After Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 2)

“You might as well say it. You might as well tell them, I suppose. I wasn’t going to describe our calculations until they had been thoroughly checked.”

Duquesne shook his head backward and forward pontifically. “I might as well tell them, because already they are asking.” He addressed those within earshot. “We will have a little class in astronomy.” He put to use two resources—the smooth vertical surface of a large stone, and a smaller stone which he had picked up to scratch upon the bowlder.

As Duquesne began to talk, all the members of the group gathered around the flat bowlder to watch and listen.

“First,” he began, “I will draw the solar system as it was.” He made a small circle and shaded it in. “Here, my friends, is the sun.” He circumscribed it with another circle and said: “Mercury.” Outside the orbit of Mercury he drew the orbits respectively of Venus, Earth and Mars. He looked at the drawing with beaming satisfaction, and then at his listeners. “So this is what we had had. This is where we have been. Now. I draw the same thing without the Earth.”

He repeated the diagram—this time with three concentric circles instead of four. A broad gap was left where the earth’s orbit had been. Again he stepped away from the diagram and looked at it proudly. “So—Mercury we have; Venus we have; and Mars we have. The Earth we do not have. Bear in mind, my children, that these circles I have drawn are not exactly circles. They are ellipses. But they vary only slightly from circles. Mr. Cole Hendron’s associates will give you, I do not doubt, very fine maps. This rock-scratching of mine is but a child’s crude diagram. I proceed. I set down next the present position of this world on which we stand—Bronson Beta.”

Every one watched intently while he drew an ellipse which, on one side, came close to the orbit of Venus, and on the other approached the circle made by the planet Mars on its journey around the sun.

“Here is our path, closer to the sun than the Earth has been; and also farther away. The hottest portion of this new path of this new planet about the sun already had been passed when we fled here. This world had made its closest approach in rounding the sun, and it had reached the point in its orbit which our earth had reached in April. Now we are going away from the sun, but on such a path that—and under such conditions that—only slowly will the days grow colder.”

“They will become, when we get out on that portion of our path near Mars,” a man among his hearers questioned, “how cold?”

Duquesne called upon his comic knack to turn this question. He shivered so grotesquely that the audience laughed. “The most immediately interesting feature of our strange situation will be, my friends, the amazing character of our days. Many of you have been told of that; so I ask you. Who will answer? Hands, please!” He pretended to be teaching a class of children. “How long will be our days?”

They nearly all laughed; and several raised their hands. “You, Mr. Tony Drake. You, I know, have become like so many others a splendid student of astronomy. How long will be our days?”

“Fifty hours, approximately,” replied Tony.

“Excellent! For what determines the length of the day? Of course it is the time which the planet takes to turn upon its own axis. It has nothing whatever to do with the sun, or the path about the sun; it is a peculiarity of the planet itself, and inherent in it from the forces which created it at its birth. Bronson Beta happens to be rotating on its axis in approximately fifty hours, so our days—and our nights—will be a trifle more than twice as long as those to which we have become accustomed. Now—hands again—how long will our year be? Let one of the ladies speak this time!”

“Four hundred and twenty-eight days!” a girl’s voice said. Her name was Mildred Pope.

“Correct,” applauded Duquesne, “if you speak in terms of the days of our perished planet. It will take four hundred and twenty-eight of our old days for Bronson Beta”—Duquesne, not without some satisfaction, stamped upon it—“to circle the sun; but of the longer days with which we are now endowed, the circuit will consume only two hundred and five and a fraction. It tears up our old calendars, doesn’t it? We start out, among many other adventures, with new calculations of time. So we will rotate in some fifty hours, and swing in toward Venus and out toward

Mars, in our great elliptical orbit, making a circuit of the sun in four hundred and twenty-eight of our old days—which will live now only in our memories—or two hundred and five of our new days. Around and about, in and out, we will go—let us hope, forever.”

His audience was silent. Duquesne let them study his sketches on his natural blackboard before he observed: “A few obvious consequences will at once occur to you.”

Higgins, who had dropped his plants while he listened, gave his impromptu answer like a grade boy in a classroom: “Of course; our summers will be very hot, and our winters will be very cold and very long.”

Duquesne nodded. “Quite so. But there is one fortunately favorable feature. What chiefly determined the seasons on the old earth,” he reminded, “was the inclination of the earth upon its axis. If Bronson Beta had a similar or a greater inclination in reference to the plane of its orbit around the sun, all effects would be exaggerated. But we find actually less inclination here. Whether that may be a favorable feature ‘provided’ for us by some Power watching over this singularly fortunate party, or whether it is one of innumerable accidents of creation which have no real causative connection with our destinies, the fact remains: The equinoxes on Bronson Beta will not march back and forth on the northern and southern hemispheres with such great changes in temperatures. Instead, as we round the sun at its focus,”—he pointed with his chubby finger,—“there will be many, many long hot days. Perhaps our equator at that time will not be habitable. And later, as we round the imaginary focus out here in space so near to the orbit of Mars, it may be very cold indeed, and perhaps then only the equator will be comfortable. So we may migrate four times a year. From the Paris of our new world to its Nice—I mean to say, from the New York City to its Miami. Does one think of anything else?”

Hendron was looking tentatively from one face to the next of his Argonauts. He had been reasonably sure that Bronson Beta would travel in the ellipse Duquesne had described; and from the behavior of the celestial bodies at the time of the collision, he had formed his calculations; but he had not wanted to worry them with thoughts of excessive heat and extreme cold in their new home, and he had enjoined the other mathematicians, astronomers and astrophysicists to say nothing. He was pleased with the reaction of the people. There was no fear in their faces, no dismay. Only a great interest.

The silence was broken by a question from Dodson: “How close will we come to Venus and Mars?”

Duquesne shrugged. Eve turned to Dodson and said: “If my figures are right, it will be three million miles at periods many, many years apart. Three million miles from Mars, and at the most favorable occasion about four from Venus.”

Dodson’s eyebrows lifted. “Is that dangerous?”

Eve shook her head. “The perturbations of all three planets will, of course, be great. But as far as danger of collision is concerned, there is none.”

The group was thoughtful.

“There will be a great opportunity,” Dodson said slowly, “to study those two planets at close range. We must build a good telescope.”

“Telescope!” The word burst from Duquesne. His eyes traveled over the members of the group standing in front of him to the tall, shining cylinder of the Space Ship. There they remained; and slowly, one by one, the people turned to look at the Ark which had carried them from Earth to Bronson Beta. They realized the meaning of Duquesne’s steady gaze. There would be an opportunity in the future not only to study Venus and Mars at close range—but to voyage to them.

Duquesne dropped the stone with which he had been drawing, and stepped away from his diagram.

Eliot James walked over to Tony and Eve. “That is something I didn’t think of,” he murmured. “Something I didn’t think of Stupendous! Colossal!”

Eve smiled. “Father and I thought of it independently a long time ago. It will make your journey around the United States after the first passing seem pretty trifling.”

James shook his head in agreement. “I’d want Vanderbilt with me again if I went on such a trip. And Ransdell.” Abruptly he stopped. Vanderbilt and Ransdell had been lost on the other Space Ship. James flushed, as he looked at Eve. “I’m sorry, Eve. For an instant I forgot.”