Show 1 1 co L LE D E sr wass wa c kf SA V r a philip b ff ay asi service i SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTERS david ransdell arrives at new york from south africa with photographic blates for dr cole hendren Hon dron tony drake calls at the Hen drons apartment eve hendron with whom tony Is deeply in love introduces rony to ransdell Hans dell hendron announces that professor bronson eminent 1 astronomer 1 8 tro nomer has discovered two planets that have been under the traction 1 tract lon of our sun the result of th the inevitable collision must be the end of the earth the approaching bodies are referred to as bronson alpha ind bronson beta hendron hendren plans a space ship on which he hopes to make a landing on bronson beta lust just preceding the destruction of the earth but has not been able mofid a metal which will withstand the heat ind and pressure pres pressure suri of atomic energy to be used in propelling the space ship ridal waves and quakes change the entire surface of the earth the hendron colony suffers but survives ransdell and eliot james english poet member of the colony cleaveon le leave aveon on an aerial to ascertain con con elsewhere CHAPTER vill VIII 13 RANSDELL abd myself jimr ivl eliot james began took our ship off the ground this morning mornin at sight ight we hew flew due nort north ifor for about seventy five mil miles es then we made a circle of which that distance was the radius covering the territory that formerly constituted parts of michigan and wisconsin 1 I say formerly because because our hight flight was like a journey of discovery you hive have already been told that the great lakes have disappeared they opey ar are however no weer not entirely gone ana I 1 should say that about one third of lake superior possibly now landlocked land locked remains in its bed the country we covered I 1 as you doubtless know was formerly heavily wooded and hilly the youngai young author continued OR it contained many lakes and was a mining renter center most of the forests have been burned away seams have opened underneath them which are in reality mighty canyon abysses in the naked earth steam pours from them and hovers in them all about the landscape are luma fuma roles hot springs geysers and boiling wells in the course of our flight we observed the ruins of a moderate sized town and of several villages we also saw the charred remains of farms lumber and mining camps not only have great clefts been made but hills have been created and in innumerable places the earth parth shows raw and multicolored multi colored the purplish red of 0 iron veins the glaring white of quartz the dark monotony of basalt intermingled in a giants conglomerate we observed a few areas which lwe our own were relatively undisturbed this district as you know Is sparsely settled I 1 will complete my wholly inadequate report to you by satisfying what must be your major curiosity we saw in the course of our flying a number of human beings some of them wandering over this nude tumultuous country alone and obviously without resources tor for their sustenance others were gathered together in small communities in the sheltered places they had fires going and ahey bey were apparently secure at least for the time being all of them attempted to attract our attention to themselves and it Is with regret that hat I 1 must say that not only Is their rescue inadvisable from the sheer necessity of our own self gelt preservation hut but that in most cases it would be difficult if not impossible as we found no place in which we might haie hae landed a plane it if the surface of the water that remained in lake superior be excepted and a few other ponds and lakes atter after the speech people crowded around james peter vanderbilt moving through the crowd glimpsed ransdell nans dell as lie he was walking through the front doors of the hall the new yorker stepped out on the porch beside the pilot the sophisticated manhattan dilettante with his smooth graying hair his worldly wise and weary eyes his svelte accent beside the rugged tan raced faced blue eyed powerful adventurer 1 I wanted to ask you something said ransdell nans dell turned and as usual chedid not speak but simply waited do you think it would be possible to hop around the country during the next few months with a good ship an amphibian vanderbilt tapped his cigarette holder aga against instone one of the posts on the porch you and I 1 are both supernumeraries around here in a sense I 1 was wondering it if it might not be alood idea to make an ex around the country and see for ourselves ourselves just what has happened ransdell Kans dell thought inarticulately pt t eve ave ile he was ana drawn to her as lever to any girl before but he reckoned she must remain here not only that but under the discipline which was clamped upon the settlement no rival could claim her while mille he be would be gone and the adventure that vanderbilt offered i tremendously allured him id like to try it ransdell replied simply then ill see gendron nen Ilen dron ransdell lansdell nans dell was waa struck by a thought shall we take tak e james too hell join I 1 1 think excellent vanderbilt accepted ne he could write up the trip it would be ignominious if any of us got to bronson beta with no record of the real history of this old earths last days together they broached the subject to hendron ue ile considered for several minutes without replying and then said you realize of course that such an expedition will be extremely hazardous yon could carry fuel and provisions for a long night fight but nothing like what need have to take potluck everywhere you sou went and whenever yon set the ship down you would be a target for any and every person lurking in the vicinity the conditions pre prevailing physically socially lly and morall morally must be wholly without precedent that replied calmly is precisely why we cannot be men and fear to study them exactly jerked lien dron and he gazed at ransdell the gray blue eyes fixed steadily on OD hen drons and the scientist abruptly decided very w ell ill sanction it ransdell and vander hill knocked on the door ot of eliot james room from which issued the sound of typewriting the poet swung wide the door they told him their plans go james repeated his face alight with excitement of course ill go what a record to write whether or not anyone lives to read it I 1 tony realized that his bis position as vice to hendron in command of the cantonment did not leave him free tor for adventure yet it was almost with shame that he assisted in the takeoff take off of the big plane two days later eve emerged from the crowd at the edge of the landing field and walked to ransdell and tony saw the light in her eyes which comes to a woman watching a man embark on high adventure tony walked around to the other side of the plane and staged there until eve had said goodby good by to the pilot many of the more prominent members of the colony were shak ing hands with vanderbilt and eliot james Vander bilts farewells dwells were debonair and light well send you postcards picturing latest developments eliot james was receiving last minute advice from the scientists who had burdened him with questions the answers of which they wished him to discover by observation ransdell came around the fuselage of the plane eve behind him he cast one look at the sky and one at the available halt of the landing field lets go he be said the plane made a long bumpy run across the field rose slowly circled once over the heads of the waving throng tl irons and gradually appeared toward the south eve signaled tony arent they fine those three men going oft off into nowhere like that thal I 1 ellke like dave ransdell no one could help liking him tony agreed lies iles so interested in everything and yet so aloof went on ave still watching in spite ot of all hes hea been burough with us hes still absolutely terrified of me 1 I can understand that said tony grimly but youve youre never been that way about me 1 I show it that way no do but I 1 know and you know what it means yes I 1 know eve replied simply the sun which had been schleid shielded by a cloud sulden sudden Jyl lyt shone on them and both glanced toward it it off there to the side of the sun gun and hidden by its glare moved the bronson bodies on their paths which would cause them to 0 o circle the sun and return one to pass close to the earth find and the other to shatter the world in little more than seven months more it if they are away only thirty days were not to count thoin them miss ing eye eve was saying of f the crew of the airplane of course if ir not back in thirty were to forget them especially were not to send anyone to search for them who said so david its t the be last thing he asked the thirty days raced by under the circumstances i time could not drag nine tenths of the people at Hen drons encampment spent their waking and sleeping hours under a death sentence no one could be sure of a place on the space ship no one in fact was positive that the colossal rocket would be able to leave the earth hendron spent most of hla his time in the rockets vast hangar the laboratories and the machine ship under the pressure of impending doom the group laboring under him had bad liberated the amazing energy in the atoria atom under laboratory conditions dit ions lons they had possessed therefore a potential power enormously in excess of that ever made available before they could break up the atom at will and set its almost endless energies to work but what mate material rial could harness that energy and direct it into a driving force for the space ship ile hendron adron and his bis group experimented for hour after desperate hour through their days with one metal another alloy and another after another the space ship still lacked its engi engine nii tony perceived an evidence of the increasing tension in eve when they walked late one afternoon through the nearby woods she saw on the pine needle carpet of the forest a white lower flower she plucked it looked at it smelled it and carried it away after they had proceeded silently for some distance she said its strange to think about matters like this flower to think that there will never be any more flowers like this again in the universe unless we take seeds with uil us 1 did david ever tell you that in his first conference at cape town with lord rhonwin and probes sor bronson they were excited over realizing there would be no more lions no said tony very quietly he never mentioned it to me tell me tony she asked q quickly you jou arent jealous howl how under the conditions laid down by your father retorted tony could anybody be lealous jealous VF JF eve walked to ransdell and tony saw the light in her eyes which comes to a woman watching g a man embark on high adventure youre not going tobe tree free to pick or choose your own husband or mate or whatever hell be called on bronson beta and if we never dever get there certainly ill have nothing to get jealous about the strain was telling too on tony lie may not even return to us here eve reminded and we would never know what happened to the three of them it would have to be a good deal to stop them each ones d n resourceful in his own way and It ansdell Is sure a flyer dyer tony gra granted grudgingly yet if the plane cracked never get back this certainly has become a mess of a world and I 1 suppose the best we can expect Is some such state awaiting us tony smiled grimly if we get across to bronson beta no if wa we get across to bronson beta well find biad far less dam age there why tony had not happened to be with the scientists when this had been discussed Bee because ause bronson betm seems certain to be a world a lot like this it the passing of bronson beta that tore us up so badly as it 1 was the passing of the big biff one bronson alpha now bronson beta has never been nearly so close to bronson alpha as we have been beta circles alpha hut but never gets within halt half a million miles of it IL so sd it if we ever step upon that worlds world well find it about as it has been As it lias has been tor for how many years tony asked the ages rind and epochs of travel through space you ought to talk tails more with professor bronson tony ne ile just lives there iles hes so sure well get therel there 1 exactly how lie he bother about hes passed that on to rather father he starts with the landing what we may reasonably expect to find there beyond water and air and soil what immediate supplies and implements feed and so on must we have with us what ultimate supplies seeds and seedlings to furnish us with tood food later what what birds and insects and should we take along you see s ee that world must be dead tony it must have been dead preserved in the rightful frightful complete cold of absolute zero for millions of years be surprised at some of the assumptions professor bronson makes lie ile ass assumes umea among other things that we can find some edible food some sort of grain ya ta probably which absolute zero would have preserved ile ho assumes that some vegetable lire life the vegetation that springs from spores which more mere cold cannot destroy will spring to life automatically 0 0 the three explorers had agreed on september 14 as the first possible day for their return but so BO great was the longing to learn the state of the outside world that on the twelfth even those who felt no particular concern for the men who ventured in the airplane began to watch the sky no one went to bed that night until long after the usual hour tony was in charge of the landing arrangements at three a in he was sitting on the edge of the field with eve they sat with straining eyes and ears doctor dodson lay on a cot ready in case the landing should result in accident at four nothing had changed it began to grow light eve stood up stiffly and stretched maybe id better leave I 1 have hare some work laid out for morning rut but she had not walked more than ten steps when she halted 1 I thought I 1 heard motors she sald said tony nodded unwilling to break the stillness A dog barked in the camp the first sun rays tipped the lowest clouds with gold then the sound came unmistakably for a full minute they heard the rise and fall of a churning motor remote soft yet unmistakable its coin coming 1 eve said she rushed to tony and held his shoulder their eyes swept the heavens then they saw it simultaneously a speck in the dawning atmosphere the ship was riot not flying well it lurched and staggered in its course tony rushed to the cot where dodson slept coming lie he said shaking the doctor and they may need you the ship was nearer those who beheld it now appreciated not only the irregularity of its course but the fact that it was flying slowly only got two motors somebody said the plane made a dizzy line toward them it flew like a duck mortally wounded there was no sign of the men in the cabin the pilot did not wiggle his bis wings or circle in a shambling slip he dropped toward the ground ashes going to crash some one yelled tony dodson and jack taylor were already in a light truck fire apparatus and stretchers were in the space behind them the trucks engine raced the plane touched the ground heavily bounced touched again ran forward and slowed it nosed over the propeller on the forward engine bent tony threw in the clutch of the car and shot to it with the doctor and jack at his heels he flung open the cabin door and looked into the canted chamber two men lay on the floor at the forward end vanderbilt and james ransdell was unconscious over the instrument panel vanderbilt looked up at tony ills his face was paper white his shirt was blood soaked and yet there showed momen momentarily tarlIS in the fading light in his eyes a spark of unquenchable deathless reckless and almost diabolical glee ills voice was quite dIst distinct ue he said in the words of the immortal |