OCR Text |
Show WHEN WORLDS j COLLIDE 8 and PHILIP WYLIE l Ctprrlfrht by Edwin Balmftr A Philip WylU WNU service ' 4 left the ship." Tony did not reply. Hendron took his arm. "So did I. I couldn't sJeep I had to Inspect our future home. I came out on the ladder half an hour ago." Hendron chuckled "Duquesne was on my heels. I hid. He's gone for a walk. I heard him fall down and swear. "What do you think of It? Did you see the aurora? au-rora? "No." Tony looked at the stars He had a feeling that the sky overhead over-head was not the sky to which he had been accustomed. The stars looked slightly mixed. As he stared upward, a crimson flame shot Into the zenith from the horizon. It was followed by torches and sheets in all colors and shades. "Lord !" he whispered. "Beautiful, isn't it?" Hendron said softly. "Nothing like it on earth. It was in rippling sheets when I came out. Then in shafts a colorful cathedral. It made fainl shadows of the landscape. I venture ven-ture to say It's a permanent fixture. The gases here are different from those on earth. Different Ionization of solar electrical energy. That red may be the neon. The blue I don't know. Anyway It's gorgeous." "You mean this thing will plaj overhead all night eery night?" "1 think so. Coming and going. It seemed to me that It touched the ground over there once. Ha pointed. "I thought I could hear it crackling faintly, swishing. It's going to make radio broadcasting bad; and it'll affect astronomical observation. ob-servation. But It is magnificent." "Like the rainbow that came on Ararat," Tony said slowly. "Lord! So It Is! God's promise, eh? Tony you're an odd fellow for a football player. Football !. What a thing 'to hover In the mind here!,. Come let's see If we can find Duquesne. The wily devil wanted to be first on Bronson Beta. He came out of the Ark like a shot No. Walt look." Tony glanced toward the Ark. Th CHAPTER XII Continued 35 "I repeat here, in my first words upon this strange, new, marvelous world what I said upon that planet which now flies in shattered fragments frag-ments about our sun ; we have arrived, ar-rived, not as triumphant individuals individ-uals spared for ourselves, bilt as humble representatives of the result, re-sult, of a billion years of evolution transported to a sphere where we may reproduce and recreate the life given us. . . . "I will pass at once to practical considerations. "At this spot, it Is now late in the afternoon of Bronson Beta's new day, which lasts thirty hours Instead of the twenty-four to which we are accustomed. For the present, we must all remain upon the ship. The ground immediately under is still baked hot by the heat of our blast at landing. Moreover we must test the atmosphere carefully before be-fore we breathe it. s "Of course. If It Is utterly tin-breathable, tin-breathable, we will all perish soon; but if it proves merely to contain some unfavorable element against which we must be masked at first until we develop Immunity to It, we must discover what it is. "While waiting, we will discharge one of the forward rocket tubes at half-hour intervals In the hope that our sister idiip will see this signal and reply. We will also immediately immediate-ly put Into operation an Internal radio system and listen for her. I wish to thank those of you who markably fresh, too." "That's fine. We'll go out in the morning." The night came on clear. The visascreen, which had been growing darker, showed now a dim, steady light. It was the light of the earth-destroyer, earth-destroyer, .Bronson Alpha, shining again upon the survivors of men as it set off on its measureless journey jour-ney Into infinite space. Other specks of, light reinforced it ; and the stars glints from the debris of the world settling themselves In their strange circles about the sun. Exhaustion allied Itself to obedl-' ence to Hendron's orders. The emigrants emi-grants from Earth slumped down and slept,. Tony lay down, but did not sleep. A thought had been stirring In his brain for a long time. Some one would have to take the risk of being the first to breathe the air of Bronson Beta. l A small sample was not decisive. Tony did not know how accurately Its composition composi-tion might have been measured. He thought it might be chemically possible pos-sible to breathe, but practically, hopeless. It might contain a trace of some rare poison. He. should test It himself. They should send him out first. It was a small contribution. In Tony's mind; but it would help justify his presence on the Ark. , "They might send, some one useful," use-ful," he thought. . "Hendron might sacrifice himself in the test." The more he thought, the more he worried. He could open the alr- I acted as my crew during this flight, 1 and who In spite of shuddering B senses and stricken bodies stuck : steadfast to your posts. But there 1 is no praise adequate In human language for the innumerable feats of courage, of Ingenuity and perse- 1 verance which have been performed by every one of you. I trust that by the morning we shall be able to make a survey of our world on foot, and I presume that by then we shall have heard from our sister sis-ter ship." Eve arid Tony walked back and forth through the throng of passengers, pas-sengers, arm in arm. Everyone was talking. ' Presently some one began be-gan to sing, and all the passengers joined In. Up in the control room Hendron and his assistants began their analysis an-alysis of a sample of atmosphere that had been obtained through a small airlock. They rigged up the ship's wireless, and sent 'into the clouds the first beacon from the Ark's sky-pointing tubes. Lights were on all over the ship. Above the passenger pas-senger quarters, several men were releasing and tending stock. The sneep and a few of the birds had perished, but the rest . of the animals ani-mals revived rapidly. One of Hendron's assistants put a slip of paper before his chief. He read it: Nitrogen. 43 per cent; oxygen, 24 per cent; neon, 13 per cent; kryp- ton, 6 per cent; argon. 5 per cent; helium 4 per cent; other gases, 5 per cent. Hendron looked at the list thoughtfully thought-fully and took a notebook from a rack over the table. He glanced at the assistant and smiled. "There's only about a S per cent error in our telescopic analysis. It will be fair enough to breathe." The assistant, Borden, smiled. Ho had been. In what the colonists came to., describe as "his former life." a professor of chemistry in Stanford University. His smile was naive and pleasing. "It's very good to breathe. In fact, I drew in a large sample and breathed what was left over for about five minutes. min-utes. It felt like air; it looked like air; and I think we might consider It a very superior form of air re- ock and drop to the ground. At last he rose. 1 He went down the spiral staircase quietly. He shut doors behind him. In the bottom chamber he stood for a long time beside the airlock. He was trembling. trem-bling. . , . He lifted the levers that closed the inner door, balanced them so that they would fall automatically. He stepped between It and the outer out-er door. The lock slammed; the levers fell. He was In pitch darkness. dark-ness. . ... He opened the outside door. He leaned out his Heart ill his mouth. He drew in a breath. A hot, rasping, sulphurous vapor smote his nostrils. He shuddered. Was this the atmosphere of the new planet? He remembered that the blast of the Ark had cooked the ground around it. Gasping, with running eyes, he lay down on the floor and felt with his feet for the Iron rungs of the workmen's work-men's ladder that ran from the now Inverted bow of the Ark to the upper up-per door and matched that on the opposite end. He began to descend. He coughed and shuddered. . With every step the heat increased. His feet touched the ground. It gave oft heat like the earth around a geyser. He ran away from the looming bulk of the ship. His first fifty steps were taken in stinging vapors. Then cooler air blew on his face. Sweet, fresh, cool air! . . He inhaled lungfuls of It. It had no odor. It was like earth air washed by an April rain. It did not make, him dizzy or sick. He did not feel weakness or numbness or pain. He felt exhilaration. He flung out his arms in ecstasy. Beside, him a voice said quietly: "It's splendid, isn't it Tony?" He could have been no more startled if stones had spoken or 8 mummy had sat up in Its sarcophagus. sarcopha-gus. He stiffened; not daring tf look. Then Into his icy veins blooc flowed. He turned in the lush, star lit dark. "Mr. Hendron. I--I T ". "Never mind." The older man ap proached. "I think I know why yot came, l'ou wanted to be sure o the air before any of the rest of m lock was opening again. They watched the fourth man to touch the new soil make his painful pain-ful descent and run across the still hot earth. . They saw him stop, a few yards away, and breathe. Thej heard his voice ecstatically. , Then they heard him weep. Hendron called: "Hello, James-Tony James-Tony saw Kllot .Tames undergo the unearthliness of hearing that voice come through the empty air. Then James approached them. "How beautiful!" he whispered. "I'm sorry. I thought some one should try the air. And I admit I was keen to get out. Wanted to be first, I suppose." . Again Hendron laughed. "It's all right, my boy. L understand. I understand un-derstand all of us. When I .came out, 1 half expected you others would be along. It's in your blood. The reason you came here one h.v one, alone and courageously, is the reason I picked you to come here with me. It. makes me rathet happy." On the outcrop of stone ledge they seated themselves. They looked and breathed and waited. Occasionally one of them spoke. Usually it was' Hendron casting up from his thoughts between periods pe-riods of silence memories of th past and plans for the future. "We are here alone. I cannot help feeling that our other ship has in some way failed to follow us. If. In the ensuing days, we hear nothing, we may be sure it is lost. Bronson Beta belongs to us. It is sad tragic. Ransdell Is gone. 1 Peter Vanderbllt is gone. Smith. That Taylor youngster you brought from Cornell, All the others. Yet with the world gone, who are we to complain that we have lost a few ' more of our friends?" 1 Tony moved away from them. He ' was stirred with a great restless-' restless-' ness. He wandered toward th ' ship: and he saw. in that glowing. opalescent night, a woman's form; and he knew before he spoke to her, that it was Eve. "1 was sure you'd be out," he said. f "Tony !" i - .TO niC nOXTlXTTED. ASSEMBLIES FORBIDDEN '.BELFAST, Northern Ireland, June 18 tt'.P) All public assemblies, assemb-lies, and all processions but funerals, fun-erals, were forbidden by the government gov-ernment today as the result of a religious riot in which 200 shots were exchanged. The riot involved rival religious factions. Police routed the rioters and 1 found one man had been wounded. |