When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

“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 colored cathedral. It made faint shadows of the landscape. I venture 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 play overhead all night every night?”

“I think so. Coming and going. It seemed to me that it touched the ground over there—once.” He pointed. “I thought I could hear it—crackling faintly, swishing. It’s going to make radio broadcasting bad; and it’ll affect astronomic observation. 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. Wait—look.”

Tony glanced toward the Ark. The lock was opening again. The aurora shone luminously on the polished sides, revealing the black rectangle of the open door in sharp contrast.

“Who is it?” Hendron whispered.

“Don’t know.” Tony was smiling.

They watched the fourth man to touch the new soil make his painful descent and run across the still hot earth. They saw him stop, a few yards away, and breathe. They heard his voice ecstatically. Then—they heard him weep.

Hendron called: “Hello—James!”

Tony saw Eliot James 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. I’m humiliated—”

Again Hendron laughed. “It’s all right, my boy. I understand. I understand all of us. It was an act of bravery. When I came out, I half expected you others would be along. It’s in your blood. The reason you came here one by one, alone and courageously, is the reason I picked you to come here with me. You all think, feel, act independently. You also all act for the common welfare. It makes me rather happy. Come on; Duquesne went this way.”

“Duquesne?” James repeated. Tony explained.

They hunted for a long time. Overhead the stars showed brightly; and underneath them in varying intensity, with ten thousand spangles, the aurora played symphonies of light. Behind them was the tall cylinder of the ship, and behind it the range of hills. Ahead of them as they walked they could hear the increasing murmur of the sea.

They found Duquesne sitting on a bluff-head overlooking the illimitable sea. He heard them coming and rose, holding out his hands.

“My friends! Salut!”

“I saw you pop out of the ship,” Hendron said, “and I was sorry you fell down.”

The Frenchman was crestfallen. “You were out here?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Ahead of me?”

“By a few minutes,” Hendron answered.

Duquesne stamped his foot several times, and then laughed. “Well—you should be! But I thought to fool you. Duquesne, I told myself—the great Duquesne—shall be first to set foot on the new earth. But it was not to be. It was a sin. I even brought a small flag of France—my beautiful France—and planted it upon the soil.”

“I saw it,” Hendron said. “I took it down. We aren’t going to have nations here. Just—people.”

Duquesne nodded in the gloom. “That too is right. I am foolish. I am like six years old. But to-night we will forget all this, n’est-ce pas? We will be friends. Four friends. The mighty Cole ’Endron. The brilliant Monsieur James. The brave Tony Drake. And myself—Duquesne the great. Sit.”

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 of silence memories of the 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. Your French confrères, Duquesne—failed. We must admit that it seems probable that others failed. Bronson Beta belongs to us. It is sad—tragic. Ransdell is gone. Peter Vanderbilt is gone. Smith. That Taylor youngster you brought from Cornell. All the others. Yet—with all the world gone, who are we to complain that we have lost a few more of our friends?”

“Precisely!” exclaimed Duquesne emphatically. “And what are we, after all? What was that mankind, of our earth, which we alone perhaps survive to represent and reproduce?”

He had recoiled from his moment of inborn, instinctive patriotism, and become the scientist again.