Bronsome Beta - After Worlds Collide Part 18

"The greatest man," said Duquesne, weeping openly.

Dodson, a person of expletives rather than of eloquence, looked down at the dark-swathed and pathetic bundle. "I doubt if ever before so much has depended upon one man. A race, maybe-or a religion-or a nation; but never a species."

Eliot James spoke last. "He did not make mere history. He made a mark across cosmos and infinity. Only in memory can adequate honor be paid to him.... Good-by, Cole Hendron!"

Then, from the city, came suddenly the sound of earth's voices raised in Rudyard Kipling's "Recessional": G.o.d of our fathers, known of old....

The tumult and the shouting dies, The captains and the kings depart....

Earth's voices singing to the skies, where never earth people had been before.

Tony sprinkled earth upon Hendron-earth not of the earth, but of the planet that had come from the edges of infinity to replace it. The grave was filled.

At the last Eve and Tony stood side by side, while the others rolled a great bowlder over the spot as a temporary marker.

Tony heard Eve whispering to herself. "What is it?" he said. "Tell me!"

"Only the Tenth Psalm, Tony," she whispered: "Why standest thou afar off, O Lord? Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?"

And in the far sky a speck pa.s.sed and vanished beyond the hill, an abrupt and vivid reminder of the exigencies of the present.

CHAPTER XV.

VON BEITZ RETURNS.

Eliot James sat in the apartment which he had chosen for his residence, and looked from its unornamented gray walls out over the city of Hendron. Presently he began to write. In a cabinet at his side were drawers filled with notebooks upon which was scribbled the history of the migration from earth.

"In summary," he began, 'since there has been no time for detail, I will set down an outline of our conditions since our perilous removal to this city f the ancient people.

"We have shelter, the gorgeous shelter of these buildings rising in a hundred hues under their transparent dome. We have warmth, for although we are moving out into the cold at a prodigious speed, the air sucked into the city is heated. Around the rim of the dome are situated eight tremendous ventilating and air-conditioning plants. We have light in abundance-our city in the long dark of night is like day. Underground is food enough for us for unmeasured generations. Some of that food disagrees with us. Some is indigestible. In some there is no nourishment which our gastric juices can extract. Two varieties of vegetables are definitely poisonous to us. But the vast bulk of the stored produce is edible, delicious and healthful.

"We have a plethora of tools and machines. In the development of electricity the Other People have far outstripped us. Also in the extension of what we called 'robot-control.' They manufactured almost no machinery which needed human attention. A technique of photo-electric cell inspection and auxiliary engines makes every continuous mechanical process self-operating. The vast generators which run underground to supply light, the powerful motors of the ventilators, and the pumps which supply processed water from the river for our consumption, not only run by themselves but repair themselves.

"The northwest ventilator cracked a bearing last week-and in the presence of Tony and Ransdell it stopped itself, took itself apart, removed the cracked metal, put on a new bearing, rea.s.sembled itself and went into operation again. They said that the thing reminded them of the operation of one of those earthly phonographs which stops automatically and has a moving arm to take off played records and put on new ones. Only -the ventilator motor was thirty feet in height and proportionately broad and long.

"We have clothing. In our first camp there is still much clothing from earth, but we have not reclaimed it. The Bronson Betans wore very light and very little clothing. We know so much about them now, that we can follow their clothing trends over ages of their history. With domed cities, always warm, they needed clothes only for ornament-as do we-in reality. But they left behind not only vast stores of garments and goods, but the mills in which the materials were fabricated. We are using the materials now. No one has yet appeared, except for amus.e.m.e.nt, in a Bronson Betan costume. Their shoes, of soft materials, are all too wide for us. Their garments were like sweaters and shorts,-both for men and women,-although the women also wore flowing robes not unlike negligees. However, we do wear portions of their garments, and we use their materials-all intermingled with the remains of the clothes we brought from earth, so that we are a motley mob.

"All Bronson Betan clothes were of the most brilliant colors -they must have loved color to live in a paradise of it. I saw Tony yesterday, for example, in a pair of old brogans, old corduroy trousers and a shirt (made by Shirley Cotton, who is now in charge of textiles) crimson in color, ornamented with green birds about a foot high-by all odds a more strident and stunning garment than I've ever seen on one of New York's four hundred. Ransdell has been running around in jade green Bronson Beta shorts, and Lady Cynthia has remodeled one of the 'negligees' I mentioned into a short metallic gold dress.

"We have baths of every temperature-private and public. The Bronson Betans were great swimmers. Jack Taylor made a study of their athletic records-and found them superior in almost every kind of event to ourselves. We have ray baths- ultra-violet and infra-red, and others we cannot use until they have been more thoroughly studied.

"We-and when I say we, I mean a score of our number- have mastered the language and much of the science of the Other People. Of course, we have not delved into their history deeply as yet, or into their fiction, or their philosophy or their arts-into their biography or their music. And their poetry is still quite incomprehensible to us.

"We fly their planes now. We run their machines."

Here Eliot James paused before continuing: "Our personal relations are interesting at this point. I have given them little time in my diary hitherto, because of the pressure of my activities.

"Our most notable romance-the love of Tony and Dave Ransdell for Eve Hendron-has reached a culmination.

"Tony is going to marry Eve.

"There was a period shortly before our desertion of our original camp when it appeared for a little while that Eve would marry Ransdell. That was immediately after his dramatic return to our midst. Eve indubitably still holds Ransdell in high esteem, and even has a place of sorts for him in her heart. But Tony is her kind of man. Tony is nearer her age. Tony is our leader-and she was the daughter of the greatest leader of all time. Tony worships her. They announced that they would celebrate the first wedding on Bronson Beta in the near future. And it will be the first. The Asiatics have, according to Lady Cynthia, made a complete mockery of marriage-and marriage was apparently unknown to the Other People.

"Ransdell, I think, knew always that Eve was not for him. He is a silent person, usually; but I believe that occasionally his love for Eve must have been very nearly indomitable-that he was more than once on the verge of a.s.serting it wildly and insisting on it. He has that kind of pa.s.sion-but I believe it will never be seen uncontrolled. Now he is resigned-or at least calm. And he has been not only one of Tony's ablest men, but one of his closest friends-if not his closest.

"Shirley Cotton, the siren of the city, is still in love with Tony. She talks about it in public, and tells Eve that when the biologists eventually decide that because of the larger number of women than men, two women will have to marry one man, she is going to be Tony's second wife. An odd situation-because some day that may be a necessity-or a common practice. There are now nearly ninety more women than men in our city. Eve is so brave and so broad-minded and so fond of Shirley, that if the situation ever became actual, I almost think that she would not mind. We have pa.s.sed through too much to stoop now to jealousy. And all of us feel, I think, that we belong not to ourselves but to the future of man. The emotion rises from the spirit of self-sacrifice that has marked our whole adventure-rather than from such a cold, cruel and inhuman law as that which attempts to set up the identical feeling among the Midianites.

"Dan and Dorothy, under Westerley, are going to Bronson Beta school-learning the language by the talking-picture machines, just as the Other People's children did. And they are the only ones who are beginning to be able to speak it naturally. In two or three years they would be able to pa.s.s as Bronson Betan-except for their minor physiological differences.

"Dodson is having trouble with the language. He goes about the city talking to friends, eating in the central dining-room and mumbling that 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks.' He never was a good linguist-as Duquesne has proved by talking in French with him for the amused benefit of all who spoke the language. But Dodson is frantic to learn, because from ill.u.s.trations in the metal books and in the screened lectures on the subject, he has found that surgery on this planet was a science far beyond terrestrial dreams. Working with him are five women and eleven men doctors.

"Jack Taylor is the sheik and Romeo of Hendron. About twenty of our handsome girls and women (they are handsome again, the long strain of our first rugged months having ended) are wildly vying for his attention. The tall red-headed oarsman takes his popularity with delight-and he is seldom seen without a beautiful lady companion. When he was absent on a mission for Tony, the number of blue damsels was appalling. They could not even write to him, which seemed to distress them enormously.

"Duquesne has moved next door to the German actress who joined us in Michigan. He is working on the mystery of our power source-and 'cementing the bonds of international amity,' he says.

"Higgins has found some carefully preserved seeds in the radium-warmed cellars of the city, and he has planted them. He keeps digging them up to see if they have sprouted-which, so far, they have not; and he goes about in a perpetual daze."

Again Eliot James paused. Again he wrote: "All those factors are on the pleasant side of our ledger. We are a civilization again. Love and clothes and cosmetics and fancy desserts and gossip and apartment-decoration have returned to us. Our animals have been collected from the encampments, and they are installed in a 'barn' made from a very elaborate theater. We have harvested and dried a quant.i.ty of the spore vegetation as hay for them. They thrive. We are wakened by a c.o.c.k's crow in the morning, and we serve fresh eggs as a badge of honor with great ceremony at the rate of four or five a day. Dan and Dorothy have milk. We've made b.u.t.ter to go with the eggs. We should be perfectly happy, perfectly content. But- "Where is Von Beitz?

"He vanished the day Cole Hendron died-the day we arrived here. That was sixty Bronson Beta days ago. And nothing has been seen of him or learned about him since then.

"And- "Who dwells secretly in our city? Who stole one of our three roosters? Who stole Hibb's translation of a book on electricity? Who screamed on the street in the dead of night three days ago-turning out the people in Dormitory A to find-no one? Do the Other People still live here-watching us, waiting to strike against us? Do the Midianites have spies here?

"We are virtually agreed upon that theory. Yet we cannot find where they hide. But we do know-to our sorrow-that they have spies in other cities.

"After learning to fly the planes, we armed them. Then Tony dispatched a fleet of six to make a thorough inspection of the surrounding country and the neighboring cities. He wanted full information on the Midianites, and on the territory around us.

"There are two cities south of where Ransdell landed his ship. There are several inland. All were entered and explored. In the southernmost city the crew of a plane commanded by Jack Taylor was sniped upon, and two of his men were killed.

"In the nearest vacant western city Ransdell fought hand-to-hand with twelve or fourteen Midianites, who attacked his party as it came through the gate. Ransdell is a deadly shot. His five men took cover, and in a battle that lasted for three-quarters of an hour, one was wounded. Six Midianites were killed. I should say-three j.a.ps and three Russians.

"A third plane did not return. It was subsequently sighted near the northern city occupied by the main Midianite colony -shot down and wrecked completely.

"We have been spied upon several times by planes flying over the city. A request for surrender to the Dominion of Asian Realists' was dropped twice, and our failure to reply brought one tremendous bomb-which, however, did not penetrate our tough, transparent envelope, although it was unquestionably intended for that purpose.

"It is not safe to leave the city. Twice parties on foot exploring the geology and flora outside the gates have been fired at by the enemy planes which appeared from the north and dived at them.

"It is evident that the Midianites are engaged in a war of attrition. They mean to conquer us. They mean to have Bronson Beta for themselves-or at least to insure that all human beings upon the planet will be governed by them and will live by their precepts. And Lady Cynthia has left no doubt in our minds about their desire for our women. They need what they call 'breeding females.' I think that 'need' in itself would be sufficient to cause every man and woman here to fight to the death.

"Yes, we could and should be happy here now. But- "More than three hundred Englishmen and Englishwomen are living in subjugation, and we are unable to set them free. They are our own blood and kin. They are living under conditions at best odious, at worst horrible to them. We cannot be happy while they are virtually slaves.

"And also-Bronson Beta moves ever into cold. Bitter cold! Sixty days ago the surface of the planet was chilly. Then, for a while, it warmed again, so that we enjoyed a long fall or Indian summer. But now the chill is returning. Our seasons are due not to an inclination of our axis, as on earth, but to our eccentric orbit. The earth in winter was actually nearer to the sun than in the summer, but in winter the earth's axis caused the sun's rays to fall obliquely. Here on Bronson Beta we move from a point close to the orbit of Venus to a point near that of Mars-and the change in distance from the sun will bring extremes of temperature.

"That is not all. That is not the only problem-anxious problem-which faces us in these autumn days. Shall we turn back toward the sun? Our scientists say so; but shall we? This planet has not done it yet. Its specialty seems to be a drift out into s.p.a.ce.

"Our astrophysicists and mathematicians burn their lights far into the night of this new planet in order to antic.i.p.ate the possibilities in our state. They are not romantic men.

"Meanwhile as we move out into s.p.a.ce toward Mars, that red world increases in size and brilliance. Already it is a more vivid body than was Venus from the earth, and its color is malevolent and ominous.

"So the days and nights pa.s.s.

"Yes, our colony is returning to the happy human pursuits of love and knowledge and social relationships. But we are surrounded by mysteries, terrors, spies within our city, enemies who would conquer us; and always the red planet draws nearer-as not long ago the two bodies from cosmos drew toward the condemned and terrified earth."

As Eliot James finished that entry in his diary, he was interrupted by a knock on his door.

"Come in!" he called.

Shirley Cotton entered. She said something that sounded like "Hopayiato!"

"Hopayiato yourself," Eliot James answered.

"That's a Bronson Beta word," she said. "It means, 'How the devil are you?'-or something like that."

"Sit," said the writer. "I'm fine. What's news?"

Shirley grinned. "Want a nice mauve-and-yellow shirt? Want a pair of red-and-silver shorts?"

"Any rags? Any old iron? What's the trouble? Your clothing-department running out of orders?"

"Nope. And when we do, we'll revive fashions-so you'll have to patronize Shirley Cotton's mills, whether you want to or not."

"My G.o.d," said James with mock anger, "you'd think that after managing to abolish styles for a couple of years, people would be glad enough to give them up forever!"

She shook her head. "This year we're going in for light clothing with animal designs. Next year I plan flowers. Higgins is going to present some patterns-"

"He never will, I trust."

"I'll bribe him with a waistcoat in Bronson Beta orchids and mushrooms. By the way-how long have you been sitting in this cramped hole?"

"All morning. Why?"

'Then you haven't heard about the green rain."

James looked at her with surprise. "Green rain?"

"Sure. Outdoors. Didn't amount to anything-but for about ten minutes it rained green."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned! What was it?"

Shirley shrugged. "Search me. A green sky is bad enough. But a green rain-well, anything can happen. Higgjns has bottles full of whatever it was-more like snow than rain- only not frozen. It misted the dome a little. And then-you probably haven't heard the rumor about Von Beitz that was going around."

"News?"

"Not news. A rumor. Scandal, I'd call it. People have been saying this morning that the spies hiding here are undoubtedly from the Midianite gang. Some of them are Germans. Von Beitz was a German. So they say that he wasn't kidnaped, but that he had always belonged to them, and merely joined them at the first opportunity."

Eliot James swore. "That's a lousy libel. Why-Von Beitz is one of the whitest men I know. A great brain. And nerve! I fought side by side with that guy in Michigan, and-why- h.e.l.l! He's practically a brother of mine. Why do you think I went out scouring the other cities last month, and why do you think I've been in every corner of this burg looking? Because Von Beitz wouldn't turn us in for his life-that's why."

The handsome Shirley Cotton nodded. "I agree. But everybody's nervous these days."

"The Lord knows there's enough to make them nervous-"

They were interrupted by a banging on the door.

"Come in!" James called.

The door swung inward automatically. On the threshold stood Duquesne. He was ordinarily of ruddy complexion, but now his face was white. "Have you seen Tony?" he asked.

"No. What's the trouble?"

The Frenchman stepped into the room, and the door closed behind him. "I have searched everywhere."

James leaped to his feet. "You don't mean that Tony-"

"Oh-no, not lost. Just busy somewhere." Duquesne regarded the man and woman for a moment. "I was in a hurry to find him, because I have some very interesting information. I shall tell you. It is for the moment confidential."

"Sit," said the writer, as he had to his previous guest "What's it about?"

"The source of our power."

James leaned forward. "You found it?"

"Not specifically. I have clung to the theory that power was generated under the city. When we learned that the interior of the planet was still warm, it seemed plausible that the power was generated from that heat-deep in the earth.

So I explored. It was difficult. All the electrical connections are built into the very foundation of the city. They cannot be traced. My a.s.sistants meanwhile studied the plans of the city-we found many. The clew in them pointed always toward a place in the earth. We finally-this morning-located that place. It is far underground. But it is not a generating plant. No."

"What is it, then?" James asked.

"A relay-station. A mere series of transformers. Stupendous in size and capacity. From it lead the great conduits-out, underground, deep down-toward the north. The station for this city is not here. It is as we suspected, in some other city-or place. And all the cities near here derive their power from that place. That is the explanation of why, when the lights came in one city, they came in all. It was a central plant which had been turned on-and which supplied every city."

"That's a very interesting confirmation," James said.

Duquesne snorted. "My dear young man! Can't you think of more to say than that it is interesting?"

James leaned back. "I see. You mean that now it is sure that they have control of our power."

"Exactly."

"And they can shut it off whenever they wish."

"Precisely."

"So that-when it gets colder-they can cut our power and not only put out our lights, but stop our heat."