After Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 2)

Down the ramp Tony saw descending two Bronson Beta vehicles of the type discovered wrecked beside the first-found roadway, and duplicates of which were stored by the hundred in the first Sealed City. 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.

“By God,” cried Marian, “they got ’em going.—Hey! Hey!” she hailed them.

Tony thrilled too, but tempered his triumph by realization that, since the cars came in sight they had been descending, so that they might not be under power at all, but having been pushed to the incline of the ramp, were coasting.

The drivers seemed aware of this flaw in their demonstration, or else they could not yet be content to stop; for when they gained the ground in rapid procession, instantly they steered up the ascending 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 his scalp tingling. One more secret of the mechanics of these people a million years dead was in possession of his own people!

Now the vehicles, having vanished briefly, swept into sight again, still climbing; then they whirled down, sped into the square, and though braked somewhat raggedly, halted in line before Tony.

Eliot James stepped from the first with a flourish.

“Your car, sir!” He doffed his battered felt hat.

From the second car stepped the English girl Lady Cynthia. Williamson piloted the third; Maltby, 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 discovered the technique of charging the batteries, which are beyond anything we had on earth,” he said with envious admiration, “both in simplicity and in economy of power application. There is a station underground which They used. We are using it. All the batteries which we have discovered were discharged or had discharged themselves, naturally, in the tremendous time that the planet was drifting through space; but two out of three batteries proved capable of receiving a charge when placed in sockets of the charging station.”

“You mean you found the charging station with its power on?” Tony asked.

Williamson looked at Maltby as if to enlist his support when replying: “We found the power on.”

“What sort of power?”

“Something between the electrical impulses with which we were familiar on earth, and radio-activity. We believe the Bronson Beta scientists, before they died—or disappeared—learned to blend the two.”

“Blend?” asked Tony.

Maltby took up the task of explanation. “You remember that on earth we didn’t even know what electricity was; but we knew how to use it for some of our purposes. Still less did we understand the exact nature of radio-activity; but we used that too. Here we have come upon impulses which exhibit some of the phenomena of electricity, and others of radio-activity. We do not understand it; but we do find ourselves able to use it.”

“But the power-station below ground in order and in operation!” objected Tony.

“I think,” said Maltby, “it should not have been described as a power-station, but rather as a mere distributing station. The power, I believe, does not originate in the station which we discovered, and in which we charged the batteries of these machines. Our station is, I think, merely a terminus for the generating station.”

“The generating station—where?”

At this, Maltby and Williamson, the technicians, both gazed at the English girl; but she, without making direct reply, nodded to Maltby to proceed.

“She believes that the chief generating station is under the city of our Midianites. It is a far larger city than this, and was probably the metropolis of the planet—or at least of this continent. She knows that the technicians with the Asiatic party got much of the machinery of the city going weeks ago.

“We believe that their technicians are employing the power-generators of the ancient civilization here without thoroughly understanding it—or without understanding it at all beyond having learned how it works, and what they can do with the power impulses.

“We believe that we get the power here because they cannot use it themselves without giving us some of it. Probably much of the power is disseminated without wires or cables. Undoubtedly the light-impulses are—those that light this city at night and illuminate interior apartments by day.

“These impulses probably are spread in a manner similar to radio waves. Williamson feels sure that power in the charging station cannot be so explained. He feels sure that the charging station below this city must have a cable connection—underground, undoubtedly—with the generating station.

“Now, if that generating station is under the city of the Midianites, either they know they are sending us that power—or they don’t know it. If they know it, they may be unable to cut off our power without also cutting off their own; but if they don’t know they are now giving us power, they may find it out at any moment—and cut us off. Duquesne thinks the latter; so he has remained below with all the men he needs to keep all the charging sockets busy, while we”—Maltby smiled deprecatingly—“allowed ourselves this celebration before busying ourselves above.”

“At what?” asked Tony, half stupidly, half dazedly. “At what here above?” Too much was being told him at once; too much—if one had to think about it.

Marian Jackson, who had remained beside him, had heard it all; but it had not confused her. It had merely amused her. She went to Eliot James and teased him to show her the controls of his machine; and she sat in it and started it.

“Easy! Easy!” Eliot yelled, and running beside her, shut off the power. “It’s perfectly easy and obvious in its steering and controls. Anybody can run it; but from the little I’ve seen, it must do over two hundred miles an hour, or three hundred, if you open it up. So don’t open it up!”