After Worlds Collide

by Philip Wylie

  Dodson, Duquesne and Eve sat in a room with Hendron’s body—a room of weird and gorgeous decoration, a room of august dimensions, a room indirectly illuminated. If they had but known, they would have been glad that Cole Hendron lay in the hall of the edifice that had been home of the greatest scientists of Bronson Beta some incalculable age before them.

  Tony left the watchers reluctantly and sought Ransdell. The former South African was in a smaller chamber in the building where the Stars and Stripes hung at half-mast.

  “He died,” said Tony to Ransdell and the other people with him, “standing in the trailer, thanking God, and staring at the city.”

  “Like Moses,” said Ransdell. “A single glimpse of the Promised Land.”

  “Like Moses.” Tony looked with astonishment at the man. He had not imagined Ransdell as a reader of the Scriptures.

  “We must go on. He’d want it,” said Williamson.

  Tony nodded. “The first van has left for your camp?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the second?”

  “Fifteen minutes ago.”

  “It is about four miles from the road to your camp. But I think those tractors can pull all the way in. They’ll bring nothing but people—and they’ll be able to accommodate every one.” He looked at his watch and pondered. “They should be here before daybreak. Now—I don’t know about the power and light in these cities. Von Beitz, suppose you take another man and start an investigation of its source. We’ll want to know that. The other city I investigated had enormous subterranean granaries and storehouses. Williamson—you search for them. Jack—you take care of housing.”

  “We’ve been working on that,” said Ransdell. “There’s ample room already available—for your people and mine.”

  “Good. Water?”

  “We’ve located the main conduits. They’re full. The water’s apparently fresh. We’ve turned it on in this building. We’re running a set of fountains in the rear court and filling a swimming-pool to be sure it is fresh.”

  “Right.—Shirley, find Kyto and arrange for a meal at daybreak. Prepare for five hundred—we’re almost that many.”

  Shirley left.

  Hastily Tony dispatched others from his improvised headquarters. Soon he was alone with Ransdell.

  “I got your signal,” he said. “You wanted every one cleared out but me. Why?”

  Ransdell glanced at the door. “For a good reason, Tony. I’ve got something important to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “There’s somebody else in this city.”

  Tony smiled. “I know that feeling. James and I had it. You get used to it.”

  Ransdell shrugged. “I’m not queasy—you know. I don’t get those feelings. Here’s my evidence: I drove the first caravan. When I reached the gates, I saw something whisk around a distant building. It might have been a man—it might have been the end of one of these little automobiles.… Then, after I’d started things going, I took a walk. I found this.”

  He handed Tony a half of a sandwich. A bite had been taken out of it—a big bite. The other half and the filling were missing. But the bread was fresh.

  Tony stared at it. “Good Lord!”

  “That bread would be stale in twelve hours, lying as it was on the street.”

  “Anything else?”

  “This building was open. The others were shut. We used your instructions for getting into them. But in here, things were—disturbed. Chairs, tables. There was a ball of paper on the floor of this room. Nothing on it.” Ransdell produced a crumpled sheet of paper.

  “The Other People had paper,” Tony said.

  “Not paper watermarked in English.”

  Tony walked around the room, pondering this. “Well?”

  “There can’t be many people. Since we arrived, ever since I found the sandwich, I’ve been conducting a search. So have five other small posses. Nothing was discovered, however.”

  “I see.” Tony sat down. “The Midianites have foreseen our scheme, then, and put watchers here.”

  “I think so.”

  “Do you believe that we can find them to-night?”

  “You know better than I.”

  “I doubt it,” Tony answered. “It would take months to cover every room, every subterranean chamber.”

  “Of course,” said Ransdell, “it might be some one else. The Midianites might have explored here—and left. The Other People had bread—like ours more or less; and this isn’t familiar—exactly. It looks like whole wheat—”

  Tony grinned. “You aren’t seriously suggesting that the Other People may be alive here?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well—why not? Anyway—some one is. Spies—ghosts—some one.”

  It was growing light when the trucks came back from the other camp. They were crowded with cheering people, who grew silent when they heard of Hendron’s death. Tony and Ransdell went to greet them. Breakfast was ready; it was served from caldrons borrowed from the Other People’s kitchens.

  Tony was busy with hot soup when Peter Vanderbilt approached him. “Where’s Von Beitz?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t he see you?”

  “No.”

  Vanderbilt scowled. “Funny! Quarter of an hour ago I saw him a few streets from the square here. He was on his way to tell you something about the power. He turned a corner. I thought I heard the first faint part of a yell—choked off. I hustled around the same corner, but he was out of sight. It seemed odd—he’d have had to run pretty fast to make the next corner. So I jammed along looking for him. No sign of him. Thought he was reporting to you. But I went back. Nothing to see at the spot where he’d left me. I—”

  Tony was calling. “Taylor—Williamson—Smith—Alexander—look for Von Beitz. Arm yourselves.”

  But two hours later Von Beitz had not been found.

  CHAPTER XIII

  FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN

  DAY broke with its long, deliberate dawn, while the strange, eerie glow of the night light that illumined the city faded. There was no sound in the streets but the scuffing feet of the sentinels whom Tony had posted, and the echo of their voices as they made occasional reports to each other or called a challenge.

  Now the night watch was relieved; and with the brightening day, searching parties set out again under strict order not to separate into squads of less than six, and to make communication, at regular intervals, with the Central Authority.

  This was set up in the offices near the great hall in which Hendron lay dead—the Hall of Sciences of the Other People.

  So the enormous chamber manifested itself. It had been, one time, a meeting-place of august, noble-minded Beings. The dimensions and proportions of the great hall, its modeling and decorations, declared their character. It was most fitting that the greatest scientist from Earth—he who attempted and triumphed in the flight through space—lie here in this hall.

  Thus Hendron lay in state, his face stern and yet peaceful; and his people, whom he had saved from the cataclysm, slowly filed past.

  Eve, his daughter, stood at his side.

  Dodson had begun the vigil with her, but he had retired to a couch at the end of the great hall, where he had dropped down, meaning to rest for a few moments. Exhaustion had overcome him, and he slept, his huge chest rising and falling, the coat-sleeve of his armless shoulder moving on the floor with the rhythm of his breathing.

  As the people filed from the hall, they passed Dodson, gazing at him but never disturbing him. His empty sleeve brought keenly to mind the savage battle in Michigan in the horrible hours when the mob there assailed the camp near the end of the waiting for the escape from earth. Where was Michigan? Where was the earth now?

  The people passed more slowly for gazing back again at the catafalque of the Bronson Betans, whereon Hendron lay.…

  Maltby, the electrical engineer, together with four others was exploring behind the walls of the building. Power was “on.” Impulses, e
lectrical in character, were perceptible; and Maltby was studying the problem of them.

  Their manifestations were most conspicuous in the glow which illumined the dome over the city at night, and which so agreeably lighted certain interiors by night and by day. These manifestations resembled those which Tony and Eliot James had reported from the first Sealed City which they had entered.

  Maltby and his assistants discovered many other proofs of power impulses.

  The source of the power they could not locate; but Lady Cynthia’s account of the activities of the “Midianites” suggested to Maltby a key to the secret.

  “I believe,” Maltby said, “that the Bronson Betans undoubtedly solved the problem of obtaining power from the inner heat of the planet, and probably learned to utilize the radium-bearing strata under the outer crust. They must have perfected some apparatus to make practical use of that power. It is possible, but highly improbable, that the apparatus came through the passage of cold and darkness in such state that when the air thawed out and the crust-conditions approached normal, it set itself in operation automatically.

  “What is far more probable is that the Midianites have discovered one installation of the apparatus. We know from Lady Cynthia that they are months ahead of us in experimenting with Bronson Betan machinery. I believe that they have put in order and set going the power-impulse machinery connected with the city which they have occupied.

  “The impulses from that installation may be carried by cables under the ground; more probably, however, they are disseminated as some sort of radio-waves. Consequently they reach this city, as they reached the city that Tony and James entered, and we benefit from them.”

  Behind the wall at the end of the hall, near the couch upon which Dodson slept, one of Maltby’s men came upon a mechanism connected with what was, plainly, a huge metal diaphragm. He called his chief, and the entire party of engineers worked over the mechanism.

  Suddenly sound burst forth. Voices! Singing! And the thunder of a tremendous chorus filled the hall! Men’s voices, and women’s! How triumphant, sublime, the chant of this chorus!

  No syllable was of itself understandable; the very scale and notes of the music were strange. Strange but magnificent!

  It caught all the people in the hall and awed them into stillness. They stood staring up, agape; not frightened at all, only uplifted in their wonder!

  Voices—voices of men and women a million years dead—resounded about them, singing this strange, enthralling requiem.

  Eve, beside the body of her father, straightened and stood, with her head raised, her eyes dry, her pulses pounding full again.

  Tony, outside in the street, heard the chorus, and he came running in—to be checked at the entrance of the hall as though caught there in a spell. Only slowly, and as if he had to struggle through an invisible interference, could he advance; for the singing continued.

  It suggested somehow, though its notes were not like, the Pilgrims’ Chorus in “Tannhäuser.” It was now like the “Fire Music”—now an exalted frenzy like the “Ride of the Valkyries.” Some great Wagner had lived a million years ago when this planet pursued its accustomed course about its distant star!

  The chorus ceased.

  Tony caught Eve in his arms, lest she collapse in the reaction from her ecstasy.

  “Tony! Tony, what a requiem for him! It leaves us nothing now to do for him! Oh, Tony, that was his requiem!”

  Down the sunlit streets of the city the children of the earth, Dan and Dorothy, walked hand in hand, staring at the wonders about them, crying out, pointing, and flattening their noses against the show panes.

  Though they plainly remembered the thrills and terrors of the Flight, they could not completely understand that the world was gone, that they had left it forever. This was to them merely another, more magic domain—an enthralling land of Oz, with especially splendid sights, with all the buildings strange in shape and resplendent in colors, with tiers of streets and breath-taking bridges. Behind the children, Shirley Cotton and Lady Cynthia strolled and stared; and along with them went Eliot James, who could not—and who did not attempt—to conceal his continued astonishments.

  “Isn’t this like the other city?” Shirley asked him.

  “In general, but not in details,” Eliot answered; and he asked Lady Cynthia: “Is it like the city where you were?”

  “In general, as you say,” the Englishwoman agreed. “But in detail these people certainly were capable of infinite variety. And what artisans they were!”

  “And architects!” added Shirley.

  “And engineers—and everything else!” said Eliot James.

  “Where,” demanded Dan, turning to his older companions, “where are all the people?”

  “Where?” echoed Eliot to himself, below his breath, while Shirley answered the child: “They went away, Danny.”

  “Where did they go? … Are they coming back? … Why did they all go away? … What for?”

  The questions of the child were the perplexities also of the scientists, which no one yet could resolve.

  “Don’t run too far ahead of us,” Shirley bade the children in a tone to avoid frightening them. For danger dangled over these splendid silent thoroughfares apparently untenanted, yet capable of catching away and keeping Van Beitz. Was it conceivable that survivors of the builders—the Other People—haunted these unruined remains of their own creation? Or was it that the ruthless men from earth—the “Midianites”—had sent their spies ahead to hide in this metropolis before its occupation by Hendron’s people?

  Tony called a council of the Central Authority to consider, especially, this problem. The Committee of Authority assembled in what had clearly been a council-chamber near to the great quiet secluded room, and yet illumined by the sunlight reflected down and disseminated agreeably and without glare.

  Ten men chosen more or less arbitrarily by Tony himself composed the Committee of the Central Authority—four from the survivors of the hundred who had come from Hendron’s camp, six from Ransdell’s greater group; and these, of course, included Ransdell himself.

  Such was the Central Authority improvised by Tony and accepted by his followers to deal with the strange and immediate emergencies arising from the occupation of this great empty city by five hundred people ignorant of it.

  The searching-parties, as they returned or sent back couriers with reports, appeared before this committee.

  Jack Taylor, haggard and hungry, made the first report.

  “I’m back only to suggest a better search organization,” Taylor said excitedly. “I took a truck and toured the widest streets at the lower levels; and some of them at the upper levels. At every corner my driver and I stopped, and yelled for Von Beitz. We didn’t see a sign of life or get any reply.”

  “Did you see any evidence of recent—occupation?” Higgins, of the Authority, asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Kyto brought food for Taylor, and he talked as he ate. “I’ve been over miles of streets, and covered only a little of the central section. The city’s too damned big. If five hundred people had moved into New York when it was emptied—and nobody else was there except maybe three or four people, or a dozen who wanted to keep in hiding—what chance would the five hundred have of finding the dozen?”

  “Of course there may be no dozen, or even four or five hiding people to find,” Tony responded. “We can’t be sure that Von Beitz fails to return because he was captured. He might have fallen when exploring somewhere; or something might have toppled on him; or he might have got himself locked in a building.”

  Taylor shrugged. “In that case, he’d be harder to find than the dozen who, we think, are hiding from us.”

  “You feel surer, I see,” Tony observed, “that some people, unknown to us, are here hiding from us.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “But without any further proof of it?”

  Jack Taylor nodded. “I tell you, there are people here. I can feel it.�
�

  Duquesne came in. He had returned from a search in another section of the city.

  “Rien!” he made his report explosively. “Nozzing. Except—perhaps I saw a face peering from a window—very high! It was gone—pouf! I entered the building. I climbed to the room where the window was. Again—rien! Only—as I stood there—I said: ‘Duquesne, people have been in this room not long ago.’ With the sixth sensation, I smell it.” He was excited; but he could add nothing more positive to the account.

  He also began to eat, and soon reported himself ready to go out for more investigation.

  Ransdell quietly arose. “I’d like to go out again too. You don’t need us, Tony,” he continued, speaking for the rest of the committee as well as for himself. “It’s nice of you to pretend we’re necessary; but we know we’re not—though we’ll be glad to try to be useful when you really want us. We’ll all obey you as we would have obeyed Hendron.”

  “You’re going to join the search?” Tony asked.

  Ransdell shook his head. “There’s enough of us searching now. I want to join Maltby and Williamson and their men, who are working on the Bronson Beta machines and techniques.”

  Duquesne gestured emphatically, unable to speak for a moment because of the food crammed in his mouth.

  “They are mad—mad—all but mad, our technicians! I have seen them!” he presently exclaimed. “It is the problem of the charging the batteries of the Bronson Betans that eludes them—those marvelous, amazing batteries which first we saw in the vehicle wrecked beside the road; and one of which Lady Cynthia herself operated in the vehicle that carried her to us.

  “To operate the vehicle, once the charged battery is installed—that is nothing. But the secret of putting power into the battery!

  “The Midianites have discovered it, my friends; but they have guarded it so that Lady Cynthia could not even suspect what it is. But if they conquered it, so may we! Ransdell is right,” Duquesne ended his declamation. “That secret is far more important than further search. I too will join our technicians!”