Philip Wylie - After Worlds Collide

by After Worlds Collide(Lit)

He found Eve. She lay where she had fallen, face forward on the desk; and Ransdell lay slumped beside her. His left hand clasped her right hand; they had been overcome together. Both of them breathed slowly; but they were completely insensible. Dodson had crumpled over a table. There was a pen in his hand, a paper in front of him. Cloth-Tony saw that the cloth was from dresses-had been stuffed around the door. In a bedroom lay Hendron, the rise and fall of his chest almost imperceptible. Tony shook Dodson.

  Suddenly he realized that his head was spinning.

  He plunged to the door and staggered into the fresh air. He breathed hard. But his head cleared so slowly that his thoughts ran slow as minutes. Gas, after all. The people in Hendron's house had seen it strike the others, and attempted to barricade themselves. They thought it was death. There were still fumes in there.

  Dodson-he must get Dodson.

  He ran back, and dragged the huge man into the open.

  He stood over him, panting. Then he remembered that Dodson had been writing. A note-a record. Tony went for it. So strong had been the poison in the air that he found it hard to read.

  "We've been gassed," Dodson had scrawled. "People falling everywhere. No attack visible. We're going to try to seal this room. They're all unconscious out there. I got a smell of it, closing a window. Nothing familiar. I think-"

  Tony shook Dodson. He brought water and doused him. He found Dodson's medical kit and tried to make him swallow aromatic spirits of ammonia, then whisky. Dodson could not swallow.

  Tony jerked about, as he heard some one move. It was Vanderbilt, who had left his post at the tube.

  "Nothing's in sight out there," Vanderbilt said calmly. "Taylor stays on watch. I ought to be more use in here."

  "What can you do?" Tony demanded.

  "I'm two-thirds of a doctor-for first aid, anyway," Vanderbilt said. "I used to spend a lot of time at hospitals. Morbid, maybe." While he spoke his slow, casual words, he had taken Dodson's kit and had been working over the physician.... "I gave him a hypo of caffeine and strychnine and digitalis that would have roused a dead elephant. He's still out, though."

  "Will any of them come to?"

  "Only one thing will tell."

  "What?"

  'Time, of course," Peter Vanderbilt said. "Then, if it proves my treatment may have helped Dodson,-and not killed him, -we might try it on others."

  Tony bent again over Eve and Ransdell; their respirations and their pulses seemed the same; and Hendron's, though much weaker than theirs, had not further deteriorated.

  'They don't seem to be slipping," Tony said.

  "No. Anything in sight outside?"

  "No," said Tony, but he went out for a better inspection, and for another patrol past those that lay senseless on the ground.

  He returned to Peter Vanderbilt and waited with him. They pulled Dodson and Eve and Ransdell out into the open air and laid them on the ground; they carried out Hendron too, and stretched him upon his mattress in the breeze and the sunlight.

  Nothing remained to do; so they sat watching the forms that breathed but otherwise did not move, and watching the sky. Three hundred yards away, Jack Taylor stood at his tube watching them and the sky, and the scattered, senseless, sleeping people.

  "Our other camp!" said Vanderbilt. "What do you suppose is happening there?"

  "I've been thinking of that, of course," said Tony. "We ought to warn them by radio; but if we did, we'd warn the enemy too. He's listening in, we may be sure; he'd know we were laying for him here; our chance to surprise him would be gone. No; I think our best plan is to lie low."

  Vanderbilt nodded thoughtfully. "I agree. In all likelihood our enemy is taking on only one of our camps at a time. Having started here, he'll probably finish here before beginning on the other."

  "We've no idea what forces they have."

  "No."

  "There might be enough to take on both our camps at once."

  "Yes."

  Tony and Peter Vanderbilt moved toward their radio-station; and they were debating there what to do, when their dilemma was solved for them: The sound of a plane came dimly to his ears. Both stepped out of the radio-room and lay down on the ground where vision in every direction was unhampered. Tony saw Taylor slumping into an attitude of unconsciousness.

  Then his eye caught the glint of the plane. A speck far away. He lay motionless, like the others, and the speck rapidly enlarged.

  It was one of the Bronson Betan ships. It flew fast and with a purring roar which was caused not by its motor but by the sound of its propellers thwacking the air.

  It came low, slowed down, circled.

  Tony's heart banged as he saw that one of the faces peering over was broad, bearded, strongly Slavic. Another of its occupants had close-cropped hair and spectacles. The slip-stream of the plane fanned him furiously and raised dust around him. People from earth! They completed their inspection, and rushed out of sight toward the northwest.

  Tony and Vanderbilt jumped up and ran toward Jack Taylor. The three men met for a frantic moment. "They'll be back." Tony shook with rage. "The swine! They'll be back to take over this camp. I wonder if they'd kill the men. We'll be ready. I'll take the west tube. Wait till they're all here. Wait till the first ship lands-I can rake hell out of that field. Then get 'em all! We can't fool. We can't do anything else."

  They went to their positions again.

  An hour later a large armada flew from the northwest. They did not fly in formation, like battle-planes. Their maneuvers were not overskillful. Some of the ships were even flown badly, as if their pilots were not well versed in their manipulation.

  Tony counted. There were seventeen ships-and some of them were very large.

  The three defenders acted on a prearranged plan: They did not follow the fleet with their tubes. They did not even move them from their original angles. They could be swung fast enough. They hid themselves carefully.

  The ship circled the camp and the unconscious victims beneath. Then the leading ship prepared to land.

  Tony fired his tube. The crackling sound rose as the blast began.

  The enemy plane was almost on the ground. He could see lines of rivets in its bright metal body. He could see, through a small peephole, the taut face of the pilot. The wheels touched.

  Tony heaved, and the counter-balanced weapon described an arc. There was a noise like the opening of a door to hell. The landing-field became a volcano. The plane vanished in a blistering, tumultuous core of light. The beam swung up, left the ground instantaneously molten.

  It curved along the air, and broken and molten things dropped from the sky. Into that armada probed two other orange fingers of annihilation; and it melted, dissolved, vanished.

  It was not a fair fight.... It was not a fight.

  The blasts yawed wide. They were fed by the horrible energy which had carried the Ark through space. Their voices shook the earth. They were more terrible than death itself, more majestic than lightning or volcanic eruption. They were forces stolen from the awful center of the sun itself.

  In less than a minutes they were stilled. The enemy was no more.

  Tony did not run, now. He walked back to the center of the camp. There he met Vanderbilt and Taylor.

  No one spoke; they sat down, white, trembling, horrified.

  Around them lay their unconscious comrades.

  Here and there on the ground over and beyond the landing-place, great fragments of twisted metal glowed and blistered.

  The sun shone. It warmed them from the green-blue sky of Bronson Beta.

  Jack Taylor, student, oarsman, not long ago a carefree college boy-Jack Taylor sucked in a tremulous breath and whispered: "God! Oh, God!"

  Vanderbilt rose and smiled a ghastly smile. He took a battered package of cigarettes from his pocket-tenderly, and as if he touched something rare and valuable. They knew he had been cherishing those cigarettes. He opened the package; four cigarettes were left. He passed them. He found a match, and they smoked. Still
they did not speak.

  They looked at the people who lay where they had fallen- the people who had come through that hideous destruction without being aware of it.

  One of those people moved. It was Dodson.

  They rushed to his side.

  Dodson was stirring and mumbling. Vanderbilt opened his medical kit again and poured something into a cup. Tony held the Doctor's head. After several attempts, they managed to make him swallow the stuff.

  He began a long, painful struggle toward consciousness. He would open his eyes, and nod and mutter, and go off to sleep for an instant, only to jerk and writhe and try to sit. Finally his fuddled voice enunciated Tony's name. "Drake!" he said. "Gas!" Then a meaningless jumble of syllables. Then "Caffeine! Stick it in me. Gimme pills. Caffalooaloclooaloo. Gas. Rum, rum, rum, rum, rum-headache. I'm sick."

  Then, quite abruptly, he came to.

  He looked at them. He looked at the sleeping forms around him. He squinted toward the field, and saw what was there. He rubbed his head and winced.

  "Aches," he said. "Aches like sin. You-you came back in time, eh?"

  "We laid for them," Tony answered solemnly. "We got them."

  "All of them," Jack Taylor added.

  Dodson pointed at the sleepers. "Dead?"

  "All breathing. We wanted to get you around first-if anybody could be revived."

  Dodson's head slumped and then he sat up again. "Right What'd you use?"

  "I gave you a shot of caffeine and strychnine and digitalis about an hour ago," Vanderbilt said.

  Dodson grinned feebly. "Wake the dead, eh? Adrenalin might be better. Di-nitro-phenol might help. I've got a clue to this stuff. Last thing I thought of." He looked at the sky. "It just rained down on us-out of nothing."

  "Rained?" Tony repeated.

  "Yes. Rained-a falling mist. The people it touched never saw or smelled it-went out too fast. But I did both. Inside- we had a minute's grace." He struggled and finally rose to his feet. "Obviously something to knock us out. Nothing fatal. Let's see what we can do about rousing somebody else. Probably'd sleep it off in time-a day, maybe. I want to make some tests."

  He was very feeble as he rose, and they supported him.

  "I'll put a shot in Runciman and Best and Isaacs first, I guess. They can help with the others." Tony located Runciman, the brain-specialist. Dodson made a thorough examination of the man. "In good shape. Make a fine anesthetic- except for the headache." He filled a hypodermic syringe, then methodically swabbed the surgeon's arm with alcohol, squeezed out a drop of fluid to be sure no air was in the instrument, and pricked deftly. They moved on, looking for Best and Isaacs.

  As they worked, Dodson's violent headache began to be dissipated. And the persons they treated presently commenced to writhe and mutter.

  Hendron was among the first after the medical men. Dodson lingered over him and shook his head.

  "Heart's laboring-bad condition, anyway. I'm afraid-"

  Vanderbilt and Taylor and Tony knew what Dodson feared.

  In two hours a number of pale and miserable human beings were moving uncertainly around the camp. Best entered the Ark and brought other drugs to alleviate their discomfort. Tony had sent a warning to the southern camp. They replied that they had seen nothing, and were safe.

  The three men who were heroes of the raid went together to the landing-field. They walked from place to place examining the wreckage. They collected a host of trifles-buttons, a notebook, a fountain pen made in Germany, a pistol half melted, part of a man's coat, fire-warped pfennig pieces-and found more grisly items which they did not touch.

  After they had made their telltale harvest among the still-hot debris, they stood together staring toward the northwest. An expedition in that direction would be necessary at once. It would not be a safe voyage.

  CHAPTER XI "TONY, I THROW THE TORCH TO YOU!"

  Night came on with its long, deliberate twilight; and with this night came cold.

  The sentinels outside stood in little groups together, listening, and watching the sky. No lights showed. Wherever they were necessary within the offices and dwellings of the camp, they were screened or covered. The encampment could not risk an air-attack by night.

  Tony found himself continued in command; for Hendron held to his bed and made no attempt to give directions. Ransdell was quite himself again, but like all the others but Tony and Taylor and Vanderbilt, he had lain insensible through the attack and the savage, successful defense the three had made.

  Everybody came to Tony for advice and orders. Eve, like all the rest, put herself under his direction.

  "You'd better stay with your father," Tony said to her. "Keep him quiet as you can. Tell him I'll keep him informed of further developments; but I really expect no more to-night."

  Eve disappeared into the darkness which was all but complete. In the north, toward Bronson Beta's pole, hung a faint aurora, and above it shone some stars; but most of the sky was obscured. There was no moon, of course. Strange, still to expect the moon-a moon gone "with yesterday's sev'n thousand years."

  Another girl joined the group of men standing and shivering near the great cannon-like tube aimed heavenward.

  "Anything stirring?" asked Shirley Cotton's voice.

  "Not now," replied Tony.

  "It's cold," said Shirley. "It's surely coming on cold, these nights."

  "Nothing to what it will be," observed a man's voice gloomily. It was Williamson, who had been insensible all through the fight, like the rest of the camp. Now he had completely recovered, but his spirits, like those of many of the others, seemed low.

  "How cold will it be-soon?" asked Shirley.

  "Do you want to know?" Williamson challenged. "Or are you just asking?"

  "I've heard." said Shirley, taking no offense, "an awful lot of things. I know we're going out toward Mars. But how cold is it out there?"

  "That's been figured out a long time," Williamson returned. "They taught that back in school on earth. The surface temperature of a planet like the earth at sixty-seven millions miles' distance from the sun-the distance of Venus-would be one hundred and fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit. The mean temperature of the earth, at ninety-three million miles from the sun-where we used to be-was sixty degrees. The mean temperature of the earth, if it were a hundred and forty-one million miles from the sun-the distance of Mars-would be minus thirty-eight-thirty-eight degrees below zero, Fahrenheit.

  "The earth went round the sun almost in a circle-it never got nearer to the sun than ninety-one million miles, and never got farther away than about ninety-four million; so our temperatures there never varied, by season, beyond comfortable limits for most of the surface of the earth.

  "But riding this planet, we aren't going around the sun in any such circle; our orbit now is an ellipse, with the sun in a focus but not in the center. So we'll have a very hot summer when we go close to Venus, where the surface temperature averages a hundred and fifty-one; but before we get that summer, we go into winter out by Mars where normal temperatures average about forty below zero-a hundred degrees less than we're used to. We're headed there now."

  "Didn't-didn't they know that, too?" Shirley gestured a white-clad arm toward the landing-field where the attackers of the camp had been annihilated.

  "They must have."

  "Then why-why-"

  Peter Vanderbilt's urbane voice finished for her: "Why didn't they spend the last of the good weather trying to capture or kill us? Because they also came from that pugnacious planet Earth."

  The reality of what had happened, while they were sunk in stupor, still puzzled some of Hendron's people.

  "Why weren't they content to let us alone? There's room enough on Bronson Beta.... Good God! Imagine two groups of human beings as stranded as ourselves, as forlorn in the universe, as needful of peace and cooperation-fighting!"

  "Men never fought for room," Walters, a biologist, objected. "That was just an excuse they gave when civilization advanced to the point when me
n felt they ought to give explanations for fighting. There surely was plenty of room in the North American continent in pre-Columbian times, with a total population of perhaps three million Indians in all the continent north of Mexico; but the principal occupation-or pastime or whatever you call it-was war. One tribe would sneak a hundred miles through empty forest to attack another. It wasn't room that men wanted in ancient America-or in medieval Europe, for that matter."

  "What was it, then?" asked Shirley.

  "Domination!" said Walters. "It's an essentially human instinct-the fundamental one which sets man off from all other animals. Did you ever know of any other creature which, by nature, has to dominate? Not even the king of the beasts, the lion. To realize how much more ruthless men are than lions were, imagine a man with the physical equipment of a lion, among other beasts, and imagine him letting all the weaker ones go their own way and killing only what he needed for food.