After Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 2)

“Nevertheless—” Hendron said. He checked himself. Several of the people on the edge of the cliff had turned toward the Ark and were marching toward him.

“Hendron!” they hailed him again. “Hendron! Cole Hendron!”

Their hysteria had not yet cleared away; they remained in the emotional excitement of the earth-cataclysm they had escaped but witnessed, and of the incomparable adventure of their flight.

“Hendron! Hendron! What do you want us now to do?” they demanded; for their discipline, too, yet clung to them—the stern, uncompromising discipline demanded of them during the preparation of the Ship of Escape, the discipline of the League of the Last Days.

Too, the amazements of this new place paralyzed them; and for that they were not to be blamed. The wonder was that they had survived, as well, the emotional shocks; so they surrounded again their leader, who throughout had seen farther ahead and more clearly than them all; and who, through Doomsday itself, had never failed them.

Hendron stepped upon an outcrop of stone, and smiled down at them. “I have made too many speeches,” he said. “And this morning is scarcely a suitable hour for further thanksgiving. It may be proper and pleasant, later, to devote such a day as the Pilgrims, from one side of our earth to another, did; but like them, it is better to wait until we feel ourselves more securely installed. When such a time arrives, I will appoint an official day, and we shall hope to observe it each year.”

He cast his eyes over the throng and continued: “I don’t know at the moment how to express my thoughts. While I am not myself a believer in a personal God, it seems evident to me in this hour that there was a purpose in the invention of man. Otherwise it is difficult to understand why we were permitted to survive. Whether you as individuals consider that survival the work of a God, or merely an indication that we had reached a plane of sufficient fitness to preserve ourselves, is of small moment to me now. And since I know all of you so well, I feel it unnecessary to say that in the days ahead lies a necessity for a prodigious amount of work.

“Your tempers and intelligences will be tried sorely by the new order which must exist. Our first duty will be to provide ourselves with suitable homes, and with a source of food and clothing. Our next duty will be to arrange for the gathering of the basic materials of the technical side of our civilization-to-be. In all your minds, I know, lies the problem of perpetuating our kind. We have, partly through accident, a larger number of women than men. I wish to discontinue the use of the word morality; but what I must ins

ist on calling our biological continuum will be the subject of a very present discussion.

“In all your minds, too, is a burning interest in the nature and features of this new planet. We have already observed through our telescopes that it once contained cities. To study those cities will be an early undertaking. While there is little hope that others who attempted the flight to this planet have escaped disaster, radio listening must be maintained. Moreover, the existence of living material on this planet gives rise to a variety of possibilities. Some of the flora which has sprung up may be poisonous, even dangerous, to human life. What forms it will take and what novelties it will produce, we must ascertain as soon as possible. I think we are safe in believing that no form of animal life can have existed here, whether benign or perilous; but we cannot ignore the possibility that the plant life may be dangerous. I will set no tasks for this day,—it shall be one of rest and rejoicing,—except that I will delegate listeners for radio messages, and cooks to prepare food for us. To-morrow, and I use an Americanism which will become our watchword, we will all ‘get busy.’”

There was a pause, then cheering. Cole Hendron stepped down from the stone. Eve turned to Tony and took his arm. “I am glad we don’t have to work today.”

“No,” said Tony. “Your father knows better. He realizes that, in our reaction, we could accomplish nothing. It is the time for us to attempt to relax.”

“Can you relax, Tony?”

“No,” he confessed, “and I don’t want even to attempt to; but neither do I want to apply myself to anything. Do you?”

Eve shook her head. “I can’t. My mind flies in a thousand different directions simultaneously, it seems. Where are those cities which, from the world—our ended world, Tony—our telescopes showed us here? What remains may we find of their people? Of their goods and their gods and their machines? … What, when they found themselves being torn away from their sun, did they do? … That monument beside the road that we found, Tony—what was it? What did it mean? … Then I think of myself. Am I, Tony, to have children—here?”

Tony tightened his clasp upon her arm. Through all the terrors and triumphs, through all their consternations and amazements, instincts, he found, survived. “We will not speak of such things now,” he said. “We will satisfy the more immediate needs, such as food—deviled eggs and sandwiches; and coffee! As if we were on earth, Eve. For once more we are on earth—this strange, strange earth. But we have brought our identical bodies with us.”

* * *

“Sardines!” Duquesne said. He patted his vast expanse of abdomen—an abdomen which in his native land he had often maintained, and was frequently to assert with pride on Bronson Beta, consisted not of fat but of superior muscle. Indeed, although Duquesne was short of stature and some fifty years of age, he often demonstrated that he was possessed not only of unquenchable nervous energy, but of great physical strength and endurance. “Sardines!” He rolled his eyes at half a dozen women and several of the men who were standing near him. He took another bite of the sandwich in his hand.

Eve giggled and said privately to Tony: “All this expedition needed to make it complete was a comedian.”

Tony grinned as he too bit a crescent in a sandwich. “A comedian is a great asset, and a comedian who was able even years ago to help Einstein solve equations, is quite a considerable asset.”

“So many things like Duquesne’s arrival have happened to us,” Eve said. “Purely fortuitous accidents.”

“Not all of them good.”

“Who’s in charge of lunch?” Eve asked a moment later.

Tony chuckled. “Who but Kyto? He, and an astronomer, and a mechanical engineer, and a woman who is a plant biologist like Higgins, are all working in happy harmony. Kyto seems to understand exactly what has taken place. In fact, there are moments when I think he is a high-born person. I had a friend once who had a Japanese servant like Kyto, who after seven years of service resigned. When my friend asked him what he was going to do, the Japanese informed him that he had been offered the chair of Behavioristic Psychology at a Middle Western university. He had been going to Columbia at night for years. Sometimes I think Kyto may be like that.”

Eve did not make any response at the moment, because Duquesne was again talking in his loud bombastic voice. He had attracted the attention of Cole Hendron and of several others, including Dr. Dodson.

Dodson’s presence on the Ark was due to the courage of a girl named Shirley Cotton. On the night of the gory raid on Hendron’s encampment, Dodson had been given up for dead by Tony. The great surgeon’s last gesture, in fact, had been to wave to Tony to carry his still living human burden to safety. However, before the Ark rose to sear and slay the savage hordes of marauders, Shirley Cotton had found the dying man.

In the space of a few moments she had put a turniquet around his arm, partly stanched a deep abdominal wound, and dragged him to a cellar in the machine-shop, intending to hide him there. It saved both their lives, for soon afterward the whole region was deluged by the atomic blast of the Ark as it rose and methodically obliterated the attackers of the camp.

Dodson had recovered, but he had lost one arm. As Tony was Hendron’s chief in the direction of physical activities, Dodson became his creator of policies. He listened now to Duquesne.

“A picnic in the summer-time on Bronson Beta, children,” Duquesne boomed. “And it is summer-time, you know. Fortunately, but inevitably from the nature of events, still summer. My observations of the collision check quite accurately with my calculations of what would happen; and if the deductions I made from those calculations are correct, quite extraordinary things will happen.” He glanced at Hendron.

The leader of the expedition frowned faintly, as if Duquesne were going to say something he did not wish to have expressed. Then he shrugged.