Bronsome Beta - After Worlds Collide Part 12

"They found themselves with nothing to do; they found already built for them dwellings, offices and palaces; they found machinery-even substances for food. They were first in possession of the amazing powers of the original people of this planet. They learned of our presence, and decided to dominate us.

"I have come to believe that probably they would not have killed us; but they wanted us all under their control."

Eve returned to the group. She did not speak, and in the dim light of the stars she was indistinguishable from the other girls; yet Tony knew, as she approached him, that it was Eve.

She halted a few steps away, and he went to her.

"Father asks for you, Tony," she said in a voice so constrained that he p.r.i.c.kled with fear.

"He's weaker?" said Tony.

"Come and see," she whispered; and he seized her hand, and she his at the same time, and together through the dark they went to the cabin where lay the stricken leader.

A cloth covered the doorway so when the door opened it let out no shaft of light to betray the camp to any hovering airman of the enemy. Tony closed the door behind him and Eve, thrust aside the cloth and faced Hendron, who was seated upright in bed, his hair white as the cover of his pillow.

His eyes, large and restless, gazed at his daughter and at his lieutenant; and his thin white hands plucked at the blanket over him.

"Have they come again, Tony?" he challenged. "Have they come again?"

"No, sir."

"Those that came, they are all dead?"

"Yes, sir."

"And none of us?"

"No, sir."

"Arm some of yourselves unto the war, Tony."

"What, sir?"

" 'Arm some of yourselves unto the war,' Tony! 'For the Lord spake unto Moses, saying: " 'Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites; afterwards shalt thou be gathered unto thy people.

" 'And Moses spake unto the people, saying, Arm some of yourselves unto the war, and let them go against the Midianites.'

"How many of the Midianites have you slain, Tony?"

"More than fifty, sir," said Tony.

"There might be five hundred more. We don't know the size of their s.h.i.+p; we don't know how many came. It's clear they have taken possession of one of the cities of the Other People."

"Yes, sir."

"Then we must move into another. You must lead my people into the city you found, Tony-the city I shall never see."

"You shall see it, sir!" Tony cried.

"Don't speak to me as if to a child 1" Hendron rebuked him. "I know better. I shall see the city; but I shall never enter it. I am like Moses, Tony; I can lead you to the wilderness of this world, but not to its promised places. Do you remember your Bible, Tony? Or did you never learn it?

"I learned whole chapters of it, Tony, when I was a boy, nearly sixty years ago, in a little white house beside a little white church in Iowa. My father was a minister. So I knew the fate of the leader.

" 'And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold, thy days approach that thou must die: call Joshua'-that is you, Tony- 'and present yourselves, that I may give him a charge.

" 'Charge Joshua and encourage him, and strengthen him; for he shall go over before this people, and he shall cause them to inherit the land which thou shalt see.' Joshua-my Joshua, Tony, we must move, move, move to-night. Move into one of their cities. Thou art to pa.s.s over Jordan this day,' Tony, 'to cities great and fenced up to heaven.'"

Hendron stopped speaking and fell back on his pillow. His eyes closed.

"Yes, sir," Tony said softly.

"The cities I shall never see!" Hendron murmured with infinite regret.

"But, Father-" Eve whispered.

The old man leaned forward again. "Go, Tony! I throw the torch to you. Your place is the place I occupied. Lead my people. Fight! Live! Become glorious!"

"You'd better leave," Eve said. "I'll watch here."

Tony went out into the darkness. He whispered to a few people whom he encountered.

Presently he stood inside the circular room that was all that remained of the Ark. No vent or porthole allowed light to filter into the cold and black night. With him were Ransdell and Vanderbilt and Jack Taylor, Dodson and Williamson, s.h.i.+rley Cotton and Von Beitz, and many others.

Tony stood in front of them: "We're going to embark for one of the Other People's cities-at once. The night is long, fortunately-"

Williamson, who had once openly suggested that Tony should not become their leader, and who had welcomed the reappearance of Ransdell, now spoke dubiously.

"I'm not in favor of that policy. We have the blast tubes-"

"I cannot question it," Tony answered. "Hendron decided."

"Then why isn't he here?"

There was silence in the room. Tony looked from face to face. His own countenance was stone-like. His eyes stopped on the eyes of Ransdell. His voice was low.

"Hendron turned over the command to me."

"Great!" Ransdell was the first to grasp Tony's hand. "I'm in no shape for the responsibility like that I had for a while."

Tony looked at him with grat.i.tude burning in his eyes.

"Orders, then?" Ransdell asked, grinning.

That was better for Tony; action was his forte in life. He pulled a map from his pocket.

"Copy of the globe James and I found in the Other People's city," he said.

They crowded around it: a rough projection of imaginary parallels and meridians marked two circles.

"Here," said Tony, pointing with a pencil, "is where we are. To the south, Ransdell's camp. West, the city we explored. The Midianites-" He smiled. "That's Hendron's term for the Asiatics and j.a.ps and Germans; it comes from the Bible-the Midianites are camped somewhere to the northwest. You note a city at this point. They doubtless occupy that city. Now-"

His pencil moved south and west of the position where they were camped. "You see that there's another city here. It's west of a line between here and Ransdell's camp, and about equidistant from both. I suggest we go to that city- to-night, by the Other People's road-and occupy it. The distance can't be too great. We'll use the tractors."

He then addressed those who could not see the map: "Imagine that we are camped in New York, Ransdell in Was.h.i.+ngton, the Midianites in Utica-then this other city is about fifty miles west of where Philadelphia would be, while the city James and I explored is say a hundred miles north of Pittsburgh. That's about correct."

"We'll move?" Vanderbilt asked. "Everything?"

"No. People-necessities. Come back for the rest."

Williamson stepped forward. "Congratulate you, Tony. Glad."

Others congratulated Tony. Then he began to issue orders.

The exiles from earth prepared to march at last from the wilderness. They prepared hastily and in the dark. Around them in the impenetrable night were the alarms of danger. They hurried, packing their private goods, loading them onto the lumber-trucks, and gathering together food-supplies and those items of equipment and apparatus most valuable to the hearts of the scientific men who composed the personnel.

An hour after issuing his orders, Tony stepped into Hendron's house. Eve was there.

"How is he?"

She shook her head. "Delirious."

Tony stared at the girl. "I wonder-"

She seized his hand. "I'm glad you said that!"

"Why?"

"I don't know. Perhaps because I'm half-hysterical with fatigue and anxiety. Perhaps because I want to justify him. But possibly because I believe-"

"In G.o.d?"

"In some kind of G.o.d."

"I do also, Eve. Have your father ready in half an hour."

"It'll be dangerous to move him."

"I know-"

Their voices had unconsciously risen-and now from the other room came the voice of Hendron: " 'And ten thousand at thy right hand: but it shall not come nigh thee.' "

They whispered then. "I'll have him ready," Eve said.

"Right. I'm going out again."

"Tony!" It was Hendron again. "I know you are there! Hurry them. For surely the Midianites are preparing against you."

"Yes, Cole. We'll go soon."

In the night and the cold again, Tony looked toward the aurora-veiled stars, as if he expected almost to catch sight of G.o.d there. To his ears came the subdued clatter of the preparation for departure.

Vanderbilt called him, called softly. It was perhaps foolish to try to be quiet as well as to work in the dark-but the darkness somehow gave rise to an impulse toward the stealth.

"Tony!"

"Here, Peter!"

The New Yorker approached, a figure dimly walking. "The first truck is ready."

"Dispatch it."

"Right. And the second will start in thirty minutes?"

"Exactly."

"Which will you take?"

"Second."

"And who commands the first?"

"Ransdell."

Vanderbilt went away.

Tony watched the first truck with its two trailers-one piled full of goods, the other jammed with people. They were like soldiers going to war, or like refugees being evacuated from an endangered position. They lumbered through the dark and out of sight-silhouettes against the stars.... Motor sounds.... Silence.

When the second convoy was ready, Tony and Williamson carried Hendron aboard on a litter. The old man seemed to be sleeping. Eve walked beside him.

The motor ahead emitted a m.u.f.fled din. Wheels turned; the three sections b.u.mbled into the blackness toward the Other People's road. When they had reached it, travel became smooth; a single ray of light, a feeble glow, showed the way to the driver.

The people in the trailer wrapped themselves in an a.s.sortment of garments and blankets which they had s.n.a.t.c.hed up against the somber chill of this early autumn night on Bronson Beta. Tony did not recognize a shawled figure who crowded through the others to his side until he heard his voice.

"It is a shame to be driven out like this!"

"It is, Duquesne."

"But by whom-and for what?"

"I don't know."

The Frenchman shook his fist toward the northwest. "Pigs!" he muttered. "Beasts! Dogs!"

For an hour they traveled.

They crossed through the valley where they had cut lumber, and they went over the bridge of the Other People. They reached a fork in the road among foothills of the western range. It was a fork hidden by a deep cut, so that Tony and Eliot James had not seen it on their flight of exploration. Then, suddenly, the light of the truck-tractor went out, and word came back in the form of a soft human shus.h.i.+ng that made all of them silent.