I occupied. Lead my people. Fight! Live! Become glorious!"

  "You'd better leave," Eve said. "I'll watch here."

  Tony went out into the darkness. He whispered to a few people whom he encountered.

  Presently he stood inside the circular room that was all that remained of the Ark. No vent or porthole allowed light to filter into the cold and black night. With him were Ransdell and Vanderbilt and Jack Taylor, Dodson and Williamson, Shirley Cotton and Von Beitz, and many others.

  Tony stood in front of them: "We're going to embark for one of the Other People's cities-at once. The night is long, fortunately-"

  Williamson, who had once openly suggested that Tony should not become their leader, and who had welcomed the reappearance of Ransdell, now spoke dubiously.

  "I'm not in favor of that policy. We have the blast tubes-"

  "I cannot question it," Tony answered. "Hendron decided."

  "Then why isn't he here?"

  There was silence in the room. Tony looked from face to face. His own countenance was stone-like. His eyes stopped on the eyes of Ransdell. His voice was low.

  "Hendron turned over the command to me."

  "Great!" Ransdell was the first to grasp Tony's hand. "I'm in no shape for the responsibility like that I had for a while."

  Tony looked at him with gratitude burning in his eyes.

  "Orders, then?" Ransdell asked, grinning.

  That was better for Tony; action was his forte in life. He pulled a map from his pocket.

  "Copy of the globe James and I found in the Other People's city," he said.

  They crowded around it: a rough projection of imaginary parallels and meridians marked two circles.

  "Here," said Tony, pointing with a pencil, "is where we are. To the south, Ransdell's camp. West, the city we explored. The Midianites-" He smiled. "That's Hendron's term for the Asiatics and Japs and Germans; it comes from the Bible-the Midianites are camped somewhere to the northwest. You note a city at this point. They doubtless occupy that city. Now-"

  His pencil moved south and west of the position where they were camped. "You see that there's another city here. It's west of a line between here and Ransdell's camp, and about equidistant from both. I suggest we go to that city- to-night, by the Other People's road-and occupy it. The distance can't be too great. We'll use the tractors."

  He then addressed those who could not see the map: "Imagine that we are camped in New York, Ransdell in Washington, the Midianites in Utica-then this other city is about fifty miles west of where Philadelphia would be, while the city James and I explored is say a hundred miles north of Pittsburgh. That's about correct."

  "We'll move?" Vanderbilt asked. "Everything?"

  "No. People-necessities. Come back for the rest."

  Williamson stepped forward. "Congratulate you, Tony. Glad."

  Others congratulated Tony. Then he began to issue orders.

  The exiles from earth prepared to march at last from the wilderness. They prepared hastily and in the dark. Around them in the impenetrable night were the alarms of danger. They hurried, packing their private goods, loading them onto the lumber-trucks, and gathering together food-supplies and those items of equipment and apparatus most valuable to the hearts of the scientific men who composed the personnel.

  An hour after issuing
his orders, Tony stepped into Hendron's house. Eve was there.

  "How is he?"

  She shook her head. "Delirious."

  Tony stared at the girl. "I wonder-"

  She seized his hand. "I'm glad you said that!"

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps because I'm half-hysterical with fatigue and anxiety. Perhaps because I want to justify him. But possibly because I believe-"

  "In God?"

  "In some kind of God."

  "I do also, Eve. Have your father ready in half an hour."

  "It'll be dangerous to move him."

  "I know-"

  Their voices had unconsciously risen-and now from the other room came the voice of Hendron: " 'And ten thousand at thy right hand: but it shall not come nigh thee.' "

  They whispered then. "I'll have him ready," Eve said.

  "Right. I'm going out again."

  "Tony!" It was Hendron again. "I know you are there! Hurry them. For surely the Midianites are preparing against you."

  "Yes, Cole. We'll go soon."

  In the night and the cold again, Tony looked toward the aurora-veiled stars, as if he expected almost to catch sight of God there. To his ears came the subdued clatter of the preparation for departure.

  Vanderbilt called him, called softly. It was perhaps foolish to try to be quiet as well as to work in the dark-but the darkness somehow gave rise to an impulse toward the stealth.

  "Tony!"

  "Here, Peter!"

  The New Yorker approached, a figure dimly walking. "The first truck is ready."

  "Dispatch it."

  "Right. And the second will start in thirty minutes?"

  "Exactly."

  "Which will you take?"

  "Second."

  "And who commands the first?"

  "Ransdell."

  Vanderbilt went away.

  Tony watched the first truck with its two trailers-one piled full of goods, the other jammed with people. They were like soldiers going to war, or like refugees being evacuated from an endangered position. They lumbered through the dark and out of sight-silhouettes against the stars.... Motor sounds.... Silence.

  When the second convoy was ready, Tony and Williamson carried Hendron aboard on a litter. The old man seemed to be sleeping. Eve walked beside him.

  The motor ahead emitted a muffled din. Wheels turned; the three sections bumbled into the blackness toward the Other People's road. When they had reached it, travel became smooth; a single ray of light, a feeble glow, showed the way to the driver.

  The people in the trailer wrapped themselves in an assortment of garments and blankets which they had snatched up against the somber chill of this early autumn night on Bronson Beta. Tony did not recognize a shawled figure who crowded through the others to his side until he heard his voice.

  "It is a shame to be driven out like this!"

  "It is, Duquesne."

  "But by whom-and for what?"

  "I don't know."

  The Frenchman shook his fist toward the northwest. "Pigs!" he muttered. "Beasts! Dogs!"

  For an hour they traveled.

  They crossed through the valley where they had cut lumber, and they went over the bridge of the Other People. They reached a fork in the road among foothills of the western range. It was a fork hidden by a deep cut, so that Tony and Eliot James had not seen it on their flight of exploration. Then, suddenly, the light of the truck-tractor went out, and word came back in the form of a soft human shushing that made all of them silent.

  CHAPTER XII A SURPRISING REFUGEE

  Tony leaped over the side of the trailer in which he had been standing near Hendron's litter.

  He ran forward. "What is it?"

  The driver of the truck-Von Beitz-leaned out in the Stygian dark.

  "We saw a light ahead!" he whispered.

  "Light?"

  "Light.... Light ahead!" The word ran among the passengers.

  "Where?" Tony asked.

  "Over the hills."

  Tony strained his eyes; and against the aurora and the stars he saw a series of summits. He could even see the metal road that wound over the hills, gleaming faintly. But there was no light.

  Not a sound emerged from the fifty human beings packed in the caravan behind.

  The wind blew-a raw wind. Then there was a soft, sighing ululation.

  Tony gripped Von Beitz' arm. "What was that?"

  "God knows."

  They strained their eyes.

  Tony saw it, then: a shape-a lightless and incomprehensible shape, moving slowly on the gleaming surface of the road-toward them.

  "See!" His voice shook.

  Von Beitz jumped from his seat behind the wheel. He stood beside Tony.

  "Don't see anything."

  Tony pointed ahead. "Something. Dipped into a valley. There!"

  Again the soft moaning sound. Again the meaningless shape topped a rise and slithered along the road toward them. Its course was crooked, and suggested the motion of an animal that was sniffing its way along.

  "Mein Gott!" Von Beitz had seen it.

  "It looks"-Duquesne had come up behind them-"like a snuffing dog."

  "A dog-as big as that?"

  Duquesne shrugged, and murmured to Tony: "It comes this way on the road. We must meet it. Perhaps it is an infernal machine. An enemy scout."

  Tony reached into the front compartment of the truck and brought out two rifles. Then he stuffed three grenades into his pocket. He turned to the trailer.

  "Vanderbilt!" he whispered.

  "Yes, Tony!"

  "Something's coming toward us on the road. We're going up to meet it. You're in charge here. If I fire-one, two, one- that means try to rush through on full power-without stopping for us."

  "Right. Bing-bing-bing-bing-and we lunge."

  Tony, Duquesne and Von Beitz began to hurry along the road.

  They went to a point about three hundred yards from the trailers. There they waited. The ululation was louder now.

  "Sounds like an animal," Von Beitz whispered nervously.

  "I hope to God it is!" Duquesne murmured reverently.

  Then it topped a nearer hill. It was a bulk in the dark. It wavered along the road at the pace of a man running.

  "Machinery!" Tony said softly.

  "An engine!" Duquesne murmured simultaneously.

  "Ready!" Tony sad. "I'll challenge it when its gets near. If it goes on, we'll bomb it."

  They waited.

  Slowly, along the road toward them, the thing came. They knew presently that it was a vehicle-a vehicle slowly and crazily driven. It loomed out of the night, and Tony stood up at the roadside.

  "Stop or we'll blow you up!"

  He yelled the words.

  At the same time he took the pin of a bomb between his teeth.

  The bulk slewed, swerved, slowed. There was a click, and the curious engine-sound ceased.

  "I'll give up!" It was a woman's voice.

  Tony shot a flashlight-beam at the object. It was one of the large vans the Bronson Betans had used in their cities. Its strange sound was explained by its condenser-battery-run motor.

  From it stepped a girl.

  Duquesne switched on another light. There was no one else in the van.

  "Sacr‚ nom!" he said.

  The girl was in breeches and a leather coat. She began to speak.

  "You can't blame me for trying-anyway."

  'Trying what?" Tony asked, in an odd and mystified tone.

  "Are you Rodonover?" she asked.

  Tony's skin prickled. He stepped up to the girl. "Who are you, and where did you come from?"

  "You're not Rodonover! You're-oh, God! You're the Other People!" she said. Tony noticed now that her accent was British. And he was suddenly sure that she did not belong to Hendron's camp, or to Ransdell's. She had not been in Michigan. She had not come to Bronson Beta with them. But her use of the phrase Other People startled him.