When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

“We have arrived; that we know. And none of you will question my sincerity when I repeat to you that it is my conviction that fate—Destiny—far more than our own efforts has brought us through.

“I repeat here, in my first words upon this strange, new, marvelous world what I said upon that planet which for millions and hundreds of millions of years supported and nourished the long life of evolution which created us—I repeat, what I said upon that planet which now flies in shattered fragments about our sun; we have arrived, not as triumphant individuals spared for ourselves, but as humble representatives of the result 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 we breathe it.

“Of course, if it is utterly unbreathable, 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 iimmunity 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 ship will see this signal and reply. We will also immediately put into operation an external radio system and listen for her. I wish to thank those of you who acted as my crew during this flight, and who in spite of shuddering senses and stricken bodies stuck steadfast to your posts. But there is no praise adequate in human language for the innumerable feats of courage, of ingenuity and perseverance which have been performed by every one of you. I trust that by 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 ship.”

Eve and Tony walked back and forth through the throng of passengers, arm in arm. Greetings and discussions continued incessantly. Every one was talking. Presently some one began to sing, and all the passengers joined in.

Up in the control-room Hendron and his assistants began their analysis 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 quarters, several men were releasing and tending stock. The sheep and a few of the birds had perished, but the rest of the animals revived rapidly.

One of Hendron’s assistants put a slip of paper before his chief. He read it:

Nitrogen

43%

Oxygen

24%

Neon

13%

Krypton

6%

Argon

5%

Helium

4%

Other gases

5%

Hendron looked at the list thoughtfully and took a notebook from a rack over the table. He glanced at the assistant and smiled. “There’s only about a three-per-cent error in our telescopic analysis. It will be fair enough to breathe.”

The assistant, Borden, smiled. He had been, in what the colonists came to describe as “his former life,” a professor of chemistry in Stanford University. His smile was naïve 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. It felt like air; it looked like air; and I think we might consider it a very superior form of air—remarkably fresh, too.”

Hendron chuckled. “All right, Borden. What about the temperature?”

“Eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit, top side of the ship—but the ground all around has been pretty highly heated, and the blast from the beacon also helped warm up the air. I should conjecture that the temperature is really about seventy-eight degrees. I didn’t pick up much of that heat, because our thermometer is on the windward side.”

Hendron nodded slowly. “Of course I don’t know our latitude and longitude yet, but that seems fair enough. Pressure?”

“Thirty point one hundred thirty-five ten thousandths.”

“Wind-velocity?”