Show AO aft A by edwin balmer and philip wylie copyright 1931 by edwin balmer and philip wylie anut service CHAPTER IX continued 14 jack taylor haggard and bunim hungry made the first report im back only to suggest a better search organization taylor said excitedly 1 I took a truck and toured the widest streets at the 0 lower levels and some of them fit at the upper levels at every corner my driver and I 1 stopped and yelled for von geltz beltz we see a sign of life or get any reply did you yon see any evidence of recent occupation higgins nig ging of the authority asked nothing kyto brought food to taylor and he be talked as he ate ive been over miles of 0 streets and covered only a little of the central section the cites too d d big it if three or four hundred people had moved into new york fork when it was emptied and nobody else was there except maybe three or four people or a dozen who wanted to keep in hiding what chance would the three or four hundred have of finding the dozen of course there may be no DO or even four or five hiding people to find tony responded we cant be sure that von beltz falls to return because he was captured he might have fallen when exploring somewhere or something might have toppled on him or he MI might nt have got himself locked in a buildt building g taylor shrugged rn in that case hed be harder to find fand than the doyen who we think are hiding from us yon feel surer I 1 see tony observed that some people unknown to it us are here hiding from us yes I 1 do 1 tut I ait without any further proof of it ink taylor nodded 1 I tell you th r are people here I 1 can feel it 11 Ii ividell wdell idell quietly arose id like to out again you wont need us tny he continued speaking for it air rest of the committee of the atral authority as well as for its nice of you to pretend ten n re necessary but we know ari ow were amt though well be glad to try t lie useful when you really want it ii well all obey you as aa we would irive obeyed cendron nen lIen dron you going to join the search tony it ii led i ed Rans 1 ril 11 shook his head bead theres enough e us its searching now dow I 1 want to join 1 M I and williamson and their mv who are working on the cronson bronson ileta I 1 ati machines and techniques tony found himself alone in the b great reat council chamber now and then some one else arrived to report but all reports report which had to do with the search for von beltz and for the unknown people who might have hare captured him were negative the couriers returned to their exploring squads and the others scattered in their wondering examination 0 of the marvels 0 of the city there proved to be eight gates to this city and tour four great central highways which met and crossed in the place before the nail hall ot of the sciences in which Ilen hendron dron lay dead and before also the splendid structure housing the council chamber tony strode out into the sunlight of the wide square and he halted and lifted ills his head in awe lie ile was in command in this city I 1 lie ile had had nothing to do with creating it IL A million years perhaps before lie was born this city had been built and then the light which fell upon it was gone from some sun to which the sun of the world the sun which now shone upon it was a distant twinkling star quadrillions Quad rillions of of miles of space distances indescribable in terms that the mind could corn comprehend brehen d sepa separated rated this city from tony drake who would not be born for a million years but it had traveled the tremendous reaches of space after it lost its ita sun until it found the star the sun eatn that lighted the earth so tony drake today stood here to in its central square in command tony 11 ne ile heard his name and turned eve dendron had bad come out to the square and she elie approached him quietly and calmly we must proceed now tony she said proceed QI if course he assured her gently lie he had ceased to be a commander of a city built a million years before his birth ile he became again tony drake recently not three earthly inars ago a young broker in wall street and friend of eve flen handron dron whose father was wag a scientist on earth tony drake had wanted her for his wife here he wanted her also and especially in her grief lie longed to be her close comforter your tour mind help you much does it tony she said at a time like this abu mean no 1 I went once with rather father and with a friend of his professor ifor through the pyramids tony when we were back on earth of course said tony it was before ever the bronson Pr onson bodies were seen tony when the earth seemed practically eternal how out of fashion it had become to look to the end of the earth tony I 1 though once it was not I 1 was saying that professor alor was showing us through the pyramids and he read us some of the pyramid texts did you know tony that in all the pyramid texts testa the word death never occurs except in the negative or applied to a foe how the old egyptians tried to defeat death by deny denying 1 of course the pyramids themselves were their most tremendous attempt to deny death yes said tony over and over again I 1 remember tony they declared that he whom they put away lived I 1 remember the words king teti has not died the death lie has become a glorious one in the horizon and ila ho king ants thou not depart dead thou depart living thou diest not and this IT king ing cepl dies not this king cepl lives forever this king has escaped his day of death 11 tony how pitiful those protests seemed to me to lo be I 1 yet now I 1 myself am making them men tall fall their name Is not sweat Is as the sweat of the eighteen ands 1 11 that aked tony something iome thing pise else I 1 remembered from earth from the 11 simmid raenid ra inid texts tony sail thou the stars sail s ail thou aith the unwearied stars she return returned ed to the treat great flail of science of the men of a million years dead the hall wherein I lerein lay her father hello hows every little thing said a cheerful voice at tonys side he faced about and confronted the rod red haired girl whom he had met in Rans dells camp and who had not been selected for the voyage from larth earth her name had not been on the lists in michigan tony remembered her name however marlan marian jackson she hid had been an acrobatic dancer in st louis can you yon beat this place can you tie it marian challin challenged ged tony cheerfully gay but not gaudy id call it ayou agree 1 I agree acquiesced tony grateful for the letdown let iet down the girl might be mentally a moron but morons marons he was discovering had their points this girl simply aoud not take anything seriously dut but the taxi service here Is terrible objected marlan arlan SI we hope to improve it offered tony the girl walked away dont go into any of the buildings alone tony reminded and even on the streets keep close to other people 1 marian halted looking up hello hello tl ello I 1 she bhe cried out softly look atthe at the maxies taxies tax les ies and she pointed to on one e of the wide spiral ramps to the right down the ramp tony saw sair descending sc two bronson beta vehicles cles of the type discovered wrecked the first found roadway and duplicates ot of which were stored by the him hundreds d reds to in the first sealed city he had visited on liis ills exploring ex flight here there were hundreds or thousands more of the machines the two that appeared were followed by two more and these by two larger and heavier vehicles not of the passenger type but of truck design look cried Mart marian aill I 1 they got ein cm going hey hey she halted hailed them tony thrilled too but tempered his triumph by realization that since the cars came in sight the they had bad been descending so that they might not be under power at all but having been pushed to the incline of the ramp were coasting but when the drivers gained the ground in rapid procession instantly they steered up the ascending THE STORY FROM THE BEGINNING under the leadership of 0 cole Ilen hendron dron american scientist some persons escape in a space ship just before a cosmic collision that lipas out the earth and land on bronson beta the appearance of 0 what looks like an airplane and which disappears without making an attempt to communicate muni cate with tho refugees leaves EL a feeling of alarm the newcomers realize they ar are no not t alono on the new planet and that their visitors may b be e enemies tony drake and eliot james on an airplane flight come upon a cl city ty enclosed under what seems like halt half an iridescent glass bubble among their finds in the city Is an edible grain millions of 0 bushels on their way back they stumble upon the camp of more than persons who left the earth when they did in a second space ship piloted by dave ransdell ransdell II goes to hendrina Hen drons camp with tony and the latter tells the people of the wondrous city tony learns that russian japanese and german communists have reached bronson beta and probably sent the mysterious plane to spy on their camp Hen drons la is gassed by unseen enemies but all recover the make an aerial raid tony and his men annihilate their armada with terrific atomic blasts from the space ships propulsion tubes Hen drons health falling failing he orders tony to remove everybody to one of the sealed cities which Is done Ilen hendron dron dies on the w way y the americans find they derive their power of light and heat from aaland a plant in another city tear fear the control it and plan to freeze them into submission during the intensely cold winter von beltz a leader disappears the egyptian psalmist of the pyra mid text sang tony men fall their name Is not seize thou king teti by his arm take thou king teti to the sky that he die not on earth among men tony reminded her very gently your father did not die on earth no he escaped to the sky bring ingus ing us all with him theres the sun now how small the sun has become tony we are farther from the sun eve than me men of earth have ever been but were going farther away yet 10 yes shall we swing back or shall we keep on out and out into the utter cold if bronson beta drifts out into the cold without return there Is no escape no said tony and combated the chill within him and could they know eveker ere persisted they could calculate and undoubtedly did that the path of this planet has become an elapse that it will turn back again toward the sun but it never has turned back toward the sun tony not once this planet appeared out of space approached the sun and swung about it and now Is going away from the sun that we know and that Is all we do know the rest we can merely calculate you mean questioned tony that your father said eald something privately during those days he was dying to make you believe tie he was deceiving us no said eve yet I 1 wonder I 1 cannot help wondering nut but it if we keep on away from the sun I 1 dont think tony im what he demanded as she fal altered and stopped unprepared she said and she recited thy seats seata among the gods godi abide he leans upon thee alth his shoulder thy odor Is as their odor thy spiral on the other side and putting on power climbed even faster than they had dropped that ended any doubt of their means of propulsion tony felt ills his scalp tingling one more secret of the mechanics of these people a million years dead was in possession of 0 his own people 1 E eliot ilot james stepped from the first with a flourish your car sirl he dolled his battered felt lint hat from the second car stepped the english girl lady cynthia caulk shank williamson piloted the third jack taylor and peter vanderbilt were the other drivers williamson the electrical engineer made his report to tony as a hundred others gathered around we have discovered the technique of charging the batteries which are beyond anything we had on earth lie he sald said with envious ad mi ration both in simplicity and in economy ot of power application there Is a station underground which they used we are using it all the batteries we have discovered were discharged or had bad discharged themselves naturally in the tremendous time that the planet was drifting through space but two out of three batteries pr proved 0 v ed capable of receiving a charge athen h en placed in sockets ot of the cha charging r ang station you mean you found the charging station with its power on tony asked williamson looked nt at maltby a as s it if to enlist hla his support when whan replying we found the power on what sort of power something between the electrical impulses with which we were familiar on parth earth and radioactivity radio activity we believe the bronson reta beta scientists enlists ts before they died or disappeared learned to blend the two 11 blend asked tony maltby took up the task of explanation you remember that on earth we even know ahat electricity was but we knew how to use it for some of our purposes still less did we understand the exact nature of but we used that too here wo we have colue upon impulses which acne of the phenomena of f oil others of nf activity we d do 0 n not 0 t understand it but we do find ourselves able to use it cut but file power station sti tion helow below ground in order and in operation I 1 objected tony 1 I think said maltby it tint not have been described describe as a power station but rather as a mere distributing station the power I 1 bellegie liel bel leie does not originate in the station which we vie discovered and i in which we charged the batteries of at these machines our station Is I 1 think thinly merely a terminus for the file generating station the generating sti tion where N here at tills maltby and willlim on the technicians both gazed at the english m gill but she without It hout making direct reply nodded to maltby to proceed she believes that the chief generating station Is is under brider the ca city t y of our it Is a far larger city than this and was probably the metropolis of the pa planet a net or at least of this continent she knows that tho the technicians with the asiatic party got much of the machinery of the city going coln weeks ago we e believe taftt that we get the power here because they cannot use it themselves without giving us lis some of it probably much of the power la Is disseminated without w wires res or cables undoubtedly the light 11 ht impulses are those that light this Is city at night nl ht and Il illuminate lumina te interior uteri or apartments by day these impulses probably are spread in a manner similar to radio waves williamson feels sure t that hat power in the charging station cannot be so explained ue lie feels sure that the charging st station eLtion below this city must have bare a cable connection underground undoubtedly with the generating station now it if that generating station Is under the city of the either they know they are sending us that power or th they ey dont know it if they know it they may be unable to cut off our power without also cutting off their own but it if they dont know they are now giving us power they may find it out at any moment and cut us ott off duquesne thinks the latter so he be has remained below with all the men lie he needs to keep all the chat charging sockets busy while we maltby smiled depre deprecation deprecatingly catin ly allowed ourselves this celebration before busying ourselves above at what asked tony half stupidly halt half dazedly at what here above too much was being told him at once too much if one had ha d had to think about it marian jackson who had remained beside him had bad heard it all but it had not confused cont used her it had merely amused her she went to eliot james and teased him to show her the controls of ills his M machine a C hine and she sa sat it in it a and bit started it easy easy eliot yelled and running beside her shut 0 off the power its perfectly easy and oil ob in its steering |