After Worlds Collide

by Philip Wylie

  “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 said. “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.

  “Sacré 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.

  “We come from earth,” he said. “We’re Americans.”

  She swayed dazedly, and Williamson took her arm.

  “Better duck the lights,” Tony said.

  They were in the dark again.

  The girl sniffled and shook herself in a little shuddering way, and suddenly poured out a babble of words to which they listened with astonishment.

  “I’ve been a prisoner—or something like it—since—the destruction of earth. To-day I escaped in this van. I’d been running it. That was my job. I knew you were somewhere out here, and I wanted to tell you about us.”

  “We’ll walk back,” Tony said. “Can we pass that thing?”

  Von Beitz looked. “Ja,” he said. He had never spoken German to them before, but now in his intense excitement, he was using his mother tongue.

  Tony took the girl’s arm. “We’re Americans. You seem to know about us. Please try to explain yourself.”

  “I will.” She paused, and thought. They walked toward the silent, waiting train. “You know that other space-ships left earth besides yours?”

  Tony said grimly: “We do.”

  “You’ve been attacked. Of course. One ship left from Eastern As
ia. Its crew were mixed nationalities.”

  “We know that.”

  “They’re living in a city—a city that belonged to the original inhabitants of this place—north of here.”

  “And we know that too.”

  “Good. A ship also left the Alps. An English ship.”

  “So—”

  “I was on that ship. The Eastern Asiatic expedition came through safely. We came down in a fog. We fell into a lake. Half of us, nearly, were drowned. The Russians and Japs—and the others—found us the next day. They fought us. Since then—they’ve made us work for them. Whoever wouldn’t—they killed.”

  “Good God! How many—”

  “There were three hundred and sixty-seven of us left,” she said. “Now—there are about three hundred and ten.”

  The truck loomed up ahead. Tony spoke rapidly. “We are moving from our camp at night. We intend to occupy a city before morning. You’ll come with us. My name, by the way, is Tony Drake.”

  He felt her hand grasp his own.

  “Mine is—or was—Lady Cynthia Cruikshank.”

  “Peter!”

  Vanderbilt sprang from the trailer and ran up the road. “You safe, Tony?”

  “Safe. This is Lady Cynthia Cruikshank. She’ll tell you her story. I think we’d better move.”

  “Right.”

  Von Beitz was already in his seat. Tony vaulted aboard. The train started.

  Lady Cynthia began a detailed account of the landing of the English ship. Tony moved over beside Eve.

  “How’s your father?”

  “You can’t tell. Oh—Tony—I was terrified!”

  He took her hand.

  “We could see it—up there in the dark, wabbling toward where we knew you were waiting.”

  He nodded. “It was pretty sour. Listen to her, though—she’s got a story.”

  They listened. When she had finished, long and dark miles had been put behind. The uncomfortable passengers had stood spellbound, chilly, swaying, listening to her narrative. Now they questioned her.

  “Why did the Midianites seize you?” one asked.

  “Midianites?”

  “That’s what we call the ‘Asiatic Expedition.’”

  The Englishwoman laughed softly. “Oh, Oh, I see. Joshua! Not inapt. Why—because they want to run everything and rule everything on this planet. And because their men greatly outnumber their women.” She spoke bitterly. “We’d chosen the pride of England. And pretty faces—”

  “Why,” some one else asked, “did you wabble so horribly?”

  “Wabble?”

  “Weave, then. In that Bronson Beta van you drove?”

  “Bronson Beta? Oh—you used the astronomical name for this planet. Why—I wabbled because I had to turn my lights out when I saw you coming, and I could only stay on the road by driving very slowly and letting the front wheels run off the edge. When they did, I yanked the car back onto the pavement.”

  Several people laughed. The van bumbled on toward the promised land. Some one else asked: “What did you call this planet?”

  Lady Cynthia replied: “We in our ship—thought— just Britannia. But the people who captured us called it Asiatica. You must realize that when I say captured, I don’t mean that in the sense that we were jailed. We lived among them—were part of them. Only—we weren’t allowed arms—and we were forced to live by their laws.”

  “What laws?”

  “German was to be their universal language. We had to learn it. Every woman was to be married. We had been given three months to choose mates. We were to bear children. There was no property. No God. No amusements or sports. No art—except for education—propaganda, you might call it. No love, no sentiment. We were being told to consider ourselves as ants, part of a colony. The colony was all-important, the individual ants—nothing.”

  “Swell,” said one of the younger men from the dark.

  Lady Cynthia nodded.

  “How did you escape?”

  “I’d elected to marry a leader. I was considering—seriously—jumping from a building in one of the cities. But I had a little more freedom than most. I was assigned to truck-driving. I went out every day to the gardens for vegetables. I befriended one of the guards there—I made rather deceitful promises to him; and he let me enjoy what I had told him was a craving of mine—going for a spin alone. I went—and I didn’t come back.”

  Duquesne asked: “You knew where to find us?”

  “Vaguely. In our city—the city was called Bergrad, by them—there had been discussions of you. Our captors called you American rabble. They are determined to subdue you.”

  “Sweet!” said Williamson.

  “Of course—in the last days on earth—I’d read about you. I knew two or three of your party. I knew Eliot James. He’d stayed once at our castle. Is he—”

  “Very much so,” said Tony happily.

  “That will be marvelous! And how many of you—”

  Tony explained. “We have two camps.”

  “So I heard.”

  “A van has gone ahead of us. It will deposit its stores and passengers at the new city, and then start at once to the other camp. We did not dare radio.”

  “They listen for you all day,” said Lady Cynthia. “And at night. But my other friends: Nesbit Darrington? Is he here?”

  There was silence.

  “I see,” she said slowly. “And Hawley Tubbs?”

  Again there was silence.

  The Englishwoman sighed heavily. “So many people! Ah, God, so many! Why was I spared? Why do I stand here this night with you on this foreign world? … I’m sorry!”

  Tony jumped. Von Beitz was rapping on the window of his driver’s compartment. Tony peered through the window. Von Beitz was pointing ahead.

  Tony’s eyes followed the German’s arm. Far away on the horizon the night sky was pinkly radiant. At first he thought that it was the aurora. Then he knew. He turned to the others.

  “There are the lights of our new home!”

  A murmur rose, a prayer, a hushed thanksgiving.…

  The tractor-truck and its two huge trailers rumbled toward the distant illumination.

  Tony bent over Eve. “We’ll be safe soon, dear.”

  “Yes, Tony.”

  They descended into a long and shadowed cut. At the end was a slow curve.

  Then they came out on a valley floor.

  In the valley’s center was the bubble of the new city. It was not as large as the first one they had seen. But its transparent cover was identical; and like the first, it was radiant with light. Did the lights go on all over Bronson Beta every night? Had Ransdell turned them on? They did not know. They only saw out on the valley floor the resplendent glory of a Bronson Betan city at night, and because none there save Tony and Lady Cynthia had seen the sight before, their emotions were ineffable.

  There, under its dome, stood the city, its multi-colored metal minarets and terraces, its spiral set-backs and its network of bridges and viaducts, shining, strong, incredibly beautiful.

  “Surpassing a dream of heaven!” Duquesne murmured.

  “Magnificent!” Williamson whispered. There were tears on almost every enraptured countenance.

  Then a strange thing happened:

  Cole Hendron stirred.

  Eve dropped a tear on his face as she bent over him. She let go of Tony’s hand to adjust the blankets over her father. But Hendron put her hand aside and slowly, majestically, sat up in his improvised cot.

  “Father!” she said.

  He was staring at the city.

  “Cole!” Tony whispered.

  The others in the trailer sensed what was happening. They looked at their old leader. And the caravan moved forward so that in the light of the city, faces became visible.

  Cole Hendron stood now.

  “Tony, my son!” His words rang like iron.

  “Yes—”

  The greatest scientist earth had ever produced stretched out his two hands tow
ard the city. “The promised land!” Now his voice was thunder.

  Eve sobbed. Tony felt a lump swelling in his throat.

  Hendron looked up to the cold stars—to Arcturus and Sirius and Vega.

  “Father!” he said in a mighty voice. “We thank Thee!”

  Then he pitched forward.

  Tony caught him, or he would have fallen to the earth. He lifted him back on his pallet and opened his coat. Dodson pushed through the herded people.

  The head of the physician bent over the old man’s chest. He looked up.

  “His brain imagined this,” said Dodson. “He brought us here in his two hands, and with his courage as our spiritual flame we shall remain!”

  It was an epitaph.

  Eve wept silently. Tony stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders—mute consolation and strength.

  “Hendron’s dead,” was whispered through the throng.

  The city was now looming in front of them, the buildings inside visible in detail and rising high over the heads of the travelers.

  Von Beitz was driving rapidly. This was the most dangerous part of the trip, this dash across the lighted exterior of the city, without protection of any kind.

  They could see presently that the great gate was open. Figures stood beside it, motionlessly watching their approach.

  Light poured over them. They were inside the city. They slowed to a stop at the mighty portals boomed shut behind them.

  Ransdell had been one of those waiting. Tony leaped out, and Ransdell smiled.

  “Welcome!”

  “Hendron’s dead.”

  “Oh!”

  The people began to alight—but they were quiet and made no attempt to celebrate their security.

  Others came up.

  “We’ll take his body into one of these buildings,” said Tony. “In the morning we’ll bury him—out there, under the sun and the stars—in the bare earth of Bronson Beta.”

  Behind the voyagers through the night was a wide avenue, and at its center in the city stood a magnificent building. Some one of those who came in the first caravan had brought a large American flag and fixed it on an improvised pole. It was hanging there when they entered the gates. Tony noticed it presently as it was being drawn down to half-mast.

  No other symbol of the death of their leader was made that night. There were too many important things to do, things upon which their existence depended.