Philip Wylie - After Worlds Collide

by After Worlds Collide(Lit)

"There is a building which they call the Citadel," Jack Taylor said, as if he had heard none of this. "It held the offices of administration of the Old People. Seidel occupies it with his inner ring.

  "If three of us could get in-or two of us-and kill ten of them,-the ten top men, including Seidel,-we'd-"

  "What?"

  "We'd at least be able to start something," Jack ended somewhat weakly.

  "But the two of you would have to kill the ten of them and the top ten-before you could really begin," said Peter Vanderbilt quietly. "How simple you make it seem!"

  Taylor swore, then laughed. "We don't know what we could do; or what we'd have to do. But we do know this: some of us, somehow, have got to get into that city, and that Citadel of that city. Then we can trust to God and what chances He may offer us. But first, and whatever's before us, we're going to get in! Agreed?"

  "Agreed!" said all voices, and Vanderbilt's was distinct among them.

  "Now how? We've no chance to advance against them by air or on the ground-or under the ground from the direction of this city. We know they've got guarded all the conduits and passages which we've discovered; and probably some we don't know about. But would they guard the conduits from the other cities?"

  "That's something, Jack! Say-"

  "See here. There's Danot-on the other side of them from us. They've a guard in there; we've nobody. They'd never look for us to come from that quarter. We get into Danot and go underground! We-"

  That night was long, but not long enough for the five conspirators.

  CHAPTER XX JUSTICE TIPS THE SCALES

  Ransdell, on the evening of the third day later, reported to Tony:

  "Five men have not returned-three of our best friends, Tony," he said, dropping formality. "Eliot, Jack Taylor and Peter Vanderbilt-and Whittington and Crosby with them. They left, you know, in two 'larks' about two hours before dusk yesterday. They said they were only going to have a look around. I thought it was a good idea; I told them to go."

  "No word from them at all since?" Tony asked.

  "Not a syllable. Marian Jackson is missing too."

  "She went with them?"

  "No. Entirely separately; and she went on the ground, not in the air. The gate watch who let her go out-it was Cluett- was ashamed of himself and did not report it promptly. It appears that she drove to the gate in one of the small cars, and wheedled Cluett into letting her take a turn outside. It was near noon, and the sun was shining. He saw no harm and let her pass. Then she turned the battery on full, and streaked away.

  "Still he thought she was just fooling with him, and would return, probably by another gate; so he sent no one after her. But as far as we're concerned, that was the end of her."

  "Which gate?" asked Tony briefly.

  "The northern gate. Duquesne's Porte de Gorfulu."

  "She disappeared down that road?"

  "Yes. And the only word she left behind with the girls she knew was that she was tired of being cold; she thought she'd try being warm again. She commented, further, that she sees now she pried herself into the wrong party."

  Tony nodded; he knew what that meant. Marian frequently reminded everybody that she hadn't been selected among the original company for either Hendron's or Ransdell's spaceships; she had pried herself into the party. Obviously, she meant she wished she had chosen the ship of the Asian Realists who now held the capital city, Gorfulu.

  "Have you searched for her?" asked Tony.

  "I've flown myself," Dave said, "along the road more than halfway, to be sure she wasn't wrecked by the road."

  "Probably," said Tony, "she went right on. But do you think the others were up to anything foolish?"

  "I'm sure of it," Ransdell answered.

  "Why? Did they tell you?"

  "Not me-Higgins. And he's just told me. Tony, they're dead now; or they're trying to get into Gorfulu from Danot. From what they told Higgins,-who swore to keep it until tonight,-we can't possibly help them now, except by being ready to respond to their signal that they're in Gorfulu and will have a gate open for us."

  Tony rose excitedly.

  "From what they told Higgins, and he told you, is the signal-overdue?"

  "It is, Tony; that's the trouble. I don't know in detail what those-those glorious idiots tried to do; but the signal, Tony, is overdue!"

  Four of them, at that moment, were alive. Crosby was dead; they had his body with them. Of the four alive, not one was unwounded; and they were lying in the dark in the tube of the power-conduit between Danot and Gorfulu, and with both ends of the tube closed against them.

  They had taken Danot; at least, they had surprised one gate and got in. For they had grounded their larks in the valley beyond Danot, and accomplished this in the twilight, unseen. Then they had crept to the western gate, surprised the guard and got in.

  Two of the other side fell in this fight; and Crosby and Taylor were shot. Jack still could walk, but the others had to drag Crosby with them.

  Once inside, they met their bit of luck-or they thought it that. Four men had been at the gate they surprised; and the two that fled separated. James and Whittington took after one of them, leaving Vanderbilt with the wounded men. The luck was that the man they pursued fled to the conduit-tube which supplied Danot from Gorfulu.

  They caught that man in the tube, overpowered him; and Whittington went back to guide Taylor and Vanderbilt and help him with Crosby. Meanwhile, Eliot had found the work-car which traveled in the tube beside the great cables to the transformers. It was part of the equipment made by the Other People which the Midianites were using when they traveled back and forth.

  The five had hardly got into the tube; and Vanderbilt was helping Crosby to the car, when the man who had escaped led another group of the guard underground. Eliot and Whittington turned back to fight them; and Vanderbilt and Taylor turned too.

  It was revolvers and knives and iron bars-anything was a weapon at close quarters.

  Everybody was wounded; but the five got away on the car, with Crosby dying. Power was on; and lights were on. The whole tunnel was illuminated; and the track of the car in the huge conduit was clear.

  Eliot James put on the power, full. He saw the chance to surprise Gorfulu; he saw the probability, too, that some signal might be sent ahead by the survivors of the fight in the tube.

  But there was a chance-a chance!

  So Eliot opened it wide, and they sped on-the four living men wounded, and one dead, on the car to catch by surprise the city that controlled the continent and which the enemy from earth held. For two hours thus they traveled.

  Then-the lights were extinguished; the car rushed on in a Stygian cave. But the car's speed was slowing; the power that propelled it was shut off.

  It did no good for Eliot to thump the control; the power was gone; the car slid to a stop.

  So there they lay underground in the tube, without light or food or water; one dead, four wounded. It seemed senseless; yet the only thing left to do was for the wounded to crawl the rest of the way to the chief city held by the enemy.

  Marian Jackson's situation was not in the least like theirs. Marian had driven by broad daylight to the chief gate, and shown herself and begged admittance.

  Marian was exceedingly good-looking; and the guard who parleyed with her had the good sense to take her at once to his superior, who knew that his business was to show her to Seidel.

  Seidel spoke English; Marian's "line," as well as her appearance, pleased him.

  She pointed out that the American parties-both of them from both ships-were composed of fools. She congratulated herself that she had not been chosen by them to join them; she had made them take her.

  This was true; and Seidel had learned that it was true, from his spies in the city. Marian was tired, she said, of ninnies from America who had chosen themselves to people this planet. They couldn't even keep themselves warm!

  Seidel had Marian assigned to quarters close to his in the Citadel.

  During t
he second day, she got a good view of the local situation, learning, among other things, that Seidel had taken very clever measures to protect himself against the always-feared uprising of the serfs: All the other rooms surrounding his suite were equipped with sprays which, upon pressing a lever, spread stupefying and paralyzing gas-the same gas which the Midianites had used in the attack on Hendron's camp.

  Also, Seidel had learned the use of klul. Indeed, he was addicted to klul, but he had let no one but the chemist who supplied him with the drug, know it.

  However, he let Marian know.

  Marian pretended she had never heard of it before. How would she, among the Americans, who were only fools? The fact was, Marian had tried it out pretty thoroughly, and was proud of the fact that she had a pretty good "head" for it.

  Seidel thought it would be very amusing to induct Marian into the uses of klul. It was most pleasant and effective, he had found, when breathed in a warm, almost steamy atmosphere. He liked to let it evaporate beside the bath, then to lie in the bath, breathing the klul-drenched air. He had a marvelous bath in his suite in the Citadel. The Ancient People had built a pool which could be heated to any temperature-a beautiful, enamel-tiled pool with gay decorations.

  Seidel insisted that Marian swim with him alone in the lovely pool and breathe klul. He dismissed his attendants and led her in.

  The klul, in its big basin, was rapidly evaporating in the warm, steamy air. Marian kept herself covered with a single garment like a kimono.

  He ordered her to throw it off and bathe with him. She asked, first, to breathe more klul; and she pretended that she was very intoxicated.

  She danced and delighted Seidel, who ordered her to throw off her garment and dive into the water with him.

  "Why do you keep it clutched about you?" he demanded.

  In a moment, she showed him; for he tried to tear off her kimono, and she let go with her hand, which had been holding, under the cloth, a knife.

  She stabbed him as he reached for her. She left the dagger in him as he staggered back. He cursed her, and found his alarm signal before he pulled out the knife, threw it at her- and died.

  Marian heard them at the door. For a moment she was dizzy; perhaps the klul was affecting her. She picked up the knife, with which she had killed him, and armed herself with it again. Then she remembered the protection he had prepared for himself against the uprising of the serfs.

  She pulled the lever that sprayed all the outer rooms with the stupefying gas-the rooms filled with his friends, the most dependable and trustworthy of those who had supported him.

  The signal promised by the five-if they succeeded-did not come to Hendron-Khorlu. It was longer and longer overdue.

  At dawn Ransdell set out to fly toward the capital city and toward Danot beyond it; but on the way he met another plane.

  A lark, it was-one of the machines of the Vanished People flown by another pilot from earth; and Ransdell, not seeking encounter, was avoiding it when he saw that the passenger-or observer-in that plane was standing, waving to him.

  Ransdell swung about, and curiously, yet keeping a cautious distance, pursued the plane, which was making straight for Hendron.

  It landed on the field outside the city; and Dave followed it down.

  Two men stepped out; and it was evident that the passenger was watching the pilot; the passenger was armed; the pilot was not.

  Ransdell and Waterman, who was with him, approached the pair; and the passenger, forgetting his watch of the pilot, hurried to them.

  "You're the Americans?" he hailed them in English; more, he spoke like an Englishman.

  "Yes!" called Ransdell. "Who are you?"

  "Griggsby-Cook! Once Major Griggsby-Cook, of the Royal Air Forces!"

  "Where from?" challenged Ransdell wonderingly.

  "Where from?" repeated the Englishman. "Out of slavery, I'd say! I came to tell you. We've taken over the city, since that girl of yours stabbed Seidel and gassed the rest of the ring! We've taken over the city!"

  "Who?' demanded Ransdell; and answered himself: "Oh, you mean the English! Then Taylor and James and Vanderbilt and the five of them got in!"

  "The five?" repeated Griggsby-Cook. "It was a girl that got in! She did for Seidel in his bath-like Charlotte Corday with Marat!

  "Then she gassed a lot more.... There was nothing to it when we got wind of that, and rose against them. I say, we've quite taken over the city! I buzzed off to tell you chaps. Didn't take time to learn the trick of this plane myself; so I pistoled one of their pilots into taking me. But he's good now, isn't he?"

  Ransdell nodded; for the pilot was meekly waiting.

  "Oh, they'll all be good!" said Griggsby-Cook confidently. "They'll have to be."

  "But the five-the five men that went from here?" Ransdell persisted.

  "Know nothing of them!" said the Englishman. "Sorry."

  Then no one spoke; but the four of them stared, as in the dim gray dawn, the great dome of Khorlu began glowing, and illumination showed in the streets too.

  "The lights are coming on!" Ransdell exclaimed incredulously.

  "Yes," said the Englishman. "We were working at that; they hoped to get the power to you before I got here!"

  It was only a little later that the same English engineers restored the power-supply to Danot, which had been cut off for reasons unguessed, until they had searched the tunnel and found one dead and four wounded Americans.

  Tony Drake, on entering the capital city, went first to the hospital rooms where Eliot and Jack Taylor and Whittington and Peter Vanderbilt lay. They would all "pull through," the English surgeon promised; but he could not say so much of others under his care; for the uprising had cost, on both sides, thirty lives; and ten more of the wounded would not recover.

  But battle on Bronson Beta was over-at least for the present. Further contest was unthinkable; yet it was prevented only by the overpowering numbers of the Americans and English together, when compared to the still defiant few of the "Asian Realists." Some score of these had to be confined; but all the rest were reconciled to the government that was being arranged by the Americans and the English.

  They were gathered all together in Gorfulu; and they were going to have a great meeting to discuss and agree upon the form of government.

  Marian Jackson sat with the men on the committee; for surely she had earned the right; but she had not, as she herself proclaimed, "the first ghost of a glimpse of government."

  What was it to be?

  Some suggested an alternate dictatorship, like the consuls of Roman republic, with an American consul alternating in power with an English. Others declared as positively that all rivalries and jealousies of the shattered earth should be forever banished and denied.

  There were a score of other schemes.

  And more debate than ever before on manners and morals- especially about marriage. Should there be laws for love? Cast off conventions and taboos! All right; try to get along without any....

  Tony retired to the lovely apartment provided in the capital city for Eve and himself; he was very tired. The day had been dark and long, and outside the shield of the city, very cold.

  It was neither dark nor cold within; for the power-plant more than supplied needed heat and light. The people were provided with every material thing.

  "And to-day," said Tony to his wife, "we ascertained beyond possible question that this planet stays with the sun. To-day we passed aphelion, and have definitely begun to approach the sun again. Life here will go on."

  "Our life together, Tony!"

  He kissed her more tenderly for his child within her.

  "I've not dared think too much of-our son, Eve. But now it seems certain he'll come into a world where he can live. But what strange, strange things, my dear, he is sure to see!"

  The End

 

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