Bronsome Beta - After Worlds Collide Part 20

"Where was he, Tony?"

The German seemed to have heard; he spoke to the Doctor. "I should not sit up, eh?"

Dodson reminded: "You've had a terrible beating, Von Beitz. You're half starved. When you've had some hot soup, and when I've dressed your various cuts and bruises, you'll be able to talk."

"Pooh!" said the man on the ground. "You've been searching for me, eh? And now you want to know why I come dramatically in a ship from the north? Well-I will tell you. I can eat later. But I lie down. You must know at once.

"I rounded a corner in this city as you know; and to you, I vanished. To myself-four men seized me. A cord about the neck, a sack over the head. It gave me no fear that my a.s.sailants might have been men from Branson Beta," Von Beitz added sardonically. 'The technique was too much of our world as we have known it. I was down and helpless, knowing no more of my attackers than that they must be men from earth.

"We spent I do not know how long hiding high in a building in this city. My eyes were taped shut. I was gagged much of the time, but I was given food, and-except on occasions which I will come to-I was not badly treated.

"At first they spoke between themselves in tongues I could not understand, but it was not language of another planet. It was speech from our old world-Russian sometimes, I am sure; sometimes, I think, j.a.panese."

Von Beitz rested a moment.

"Did you discover how many they were?"

"Here in this city watching us," Von Beitz proceeded after a moment, "there were four at least. I am sure I heard four different voices speak. Sometimes it seemed to me that more moved back and forth; but I cannot be certain that more than four actually were here."

"Men?" asked Tony.

"They were all men. I heard no woman speak; it was never a woman's hand that touched me. But they talked a great deal about women as they watched us," Von Beitz said.

"You mean, you heard them talking about our women? They talked in some language you understood?"

"No; not then. They talked about our women in their own tongues. But I did not need to understand the words to know they were talking about-women."

"I see," said Tony.

"They did talk to me in English later-two of them did."

He stopped again.

"What did they tell you?"

"Tell me?" repeated Von Beitz. "Nothing. They asked me."

"Asked you what?"

"About you-about us. They wanted to know what we knew, how far we had progressed in mastering the secrets of the Old People."

"Ah!" said Tony.

"They were here-those four-before we moved into this city. They were sent here as similar squads of them were sent to every other city accessible to them. You see, they moved into their city-which apparently was the old capital of this planet or at least of this continent-long before we made any move at all."

"Yes," said Tony. "That's clear."

"Our delay," breathed Von Beitz, "laid on us a great handicap." He did not continue that criticism, but observed: "For they grasped the essentials of the situation almost at once. It lay, of course, in mastery of the mechanics of the ancient civilization. So they seized at once and occupied the key city; and they dispatched a squad to each of the other cities, to explore and bring back to them whatever might be useful."

Again he had to rest, and the others waited.

"Particularly diagrams."

"Diagrams?"

"The working plans of the cities, and the machinery and of the pa.s.sages which, without the diagrams, you could not suspect."

"Underground pa.s.sages?"

"Precisely. That is how they took me out of the city. They laughed at us guarding all the gates! When they decided to take me away, two of them escorted me underground and led me on foot to a door that was opened only after some special ceremony, and which communicated with a conduit"

"Conduit for what?"

"I could only suppose what. My eyes were taped, and during this journey, even my ears were m.u.f.fled; but I am sure from my sensations during the journey mat I was underground, and carried through a long, close conduit like a great pipe."

"Carried?" repeated Tony, as the others in the group excitedly crowded closer to catch the weak word. "How did they carry you?"

"In a car. They sat me up in some sort of small car which ran very rapidly-and, I am sure, underground. I could feel enough of it with my hands to be sure it was not what we would call a pa.s.senger-car. I am sure now, from what I felt at the time, and what I learned later, that it was a work-car, built by the Old People for their workmen in the conduit. I was taken into a power tunnel, I believe, and transported in a work-car through the conduit to the other city. Certainly when, after a time I can only estimate as hours, I was brought up to daylight, it was in the city occupied by Russians and j.a.panese, and with them, on the same terms, some Germans. There are also English there, men and women; but not on the same terms as the others."

"Go on!" begged several voices.

"They let me see the city-and themselves," said Von Beitz. "It is a great city-greater than this, and very beautiful. It offers them everything that they could have dreamed of- and more! It makes them, as they succeed in mastering its secrets, like G.o.ds! Or they think so!"

"Like G.o.ds!"

"Yes," said Von Beitz, "that is our great danger. They feel like G.o.ds; they must be like G.o.ds; and how can they be G.o.ds, without mortals to make them obeisance and do them reverence? So they will be the G.o.ds; and we will be the mortals to do their bidding. Already they have taken the English and set themselves above them, as you have heard. They tried to take us-as you know. We killed some of them-some of the most ruthless and dangerous; but others remain. They know they need not endanger themselves. They wait for us confidently."

"Wait for us? How?"

'To come to them."

"But if we don't come?"

"We must."

"Why?"

"We have no help for ourselves-and they know it. For the truth is as we feared. For all these great cities of the eastern section of this continent," the German declared solemnly and slowly, "there is a single power city-or station. It is located deep underground-not directly beneath their city, but near it. Of course they control it, and control, therefore, light and power- and heat. Any of these we can enjoy only as they ration it to us.

"We move out, as we know, toward the cold orbit of Mars where heat will mean life in our long dark nights. They wait for that moment for us to admit their G.o.dship, and come and bow down before them."

Tony stared silently at Von Beitz, biting his lip and clenching his hands. He remembered the exaltation which he had felt-which he could not help feeling-when he realized that he was in command in this single city. They felt themselves in command-in absolute power-over this planet. He could comprehend their believing themselves almost G.o.ds.

The weakened man went on: "In the cavern city where are the engines which draw power from the hot center of this planet, a guard of the 'G.o.ds' stands watch. It is the citadel of their authority, the palladium of their power. I have not seen the station; but yesterday I learned its location. I stole a diagram and traced it before I was discovered. I escaped my guards. I fought my way into a ship this morning."

"You have the tracing?" Dodson whispered.

The German smiled. "I have it."

He shut his eyes and gave a sigh that was partly a groan. Dodson leaned over him. "We'll carry you to the center of the city now. You've taken a terrible beating."

Von Beitz opened one eye, then, and a grin overspread his battered features. "My dear Dodson," he replied spiritedly, although in a low tone, "if you think I've taken a terrible beating, you ought to see the other fellows. Three of them! One I left without so many teeth as he had had. The one who had the knife, I robbed of his weapon, and I put it between his ribs-where, I fear, it will take mortal effect. The third- alas, his own mother would neither recognize nor receive him!"

With those words the courageous Von Beitz quietly fainted.

Tony told Jack Taylor to post a call for a meeting, in the evening, of the Council of the Central Authority; and he himself accompanied those who bore Von Beitz to Dodson's hospital.

It was, of course, really a hospital of the Other People which Dodson had preempted. The plan of the place and its equipment delighted Dodson and at the same time drove him to despair trying to imagine the right uses of some of the implements of the surgery, and the procedures of those Vanished People.

Von Beitz' case was, however, a simple one; and Tony left, fully a.s.sured that the German would completely recover.

Tony went home-to the splendid, graceful apartment where he knew he would find Eve, and which they called their home because they occupied it. But they could never be free from consciousness that it was not theirs-that minds and emotions immensely distant from them had designed this place of repose.

Minds far in the future, Tony always felt, though he knew that the Other People actually pertained to the epochal past; but though they had lived a million years ago, yet they had pa.s.sed beyond the people of earth before they came to gaze on the dawn of their day of extinction. So, strangely, Tony knew he was living in an apartment of the past, but felt it to be like one of the future. Time had become completely confusing.

What were years? What had they been? A year had been the measure of an interval in which the earth circled the sun. But the earth, except in fragments, no longer went around the sun. This planet had taken its place; and earthly time ceased to have significance. You lived in the time of this strange planet; its eons and epochs were behind you; and the incalculable accomplishments of its people.

The soft illumination of interiors, to which he had now become accustomed, glowed in the hallway. It was agreeable, soothing, never harsh; and the soft pastel colors of the walls showed patterns pleasing to the eyes, though they were eyes from earth, and earth never had seen anything similar.

Taste, thought Tony, reached through the universe; and beauty; and happiness-and peace. And cruelty also? When had these Other People been cruel? Had they cast it off only at last?

He was very tired, but excited too; he was glad to find Eve alone, awaiting him.

He kissed her, and held her, and for a moment let himself forget all else but the softness of her in his arms, and the warmth of her lips on his.

"Lord of my love," she whispered, in her own ecstasy. "Lord of my love," she repeated; and holding him, went on: "To whom in va.s.salage, Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit."

"Oh," said Tony.

"I memorized it as a child, Tony, never guessing at its meaning till now. How could Shakespeare have found words, dear, for so many feelings?... This place was planned for love, Tony."

"Yes."

"They loved here, Tony; some couple very young-a million years ago. We lie on their couch.... Where are they?"

"Where we, sometime, shall probably be; but why think of that? 'From fairest creatures'-finish that for me, Eve, can you?"

"The first sonnet, you mean?"

"I don't know the number; but I knew it once-at Groton. I had to learn it to get into Harvard for the college board examinations. Wait: I've got more of it: 'From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty's rose might never die.'

"Where are Harvard, and Groton, now, Tony?"

"With Nineveh and Tyre; but you're here-and beauty's rose shall never die.... And by G.o.d, no one will take you from me-or freeze you in the cold, if I don't let you go."

"You've the diagram that Von Beitz brought?"

"I've seen it-studied it. He did well; but not enough. We know now where is the great central power-station; but we don't know how to get to it. We don't know even how they get in and out of this city."

"You think they still do?"

"We can't say that they don't. Undoubtedly Von Beitz was right; he was taken out by way of some conduit. We'll have to find that first, and stop it up or guard it; and then there may be a dozen underground doors leading anywhere, for purposes we've not progressed enough to guess. We've got to catch up on the old records of this place-though it's plain that some of them have been removed by the men who captured Von Beitz. Yet we've an awful lot to learn that we can learn."

'Tony, it's perfectly fascinating-and terrible, some of it. I met Professor Philbin when I was coming here. I never saw him so excited. He didn't know anything about what had just happened; he didn't even know that Von Beitz had returned. When I told him, he only stared at me; he wondered why I'd mentioned it. He was living in something far more exciting. He'd found the record, Tony, of the Other People when they first discovered the star of their doom approaching! He was looking for you; he wants to report to you what happened here, Tony, a million years ago!"

But Tony not yet could leave her. "If it's waited a million years, it can wait," he said, "ten minutes more."

CHAPTER XVII.

AT THE MERCY OF THE MIDIANITES.

Tony found Philbin with Duquesne, to whom the linguist had brought his version of the records he had decoded.

The French astronomer strode about the table in his excitement.

"We may picture now, with some confidence," he proclaimed to Tony, "the original situation of this planet-the place which it occupied in the universe when the people, who have provided these cities for us, lived.

"Its star-its sun-was, as we know, in the south. Eleven planets, of which this was one, circled that sun. This planet, and the one which we called Bronson Alpha, were the fifth and sixth in order of distance away from their sun. They were more closely a.s.sociated than any other two planets; in fact, this planet revolved about Branson Alpha almost like a moon. But it was not like our moon, which was always a dead world. It was Bronson Alpha, the greater planet, which bore no life; it was this planet-the smaller of the two-which bore life. And what a splendid order of life it bore at the end of its time!

"It seems to have been about two hundred years before the end that the people on this planet began to appreciate that a star was approaching which was to tear them away from their sun and cast them out into utter darkness and cold. There appear to have been living on this world, at that time, about one billion people."

"One billion people!" Tony exclaimed.

Philbin nodded. "One thousand million-about two-thirds of the population of our earth before our destruction began. I have found reference to earlier conditions of this planet which indicates that at one time the total population here might have been similar to ours. They had solved sanitation problems, and health and nutrition difficulties, at least a thousand years earlier; and for centuries their population grew rapidly; yet I believe that they never had quite the total population of our earth.

"After they became scientific and gained control of their living conditions,-and the conditions of birth,-they seem to have reduced their total number to about a billion. They seem to have stabilized at that figure.

"For centuries there seems to have been little change, except locally; they kept their birth-rate approximately level with their death rate. The thousand millions of people were spread fairly evenly, in cities, towns and villages, over the best parts of this planet. Civilization seems to have spread and been established everywhere, though the people were not everywhere h.o.m.ogeneous. It is perfectly plain that they had developed at least six different races of men, with some forty or fifty subdivisions distinguished by what we called 'national' characteristics. I have not yet been able to make out the form of their government at the time prior to the approach of the destroying star; but it is clear that war either was very rare or had been completely abandoned.

"They had come to provide for themselves a very high quality of life; they seemed to have established throughout their globe both peace and comfort-when their scientists saw their fatal star approaching."

"Go on," said Tony, when Philbin halted. "Or can't you?"

"Yes. I know a little more of what they did at that time- or at least how they felt-that billion people who used to live on this earth."

Yet he halted again while he gazed about the hall at their handicraft, their lovely sensitive art and decorations. They were gone-the billion of them-but they had been people who strived and struggled, and who had undergone an ordeal surpa.s.sing, in its prolonged torture, the agonies of the end of the earth. Philbin, the linguist and translator, tried to put some of this into words.

"You will pardon me, my friends," he said to Tony and Duquesne, "and understand that I can give you facts in fragmentary manner only, at this moment. My source is an autobiography of a man called Lagon-Lagon Itol. Lagon was what we would consider his surname. He was an artist and an architect of the time I speak of-the period of their discovery of, or their realization of, their threatened extinction from the approach of the star.

"With this autobiography of Lagon Itol, I found a volume about him by one of his contemporaries-one Jerad Kan. Lagon was a genius; he was, I think, the Michelangelo of this planet; and with this enormous artistic and architectural ability, he had an insatiable curiosity and interest in personalities. He kept a most careful diary, which is like nothing so much as Samuel Pepys'. Think of this remarkable man-Lagon Itol -as an amazingly vital, vigorous blending of our Michelangelo and Samuel Pepys.

"He records on this page,"-Philbin spread it before Tony and Duquesne,-"his first fear, if you will call it that, of the star.