After Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 2)

They sighted, far ahead, columns of smoke lifted lazily into the sky. Ransdell pointed and Tony, leaning to his ear, shouted: “Our camp-fires! Our camp!”

He could make out now, in the early morning light, that these were indeed camp-fires ending their duty of lessening the chill of the long night, perhaps, starting their services of cooking. The camp seemed unchanged; it was safe.

Tony compared its crudeness and rudeness with the marvelously proportioned perfections of the Sealed City; and a pang of nostalgia for this encampment suddenly assailed him. Here were his own; here was home.

He glanced aside and surprised his comrade Dave Ransdell, as he stared down. What thousand shattering fragments of thoughts must fill Ransdell’s mind! One—and Tony plainly could see it—overwhelmed all the rest. Here, below, was Eve Hendron.

For it was a sudden softness and yearning that was in the eyes of the broad-shouldered, Herculean man at Tony’s side. What would be in Eve’s eyes when she saw him?

Tony’s nostaglia of the moment before was replaced by a jerk of jealousy. Eve always had admired Dave and liked him—and more. More, yes, more than liked him, during those last desperate days on earth. Now he was here; and he had done well.

Yes; any one would say—Hendron himself would declare—that Dave Ransdell had done well indeed to have brought across space the ship intrusted to him with loss of less than half the party. Ransdell would be greeted ecstatically as a hero.

Tony caught his lip between his teeth and tried to establish better control of his inward tumult. If Eve preferred Dave to himself, let her!

He busied himself grimly with his throttles, putting down the ship on the bare soil more than a mile from camp.

They had been seen in the air and recognized; and the camp was outpouring toward them. The tractor was leading, piled with passengers.

Tony and Dave started to run toward them; then they halted. The people from the camp began to see that one figure was not that of Eliot James.

“Who is it? Who’s with you?” came the cry from the tractor which was ahead of the runners.

“Ransdell! Dave Ransdell!” Tony yelled; and Dave stopped and lifted high his arms.

“Ransdell! Ransdell?” came back.

“Yes! They got over! The second ship got over!”

Then the welcome began.

“Tony,” said Ransdell later, when for an instant they had a few words together, “how Hendron’s changed!”

“Yes,” said Tony, “of course he has.” But he realized that to Ransdell, who had not seen their leader since the last day on earth, the alteration in Hendron’s appearance and manner was more tragic. Indeed, it seemed to Tony that in the few days he had been gone, Hendron had become whiter and weaker.

Never had Tony heard Hendron’s voice shake as now it did; and his hand, which clung to the list which Ransdell had given him, quivered as if with palsy.

It was the list of the survivors and of the dead from the second Ark, with which Hendron had insisted that he be supplied.

He had read it several times; but again and again, like a very old man, he went over it.

“It was the tubes, you say, David?” he kept reviewing the disaster at landing, with Ransdell. “Three of the tubes fused! That was the fault of the design—my fault,” he blamed himself morbidly.

“Father!” whispered his daughter to him. “Father, you ought to be happier than any other man in the world.”

“In the world!” repeated Hendron.

“In all the universe!” Eve quickly corrected. “You brought all the people in our ship over safely; and more than three hundred in the other Ark! Oh, Father, Father, no man in the universe could have done more!”

Hendron shook his head. “These people here, of whom Tony has told us. What metallurgists! They would have made a ship. Ah! Ah! Aha! Tony—David—Higgins! The rest of you! What do you think of this? The People of this planet are n

ot here because they made good their escape through space! They made their own space-ships and better ones and more of them; and escaped when they were passing some habitable sphere as they scraped some star!”

“No, Father!”

“How do you know? I tell you, they probably did it; and accomplished it so much better than I, with my bungling, that I am an amateur—a murderer. How many did I kill, David? How many did you say?… What rows of names!”

“Father, you didn’t kill them!”