by Philip Wylie
Hendron rushed toward the observatory and shouted to Von Beitz, who was on duty at the radio, to turn on a searchlight. Von Beitz must have heard the airplane too, for even as Hendron shouted, a long finger of light stabbed across the sky and began combing it for the vanishing plane. It caught and held upon the ship for a fraction of a second before it plunged through a sleazy cloud, but that second was not long enough for any one to tell what manner of ship it was, or even whether it was a ship such as might have been made by the people of the earth. A speck—a flash of wing surface. And the clouds.
They sat, stricken and numb. Surely, if there had been human beings in that ship—surely if it had contained other refugees from the destruction of the earth—it would have circled over their fire time and again in exultation.
But it had fled. What could that mean? Who could be in it? What intelligence could be piloting it?
The pulsations of the motor died. The light was snapped off. The colonists shuddered.
They were not alone on Bronson Beta.
CHAPTER IV
WHAT WAS IT?
SOMEBODY threw a log onto the fire. It blazed up freshly, and illuminated the strained, immobile faces of the emigrants from earth. Nobody spoke. They only looked at each other.
Out of the night, out of the darkness, out of the remote, infinitely distant, impersonal Nowhere, had come that humming, throbbing reality. Somewhere on Bronson Beta there were other human beings. Another still more dreadful thought curdled the imaginations of the people who sat around the camp-fires: were those other beings human?
Hendron, the leader of these brave people, had never felt upon himself pressure for greater leadership—had never felt himself more incompetent to explain the mystery of that night.
He moved among his fellows almost uncertainly. He walked up to the camp-fire and addressed his comrades. “I think,” he said slowly, “that the thought now engraving the imaginations of many of you may be discarded. I mean the thought that the plane which approached our camp was piloted by other than human beings.”
Eliot James interrupted, speaking with a confidence he did not feel. “It looked like an ordinary airplane.”
Cole Hendron shook his head. “From the glimpse we had, no one could say. What we saw was merely a glint upon some sort of material. However, we must use our reason to rescue us from impossible conclusions. We must infer from our glimpse of that machine in the sky, and from the sound of its flight, that some other party on earth was successful in completing a ship capable of taking the leap from Earth to Bronson Beta; and that, also, they were fortunate in the flight; and that they have succeeded, as well as we, in establishing themselves here.”
“They must be established very well,” somebody else said grimly. “We haven’t got a plane.”
Hendron nodded. “No; nor did we include an airplane in the equipment of our larger Ark. Therefore it could not have been our comrades from our own camp on Earth whom we heard in this sky. Were they the English, perhaps? Or the Russians? The Italians? Or the Japanese?”
“If they were any people from earth,” Jeremiah Post countered, “why should they have approached so near, and yet not give any sign they had seen us?”
Cole Hendron faced this objector calmly. He was aware that Post was one of the younger men who believed that he, the leader of the party on earth, and the captain on the voyage through space, had served his purpose. “Have you come to believe,” he challenged the metallurgist, “that any of the people native to this planet could have survived?”
“I believe,” retorted Post, “that we certainly are not safe in excluding that possibility from our calculations. As you all know,” he continued, addressing the whole group now rather than Hendron, “I have given extended study to the vehicle of the Other People which we have found. Not only in its mechanical design and method of propulsion was it utterly beyond any vehicle developed on earth, but its metallurgy was in a class by itself—compared to ours. These People had far surpassed our achievement in the sole fields of science from which we yet have any sample. Is it not natural to suppose that, likewise, they were beyond us in other endeavors?”
“Particularly?” Hendron challenged him.
“Particularly, perhaps, in preservation of themselves. I will not be so absurd as to imagine that any large number of them could have survived the extreme ordeals of—space. But is it utterly inconceivable that a few could?”
“How?” said Hendron.
“You know,” Jeremiah Post cast back at his leader, “that is not a fair question. I suggest a possibility that some people of this planet may have survived through application of principles or processes far beyond our knowledge; and then you ask me to describe the method. Of course I can’t.”
“Of course not,” agreed Hendron apologetically. “I withdraw that question. However, in order that each of us may form his and her own opinion of the possibilities, I will ask Duquesne to acquaint you with the physical experience of this planet as we now perceive it.”
The Frenchman readily arose and loomed larger than ever in the flickering flare of the fire:
“My friends, it is completely plain to all of us that once this world, which has given us refuge, was attached to some distant sun which we, on the world, saw as a star.
“That star might have been a sun of the same order as our sun, which this world has now found. If such were the case, it seems likely that Bronson Beta circled its original sun at some distance similar to our distance from our sun; for the climatic conditions here seem in the past to have been similar, at least, to the conditions on earth.
“There are two other alternatives, however. The original star, about which Bronson Beta revolved, might have been a much larger and hotter sun; in that case, this planet must have swung about that star in an enormous orbit with a year perhaps ten or fifty times as long as our old years. On the other hand, the original sun might have been smaller and feebler—a ‘white dwarf,’ perhaps, or one of the stars that are nearly spent. In that case, Bronson Beta must have circled it much more closely to have obtained the climate which once here prevailed, and which has been reëstablished now that this planet has found our sun.
“These are fascinating points which we hope to clear up later; we can only speculate upon them now. However, whether the original sun for this planet was a yellow star of moderate size, like our own sun, or whether it was one of the giant stars, or a ‘white dwarf,’ this world must have been satisfactorily situated with regard to it for millions and hundreds of millions of years.
“Orderly evolution must have proceeded for an immense period to produce, for instance, that log—the material which we burn before me to give us, to-night, light and heat; and to produce the People who made the vehicle which my colleague Jeremiah Post so admirably has analyzed.
“Beings of a high order of intelligence dwelt here. We have evidence that in science they had progressed beyond us—unfortunately for themselves. Poor fellows!”
Dramatically, Duquesne stopped.
Some one—it was a girl—did not permit him the full moment of his halt. “Why unfortunately?”
“Their science must have showed them their doom so plainly and for so frightfully long a period—a doom from which there scarcely could have been, even for the most favored few, any means of escape. Theirs was a fate far more terrible than was ours—a fate incomparably more frightful than mere complete catastrophe.
“Attend! There they were, in some other part of the heavens, circling, at some satisfactory distance, their sun! For millions and millions of years this world upon which now we stand went its orderly way. Then its astronomers noticed that a star was approaching. A star—a mere point of light on its starry nights—swelled and became brighter.
“We may be sure that telescopes upon this world turned upon it; and the beings—whose actual forms we have yet to discover—made their calculations. Their sun, with its retinue of planets, was approaching another star. There would be no collision; we d
o not believe that such a thing occurred. There was merely an approach of another sun close enough to counteract, by its own attraction, the attraction of the original sun upon this planet, and upon Bronson Alpha.
“The suns—the stars—battled between themselves from millions and perhaps hundreds of millions of miles away; and neither conquered completely. The new sun tore the planets away from the first sun, but it failed to capture them for itself. Between the stars, this planet and its companion, which we called Bronson Alpha, drifted together into the darkness and cold of space.
“The point is, that this must have been a torturingly prolonged process for the inhabitants here. The approach of a star is not like the approach of a planet. We discovered Bronson Alpha and Bronson Beta only a few months before they were upon us; the Beings here must have known for generations, for centuries, the approach of the stranger star!
“Knowing it, for hundreds of years, could any of the inhabitants here have schemed a way of saving themselves? That seems to be the question now before us.
“I cannot say that they could not. I can only say that we could not have devised anything adequate to meet their situation. Yet—they might have. They knew more than we: they had much more time, but their problem was terrific—the problem of surviving through nearly absolutely cold and darkness, a drift through space, of a million or millions of years. If any of you believe that problem could have been met by the Beings here, he has as much right to his opinion as I have to mine.”
“Which is?” Jeremiah Post demanded.
“That the People here tried to solve that problem,” replied Duquesne without evasion, “and failed; but that they made a magnificent attempt. When we find them, we will find—I hope and believe—the method of their tremendous attempt.”
Shirley Cotton stood up. She always moved with an almost languid voluptuousness. Now, in these tense moments, her actions were seemingly doubly calculated to be slow and indolent.
“What, M. Duquesne,” she inquired, “would be the attitude of the Beings if they survived and found us here?”
The Frenchman shook his head. “Before imagining their attitude, I must first imagine them surviving. I have confessed my failure at that task.”
“But if some of them survived?” Shirley persisted.
“Their attitude, after awaking from a million years’ sleep, would combine, among other elements, surprise and caution, I should suggest,” the Frenchman concluded courteously. “But, engaging as such speculations may be, our position demands that we be practical. We must assume that aircraft we saw in these skies came from earth. If there are other people from our world upon Bronson Beta, we prefer to be friends with them. That attitude, besides being rational, is our natural inclination. However,”—he shrugged his huge shoulders eloquently,—“it does not therefore follow that another party of emigrants from earth would want to be friendly to us. We cannot assume that the same emotions sway them. It is possible that, finding themselves here, they prefer private possession of this planet.”
Eve, sitting beside Tony, leaned toward him and whispered: “I can imagine that. Can’t you?”
Tony nodded. “That’s what I’ve been doing. I was in Russia during the days on earth,” he said, and repeated, “during the days on earth,” feeling how it seemed an epoch long ago, though it was not yet a month since they fled before the final catastrophe; and as Duquesne had reminded them, it was less than two years since they all had been living on the world unwarned that its end was at hand. Only a little more than two years ago, Tony had traveled as he liked on the world, and had visited, among other countries, Russia.
“Suppose that a Russian party made the hop,” Tony continued. “Since we did, why not? They worked along lines of their own, but they had some of the world’s best scientists. If they made it, you may be sure they packed their ship with first-class communists—the most vigorous and the most fanatic. When they found themselves here, what would they feel most?”
“I know,” Eve nodded. “They’d feel that they had a world to themselves, where they could work out the millennium according to their own ideals.”
“And,” Tony finished for her, “that they must beat down, at the very outset, possible interference.”
They were whispering only to each other; but many heads bent near to listen; and Hendron, seeing that Tony caught this attention, called to him: “You have a suggestion?”
“Two,” said Tony, rising to his feet. “I suggest, Cole, that we organize at once an adequate exploring expedition; and at the same time, prepare defenses.”
Nobody in the encampment had ever before called Hendron by his first name. Tony’s use of it was involuntary and instinctive. Having to oppose his leader in again urging exploration, he took from it any air of antagonism by addressing him as “Cole.”
Hendron appreciated this.
“Will you lead the exploring party—and choose its members?” he asked Tony.
“Gladly.”
“I,” said Hendron, “will be responsible for the defenses here.”
The people about Tony pressed closer. “Take me!… Me!… Tony, I want to go! Take me!”
From the gloom, where Eliot James sat rose his calm, twangy voice: “So we have come to the end of our honeymoon!”
Eve reached for Tony’s arm and clung to him as he moved out of the group gathered about him.
“Take me too, Tony.”
“Not you.”
“Why not?”
“I wouldn’t on earth; why would I here? Besides, I want to come back to you. I want to feel, when I’m away, I’m risking whatever we happen to risk, for you. You see, I love you. It’s like on earth, when I’m with you away from the others. See the stars up there.” The clouds were cleared from a patch in the sky. “There’s Cepheus and the Dragon; and Vega and the Swan, as we’ve always seen them. And the earth hard and cold at our feet; so comfortably solid and substantial, this earth, which came to us torn from some distant star for a couch, sometime, for you and me!”
Night deepened. The company of emigrants from the earth heaped higher the fire with the wood from the forest which had leafed on this land of Bronson Beta a million years ago. Some of the company—men as well as women—shivered with a chill not instilled in their veins by the sharpness of night, as this side of the planet turned away from the sun it had found at the end of its incalculable wandering. Slowly, lazily, the stars swung in the sky; for this planet rotated much less swiftly than the earth upon its axis. The earth people had learned not to lie down too soon to sleep, but to wait out the first hours of the long night in talk; and doubts, terrors, phantasms, easier to dismiss by day, plagued them.
That night, as Eliot James had said, they felt “the honeymoon over.” The triumph of their flight, the enormous excitement and relief at finding themselves safe on the new world, could suffice them no longer. Others besides themselves were on this world.
Survivors of the People of the Past! That idea would not down. Contrarily, it increased with the night.
Survivors of the People of the Past—or other emigrants from Earth who had made the journey safely, established themselves and already were exploring, and who, having found this encampment, had swung away again to report. Report what? And to whom?
Nothing happened.
Days passed—the long, slow days of Bronson Beta. The murmuring specter of the sky put in no further appearance; but the consequences of its evanescent presence continued. The camp was roused to a feverish activity which reminded the emigrants of the days of the Ark-building on earth. Indeed, this was Ark-building again, but on a far smaller scale; for the Ark was being taken down, and its materials—especially the last of the lining of the propulsion tubes—were being adapted to an exploration ship.
In the section of building which had been originally dedicated to research, rivet-hammers now rang, and metal in work glowed whitely. The crew that manned the farm was still at its post. Lumber was still being brought from the forest. But th
e most skillful and the most energetic members of the colony were working upon a small metal jet-propulsion ship hastily designed to travel in Bronson Beta’s atmosphere—a ship with lifting surfaces—but a ship with an enclosed cockpit; a ship which could travel very rapidly through the atmosphere of the new planet, and which could rise above that atmosphere if it became necessary.
The throbbing of the motor of the strange plane had changed the entire tempo of the lives of the colonists; it had rearoused them to themselves. If they were to preserve the intelligent pattern of their plans, it was essential to learn at once what interference threatened them. They could look upon themselves no longer as law unto themselves. Some other beings—survivors of the People of this planet or others from the earth—shared this new world with them.
Hendron’s people no longer could endure delay in learning, at whatever risks, what lay beyond these silent horizons.
On the morning of the fifty-sixth Bronson Beta day after their arrival, the airship was ready. Streamlined, egg-shaped, with quartz glass windows and duraluminum wings, with much of the available Ransdell-metal lining its diagonally down-thrust propulsion tubes, it stood glittering in the sunshine five hundred yards from the half-wrecked cylinder of the Ark. At about noon of that day Tony and Eliot James climbed into the hatch of the ship after Tony, under Hendron’s tutelage, had been familiarizing himself with the controls.
They were to make the exploration alone; the ship had been built only for pilot and observer. Both carried pistols.
It was proof of Hendron’s high practicality that, among the implements cargoed from earth, were pistols and ammunition. Policing might have to be done, if there were no other use for arms; and so there were pistols not only for Tony and Eliot James, but for others who remained in the camp.