Bronsome Beta - After Worlds Collide Part 17

"What weapons did the Midianites find in their city?"

"Practically none. None at all, that I know of," Lady Cynthia corrected.

She had returned from her tour with the technicians, having demonstrated all she had learned of the manner of manipulating electric locks, taps, pumping-apparatus and other mechanisms which now were capable of being operated.

Duquesne had delegated to other competent hands the continuous charging of the batteries; and he sat with Tony, as did also Eliot James in the office of the Hall of the Central Authority. So the three men listened to the girl and questioned her-to learn, with least delay, of the discoveries of the Midianites.

"We found no weapons in the city we entered," Eliot James reminded Tony. "We have come on nothing like a weapon-except some implements in what must have been a museum-here."

"The people of Bronson Beta," p.r.o.nounced Duquesne, "seem to have had no need of war in their later development Why? Because morally they had pa.s.sed beyond it? I do not believe it. Other causes and conditions intervened. No greater authority upon human development than Flinders Petrie lived on earth; and what did he say?

" There is no advance without strife. Man must strive with Nature or with man, if he is not to fall back and degenerate.' Certainly these people did not degenerate; there is no sign in this city but of a struggle, magnifique-epic. But not of man against man. It was, of course, of man against Nature-even against the drift into the darkness of doom which they saw before them.

"In comparison with this struggle, strife between themselves became puny-imbecile. Long ago, long before the drift into the dark, they ceased to wage war; and so they left to our enemies none of their weapons."

"They left material, however, which could be used as weapons," the English girl corrected.

"Most certainly; the gas-gas that was merciful anesthetic for the Vanished People, probably."

"How much progress," Tony asked the girl who had been a prisoner in the other city, "did your captors make in reading the records of the Vanished People?"

"Very considerable, I am sure. They brought over from earth an especially strong staff of linguists. They seemed to have realized, even better than did our party-or perhaps than did you," the English girl said, "the importance of solving quickly the secrets of the original civilization. And they went right at it."

"How did they learn?"

"From repairing and putting into operation what seems to have been instruction-machines for the children of this planet- machines which in form are very unlike but in effect are like talking motion pictures. The machines ill.u.s.trate an object, and print and p.r.o.nounce a word at the same time. I have shown M. Duquesne similar machines found here."

"Maltby and Williamson together," said Duquesne to Tony, "are working on them now."

Tony arose. Again the implications of what he heard were so tremendous that he could not think of them without confusion. He put them aside for the moment.

He paced up and down. "What was on that lake where your s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p fell?" he asked the English girl.

"Nothing. It seemed to have been burned over all around the border. The water was fresh."

"Half of you, you said, were drowned?"

"Nearly half."

"All the survivors of the crash were captured?"

"Yes; and when I escaped, I figured that three hundred and ten of us were living." She repeated the figure she had given in her first account.

"And how many were they-your captors-our 'Midianites'?"

"More than our number, considerably. They never said how many they were, nor gave us a chance to count them. They were always on the move."

"Where to?"

"Everywhere."

"You mean they visited several other cities?"

"Oh, yes."

"How many?"

"As many as they could find and reach. And I believe they could have found all within reach. For they had a globe of this planet. I heard about it; but they never let any of us slaves see it."

"Every city of course has a globe-or several," Tony said to himself, aloud, and asked her: "What did you pick up from them as to their opinion of the different cities?"

"They believed they had the best one."

"Did they say why they believed it the best?"

"No."

"What else could you pick up?"

"They said that one city was a good example of every other. They're all complete, and all similar in a general way."

Tony gazed out of the window. More and more of the vehicles of the Vanished People were appearing on the ramps and the streets. The sun, the small clear sun, shone down through the huge transparent dome. He swung back.

"Did they find how the air was kept fresh in the cities when they were fully-populated?"

"Yes; and they even operated some of the ventilators, though it was not necessary with so few people in the city, of course. The Original People had huge apparatus for what we would call air-conditioning, and for heating the air. The Asiatics of course were especially interested in that."

"The heating, eh? Did they think the planet was drifting again into the cold?"

"That," said Lady Cynthia, "surely worried them. They had their own computations, but they repeatedly asked what ours were. They were-and are, I am sure-especially careful with our scientists. They aren't sure, you see, that this planet will stay livably near the sun."

"Were your scientists-the English, I mean-sure?" asked Tony.

"They said they were. We'd go out into the cold nearly, as far as Mars-and then come back."

"Yes," said Tony.

"That's what you think here, isn't it?" the girl appealed.

Intentionally Tony waited until Duquesne replied. "It is upon that," said the Frenchman, "that we rely. Now may I ask something? Did these people-your captors, these Midianites -find any trace as to where the builders of these magnifique cities and the other inhabitants went?"

"No! Constantly they talked about it. Where were they? Where did they go? And did any-survive?"

"Precisely," said Duquesne.

"We shall name this city," said Tony suddenly, "Hendron. Hendron. I am sure no one objects.... I thank you," he said to the English girl, "for all you have told us. Of course we will have much more to ask; but not now."

He left them and went out. Now he had need, as he had not before, for an inspection of the city.

Jack Taylor, seeing him, stopped one of the cars and took Tony in with him. Dizzily they spun up a twisting ramp and shot out upon a wide boulevard. They pulled up after a couple of miles, which had been coursed in barely a minute, beside a building at one of the guarded gates. On the far side of its entrance-lobby was a dining-room where a score of women were setting out upon tables the square metal plates upon which the Other People had dined perhaps a million years before.

Tony got out and went in. He smelled the aroma from a caldron of stew, but he was not hungry.

Higgins was there eating-excited to be sure, but eating.

"Tony!" Higgins called. "Tony!" he beckoned, rising.

Tony sat beside him. "I've been two miles underground!" Higgins reported. 'Two miles! Maltby got the lifts working. I took a chance on one. Two miles down. Wonderful. Temperature rises all the way."

Tony whipped his thoughts to this problem. "Temperature rises? How could it? Didn't this planet cool-ages ago?"

"Not to the core. Only the crust. Two miles down, it was a hundred and six degrees Fahrenheit. I brought back-well, you will see."

"What?"

"Samples of what they tried to preserve below, or store for themselves. Some of it preserved, some of it not; some sealed in naked rock close to the surface and allowed to get terribly cold; some stored in metal containers and placed at strata where some heat would have endured-and did. There is enough stuff under this city to feed a Chicago for years- generations. I can't estimate how long-that is, if the stuff remained edible. The meat must be decidedly questionable."

"Meat!"

"From what animals I can't say; the vegetables from what plants I am unable to guess. Some of it may not be digestible by us. Some may be poison, we'll discover. But some must be edible, for I've eaten some and I still feel fine."

Tony went down the staircase to the hall with Higgins. In the hall a half-dozen square gla.s.slike containers, each about two feet high and a foot in its other dimensions, had been set on tables. Covers sealed them hermetically. Their contents were visible; meat indeed-a reddish lean meat not unlike beef, and a lighter meat in small fragments; and vegetables-one appeared as long yellow cylinders, another as pink b.a.l.l.s not unlike radishes, a third streaked with yellow and green and of an indeterminate lumpy shape.

Tony regarded the exhibit thoughtfully. "They covered their cities. They stored food-supplies for a prodigious time. They must have prepared for the journey into s.p.a.ce."

"Of course," said Higgins.

"But where are they?"

"I do not know."

"And the heat increased with depth?"

"Exactly."

"Probably the same system that lights the cities heated the storerooms, so the precious food there would not at first freeze, crack its containers and spoil."

"Possibly," said Higgins. "I am a plant biologist, not an engineer. But I would venture to disagree, even so."

"Why?"

"I saw no evidence of heating-mechanisms. Ventilation-yes. Heat-no."

"But the air-it's warmed," Tony persisted.

"It wasn't. Observation showed the air on Bronson Beta was frozen solid-as it approached."

"We couldn't make observation under the domes."

'True. But you will find ample evidence in fractures and wash-marks to show that the air in the city was frozen. Yes- it is not heated air from the domed city which has kept these immense subterranean warehouses warm." Higgins shook his head. "Radium."

"Radium?" Tony repeated.

"Radium. Deep in this planet. Only radio-active minerals could maintain heat inside a planet during untold ages of drift through frigid s.p.a.ce. So we may conclude that the interior of Bronson Beta is rich in such minerals."

"Then it must be dangerous-"

Higgins shrugged. "The presence of heat does not mean that rays are also present. They are doubtless absorbed by miles of rock. Hundreds of miles, maybe. But the heat is there, the activity of radium; and the rocks carry the heat almost to the surface."

There was silence in the group. Tony addressed a bystander. "Jim, get Duquesne. Tell him to turn the power-station over to Klein, and investigate this. Take Higgins with you." Then: "If the interior of Bronson Beta is warm still-then it is quite possible-"

"That the original inhabitants still persist somewhere? How? They melted air from the frozen lightless desert above them on the surface, and lived down in the radium-warmed bowels of their planet? I found no living quarters underground. But-who can say!"

Tony squared his chin against his imagination. "They are all dead," he said.

Higgins started away with Jim Turnsey, talking excitedly.

Before noon, people began to collect for their next meal. No one brought any information about Von Beitz. He had vanished. But another clew to the possible existence of living people in Hendron had been discovered. Williamson, exploring with a searching-party, had found three beds that had been slept in. He had been led to the find by an open window in a building on the northern edge of the city. Whether the beds had afforded resting-places for the Other People after the city was built, or for scouts from the Midianite camp, he could not be sure.

Three beds, with synthetic bed-covers rumpled upon them. No more.

The vast dining-room was filled as the sun came directly overhead. Twenty of the women waited on table. Plates of stew were served, then coffee in stemmed receptacles which had handles for five fingers-five fingers a little different from human fingers, evidently, for they were awkward to use.

After that, Tony rose and spoke.

"My friends," he said, "we are safe. Our security is due to the courage and intelligence of our dead leader. No praise is adequate for him. I shall not attempt to reduce what is in your hearts to words. Prodigious labors, great dangers, even the dangers of battle and peril of annihilation at the perihelion of our orbit, lie ahead of us. Unknown conditions, diseases, poisons, threaten us. Enemies may lurk among us. An evil and powerful aggregation of fellowmen is striving and planning now to conquer us. Mysteries of the most appalling sort surround us. Still-Cole Hendron faced calmly both hazards and enigmas as awesome. We must endeavor to emulate him. And on this afternoon we shall pay a last homage to him.

"I have prepared the earth to receive him. I have named this city for him. I shall ask you to remain inside the protecting dome of this city-standing on the ramp of the western skysc.r.a.per-while Cole Hendron is buried. I do not dare to expose you all. The following will accompany me to the grave." He read from a paper: "Eve Hendron, David Ransdell, Pierre Duquesne, Eliot James and Doctor Dodson. His pall-bearers to the gate will be the men whose names I have just read, and also Taylor, Williamson, Smith, Higgins and Wycherley.

"We will march from here to the gate. You will follow; Eve will open the gate."

Once more, before Cole Hendron-Conqueror of s.p.a.ce- was borne from the Hall of Science, the music of Bronson Beta burst forth. Maltby once more made rise the tremendous tones from the throats a million years silent to sing Cole Hendron's requiem. Then the bearers of the body descended the staircase of the majestic building.

Cole Hendron had no coffin. Over the body was an immense black tapestry-a hanging taken from the great Hall in which he had lain.

The procession reached the street, amid m.u.f.fled sobs and the sound of feet.

At the gate, Eve pulled the control lever. Hendron's closest friends and his daughter marched into the open.

It was cold.

The mourners filed up a great spiral ramp and stood watching.

Tony beside Ransdell, at the head of the bier, walked with his head down. Eve came last, a lone regal figure.

They surmounted the knoll. The body was lowered. They stood around the grave, s.h.i.+vering a little in the cold.

"The greatest American," Tony said at last.