After Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 2)

The spasm of pain appeared to pass; he opened his eyes, and looking up at Tony, he winked.

It was the most reassuring thing he could have done. “Good stuff!” Tony whispered to Eve.

“Where was he, Tony?”

The German seemed to have heard; he spoke to the Doctor. “I should not sit up, eh?”

Dodson reminded: “You’ve had a terrible beating, Von Beitz. You’re half starved. When you’ve had some hot soup, and when I’ve dressed your various cuts and bruises, you’ll be able to talk.”

“Pooh!” said the man on the ground. “You’ve been searching for me, eh? And now you want to know why I come dramatically in a ship from the north? Well—I will tell you. I can eat later. But I lie down. You must know at once.

“I rounded a corner in this city as you know; and to you, I vanished. To myself—four men seized me. A cord about the neck, a sack over the head. It gave me no fear that my assailants might have been men from Bronson Beta,” Von Beitz added sardonically. “The technique was too much of our world as we have known it. I was down and helpless, knowing no more of my attackers than that they must be men from earth.

“We spent I do not know how long hiding high in a building in this city. My eyes were taped shut. I was gagged much of the time, but I was given food, and—except on occasions which I will come to—I was not badly treated.

“At first they spoke between themselves in tongues I could not understand, but it was not language of another planet. It was speech from our old world—Russian sometimes, I am sure; sometimes, I think, Japanese.”

Von Beitz rested a moment.

“Did you discover how many they were?”

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“Here in this city watching us,” Von Beitz proceeded after a moment, “there were four at least. I am sure I heard four different voices speak. Sometimes it seemed to me that more moved back and forth; but I cannot be certain that more than four actually were here.”

“Men?” asked Tony.

“They were all men. I heard no woman speak; it was never a woman’s hand that touched me. But they talked a great deal about women as they watched us,” Von Beitz said.

“You mean, you heard them talking about our women? They talked in some language you understood?”

“No; not then. They talked about our women in their own tongues. But I did not need to understand the words to know they were talking about—women.”

“I see,” said Tony.

“They did talk to me in English later—two of them did.”

He stopped again.

“What did they tell you?”

“Tell me?” repeated Von Beitz. “Nothing. They asked me.”

“Asked you what?”

“About you—about us. They wanted to know what we knew, how far we had progressed in mastering the secrets of the Old People.”

“Ah!” said Tony.

“They were here—those four—before we moved into this city. They were sent here as similar squads of them were sent to every other city accessible to them. You see, they moved into their city—which apparently was the old capital of this planet or at least of this continent—long before we made any move at all.”

“Yes,” said Tony. “That’s clear.”

“Our delay,” breathed Von Beitz, “laid on us a great handicap.” He did not continue that criticism, but observed: “For they grasped the essentials of the situation almost at once. It lay, of course, in mastery of the mechanics of the ancient civilization. So they seized at once and occupied the key city; and they dispatched a squad to each of the other cities, to explore and bring back to them whatever might be useful.”

Again he had to rest, and the others waited.

“Particularly diagrams.”