Bronsome Beta - After Worlds Collide Part 22

"What happened to this planet was one of the things that might have happened to our earth-"

Duquesne broke in: "In fact, my friends, what happened here was the commoner occurrence in the cosmos. The fate of our earth was one of the ends of existence which always was possible, but yet exceedingly rare. The fate of this planet was much more typical of the ends of the earths which have been happening, and must continue to happen, until the termination of time. What is the first state of a star? Loneliness. At last another star approaches; and from its own substance, streamers are torn forth. The disturbing star pa.s.ses on; but it has begot-planets. For it is from the substance that streamed from the sun, when another sun came close, that worlds are born.

"They circle their solitary parent, the sun; they cool and grow old; and upon one or two, not too large or too small, or too near or too far away from the sun, life begins-and grows and changes, and becomes man.

"Through millions of years!

"And what saves him, through all these ages? Nothing but the solitary situation of his sun; it is the loneliness of the Life-giver-the loneliness of his sun in s.p.a.ce-that permits man and his world to endure.

"But at last the sun suffers it no longer; once more, it must speak to another star; and at last-for always sometime it must be so, even in the loneliness of the sky-another sun approaches; and before fresh material is sucked out to start another set of worlds, the spheres already old are drawn away and cast out into s.p.a.ce. Such is the circle of life-and death-of worlds, to which all must, in the end, submit. Sometime one of those cast-off worlds may find another sun, as this has done."

The Frenchman bowed to Philbin. "You were, monsieur, in the year of this planet the sixteenth thousand, five hundred and eighty-fourth, Ecliptic. I return you to it."

"It was a remarkable year," said the little linguist, thrillingly, "if for no other reason, because of the production of the tremendous pessimistic poem Talon.'

"I translate the original t.i.tle-Talon, a claw. The Talon of Time was meant. The people here understood the awful circle of the life, and death, of worlds as M. Duquesne has just sketched it. The poet of 'Talon' was the Omar Khayyam of their days of facing their fate. So in a poem of marvelous power he pictures man pursued by Time-a great tantalizing, merciless bird of prey which waits for him through the ages while he rises from a clod without soul to feel and brain to know, until he can appreciate and apperceive the awful irony of his fate; then the bird reaches out its great talon and tears him to pieces.

"I despair adequately to render in our words the ironic tragedy of this poem; but Fitzgerald, translating our Omar, has rendered two lines like two of these: 'And lo!-the phantom Caravan has reach'd The nothing it set out from. Oh, make haste!'

"Like Omar, the poet preached pleasure; and he laughed at the ghastly futility of those who defied and fought the fated drift of their world into eternal darkness and cold.

"Clearly he presented the prevailing mood of the period; but clearly, also, there was another mood. The spiritual and intellectual heirs of Lagon Itol had proceeded with his plans for these cities.

"There was yet no complete agreement among the scientists that this world must be torn away from its sun. Its...o...b..t was on the edge of the critical area of disturbance. Every one agreed that the five outer planets would surely be torn away; they agreed that the next planet inferior-that is, nearer its sun than this one-probably would not be torn away.

"The name of that planet was Ocron; and by the way, these people knew that it was inhabited.

"They agreed that this world on which we now stand would be severely altered in its...o...b..t; yet they considered there was a chance it would not be torn away.

"Yet that chance did not appeal to many. By the year 16,675 Ecliptic-which is the last year for which I can find a census-the total population was under twelve million, and many of them very old. The number of children under ten years is given separately; they were less than a hundred and fifty thousand. At the rate they were allowing themselves to die, probably there were barely ten millions of people of all ages when the disturbing star-which they called Borak-came its closest and cast them off into s.p.a.ce.

"The best of the energies of the dwindling millions had been put, for two generations, into these five cities which were planned, located and created and equipped for the final defiance of extinction. They abandoned all older habitations and adopted these."

"But where did they go, in the end?"

A dozen demanded it, together.

"Of that mystery, we have not yet," Philbin confessed, "a trace. They had reduced themselves, we know, from a billion in number at the time of Lagon Itol-two hundred years before-to about ten millions. Barely one per cent of them, therefore, were spared up to the time of the catastrophe to attempt the tremendous task of further survival.

"Throughout at least the last five thousand years of their history, cremation of the dead was universal among them. We will find no cemeteries or entombments, except perhaps a very few archaic barrows from a very early age. The people throughout their civilized period disposed of their dead in a systematic, orderly and decent way.

"Now, did the last ten million also die, and as they went, were they also cremated by their survivors, so that we will find, at the end, only the bones of some small group who, enduring to the last, had disposed of those immediately before them? Or somehow, did some of them-escape?"

The great chamber of the Council was tensely silent, close-crowded as it was.

It was Tony, presiding, and having the advantage of having heard most of these facts before, who first found voice: "Returning to our present problem," he recalled them to that which had gathered them together, "it is clear that we can find no other cities of the s.h.i.+elded type, and equipped to combat the cold, except the five we know; for no others ever were built. We know also that there is no other generating station providing light and heat and power, except that close to Gorfulu; for no other ever was planned or built."

CHAPTER XIX.

THE PIONEERS PLAN REPRISALS.

Jack Taylor's post, when on watch, was the northern gate.

"The Porte de Gorfulu," Duquesne had dubbed it, recalling the fas.h.i.+on in Paris of naming the gate after the city to which, and from which, its road ran.

There was not at this gate, or at any of the seven others, any actual guard station. What Philbin had read had made certain, if it had been doubtful before, that the builders of these cities had acted in complete cooperation and unison; they had been banded together in their desperate attempt to defy their fate of dark and cold.

However, the structural scheme and the materials chosen had made each gate exceedingly strong. It would have required artillery to reduce it; and artillery here did not exist, except perhaps in some museum of archaeology of the Vanished People.

The blast of the atomic tubes, which had transported the Arks through s.p.a.ce, of course could reduce any of the gates; but first they must be brought to the vicinity and placed in position; and if this could be done without danger, there was the problem of the lining of the tubes. Those in the second s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p from Michigan, commanded by Ransdell, actually had burnt out at the end of the pa.s.sage, and had contributed to the disaster which overtook that party.

Little, indeed, had been left of the lining in the tubes of the Ark which Hendron himself, more successfully, had piloted. So it was fairly certain that the propulsion tubes in the possession of the Midianites must be in similar state.

"What they have left of the lining, they'll save for their own defense-as we used ours," Jack expressed his opinion to Eliot James, who to-day was standing watch with him.

Eliot nodded. "I think so. At least, I'm sure they'll not attack us with the tubes; they'll not think it necessary. They figure, of course, we've got to come to them."

"Well," challenged Jack, "haven't we?"

Eliot gazed out the gate along the road where the shadow of a post placed by the Ancient People lay long and faint upon the ground.

"There goes the sun," he said. "And gosh, it's cold already! But we can burn things to keep warm. It's humiliating as h.e.l.l; but we can burn old wood or grain, or a thousand things, and keep warm for a while, anyway. Physically, we're not forced to go to them; but can we be men-and stay away?"

"That's it," Jack commended his friend. "That's it exactly."

"I know," said Eliot. "I was never so mad in my life as the night when they cut off our light and heat. I could have done anything-if I could have got to them, for it. It was the most infuriating thing I ever felt."

"Are you telling me?" said Jack. "You thought you were alone in that feeling?"

"Of course not; but I can't laugh at it yet. Can you?"

"No; and I never expect to-until I can fix that feeling."

"But how can we fix it?"

"Exactly. How can we? How in the world-how on Bronson Beta, Jack, are we going to be able to get at them?"

"Tony'd like to know; but it's got to be without too great a risk. He won't have us killed-not too many, anyway."

"Well, how many of us would he think it worth while to lose, if we took Gorfulu?"

"Do you think you know how to do it?... Whew, that chill certainly comes on."

"Sun's gone; and d.a.m.n' little of it there was to go. We simply weren't made to be this far away from the sun."

"Half a year from now, you'll be saying we weren't made to be as near the sun as we'll be."

"If we live till then."

"Yes; and if this c.o.c.k-eyed world decides to do a decent orbit really around the sun, and not go sliding off into s.p.a.ce, as it's done before."

"What makes you say that? Do you think Duquesne and Eiffenstein are giving us a run-around? They say we're coming back, and too close to the old sun for comfort."

"Yes," agreed Jack. "But do they know? Does anybody know until the old apple does it-or doesn't do it? Somebody certainly must have told the people who built these cities that they were going to stay in sight, at least, of some sun; and they certainly took a long ride in the dark.... h.e.l.lo, here's our relief." And Jack hailed the pair who appeared in the twilight of the street; he pa.s.sed them his report, "Everything quiet," and he started up the street with Eliot toward his quarters.

"What's the hurry, soldiers?" some one softly hailed from the darkness of a hooded doorway. It was a girl's voice, teasing, provocative.

Both halted. "Who are you?"

"Please, soldiers, we're only friends caught out in the dark and needing protection."

Jack laughed, and knew her before he turned on his flashlight. "Marian," he demanded, "what are you doing here, and who's with you?"

Then her companion, s.h.i.+rley Cotton, made herself known.

"We were hoping," Marian Jackson said, as the two girls walked along with the two young men, "for somebody to come by who knows how to turn on the heat again, not to speak of the lights."

"Were you in that building?" Eliot asked her.

"We were; and I tell you, it's hard to open doors now that the power's off. They stick terribly."

"What were you doing in that building? You know you shouldn't have gone in from the street alone."

"Sure I know," agreed Marian blandly. "But where have we got by obeying all your nice orders?"

"What were you doing, Marian?"

"Shall we tell them, s.h.i.+rley?"

"Why not?"

"Well," said Marian, speaking carefully as though she might be overheard, "we decided we'd see what we could do as baits."

"Baits?"

"Baits. The chunks of meat trappers used to put in traps, and like minnows on hooks-baits, you know. My idea."

"Then," said Jack generously, "it must have been a pippin. Baits. I've got the general underlying scheme of you girls now; go on."

"But there's nothing to go on to; nothing happened."

"The fish didn't come?"

"No nibble. No. But give us time, boy. There's some way, we know, by which somebody still gets in and out of this city. The idea is, we hope he-or they, if they're two of 'em-will try to grab us. We'll go along."

"Sabine-women stuff, Eliot," s.h.i.+rley put in.

"What?" asked Marian Jackson.

"I'll tell you later, dear," s.h.i.+rley offered.

"Oh," sniffed Marian. "Deep stuff! Well, anything they didn't teach in the first six grades of the St. Louis grammar schools is lost on me. Still, you got me curious. What did the Sabine women do, s.h.i.+rley?"

"They went along," s.h.i.+rley told her, "with the men from the other city that grabbed them."

"And then what did they do, darling?"

"They stayed with them as willing little wives."

"No stabbing after they found the way in and out?"

"No," said s.h.i.+rley. "That's where the Sabine women were different."

Jack Taylor whistled softly. "So that's what you little girls were up to?" he said. "Perhaps it's just as well we came along. But they rather show us up, eh, Eliot?"

Dinner was a moody meal in the evening of that prolonged day. The natures of the people from earth had not adjusted themselves to the increased length of both day and night; most of the people still slept, or at least went to bed, for eight hours of each twenty-four, so they dozed by day and were awake, on the average, sixteen hours of each period of darkness.

Philbin had learned that this had not been the custom among the ancient people; they had pa.s.sed through the stages of evolution adapted to the long day and night; but it appeared impossible for the people from earth to acquire this adaptation.

Accordingly, after dark, there were long, restless periods; and to-night Eliot James, Jack Taylor and Peter Vanderbilt, with two more of the younger men-Crosby and Whittington -met for a midnight discussion.

Tony was not called to this informal council of his friends; nor was Ransdell; for Tony, though personally the same with all of them, yet was Chief of the Central Authority; he bore the responsibility; and if he forbade the enterprise on foot, his friends could scarcely proceed. So it was agreed not to let him know. And Ransdell, too-being charged with the security of the city-had better learn about the plan much later.

The five gathered in Vanderbilt's quarters, which were not cramped, to say the least. There was no need in that city, constructed on its splendid scale for some two millions of people, for any one now to be n.i.g.g.ardly of room. Each of the emigrants from earth could choose his own dwelling-place, so long as it was approved for its security.

Peter Vanderbilt had chosen what would have been called, on earth, a penthouse-a roof-dwelling, built, he was sure, by some connoisseur of living.

The place delighted Peter; it was on a roof but near an edge of the city where the s.h.i.+eld sloped steeply down; so the roof there was not high, and was easily reached by foot, after the power failed.

Also it was especially well adapted for habitation in the present emergency when the heating apparatus prepared for the city had failed or rather, had been cut off. For the original builders had allowed for no such emergency; they had been dealing with elements in respect to which they had no reason to figure on that factor of failure-the internal heat and radioactivity of the core of the planet. Stoppage of that was unthinkable; and so, to them, was the cutting of the power-conduits to any of the cities. Therefore they had supplied no alternative heating arrangement.

As a consequence the present tenants had to employ the most primitive methods of keeping themselves warm in these lovely supercivilized chambers. They were driven to build bonfires in some of the great halls; but they spared those of exceptional splendor.

Peter Vanderbilt, being on the roof in his "penthouse," had contrived a chimney and a fireplace which gave him heat without much smoke or soot.

It was before this fire that the five gathered.

"Wonderful place you have, Peter," said Whittington, looking around. He had not visited it before, and he went about examining the metal panels of mountain, woodland, marsh and sea, all splendid in the colors of enamel paints baked on.

Peter asked him: "Are you complimenting me? All I've done is to choose it.... Do you know, not a thing was flecked or rubbed, not a thing was worn. The man who made it never used it."

"It seems so with most of the buildings," said Whittington. "It seems they must have gone on building them to complete their plan, after they knew they themselves would never fill them."