After Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 2)

“I agree with you,” said Hendron.

“And when I thought about looking for them, it seemed darned difficult. After all, Bronson Beta has an area of more than five hundred million square kilometers, and any one of those five hundred million would be big enough to hide a ship like the Ark. Besides, we don’t even know where the land is, except in a general way.”

“I’ve got maps made for telescopic photographs,” Eve said, “but they’re not very good. Bronson Beta was mighty hard to observe—first with its atmosphere thawing, then its water. You could get a peek through the perpetual clouds at a little chunk of water or a small area of land now and again, but all the photographs I collected don’t give a very good idea of its geography.” She reached in her pocket and took out a piece of paper. “Here is a rough sketch I made of the East and West hemisphere; it isn’t very good cartography, but it will give you some idea of what little we do know of the planet’s surface.”

They bent over the map for a few moments. Hendron said: “It would be like looking for a haystack on a continent, so that you could look for a needle in the haystack when you found it.”

“And besides,” Tony continued, “you might go over the place, where the people you were looking for were, at night, and in that case your jets would completely annihilate them.”

Cole Hendron’s face showed amazement. Then he said:

“By George, Tony, you’re quite right! And do you know that although I spent a lot of time thinking about looking for other human beings here, and although I originally considered we would probably make long excursions in the Ark until I realized it would be more sensible to take it down at once, it never occurred to me for an instant that our jets would be dangerous to anybody underneath, even in spite of the fact that I used it to wipe out that army of hoodlums that attacked us. It just goes to show what you may omit when you think. Still, I am of the opinion that we arrived here alone out of all the expeditions. If our crops fail us entirely because of too much heat, or because it gets cold too soon, or for reasons we cannot anticipate now—” He paused.

“Twenty-five or thirty of us might get through the winter on the provisions I’ve brought. But all of us couldn’t.”

With the injection of that grim thought into their breakfast conversation, the meal was brought to an end.

“It therefore behooves me,” Tony said, “to look for farm lands, and get some sort of crops in.”

Half an hour later Tony started out with Higgins. Tony carried a knapsack in which there was food enough for two days for both of them. He also carried a pair of blankets and a revolver. He had objected to the revolver, as it had been his wish to appear in complete possession of himself. Reason argued that there would be no phenomenon on the new planet which might make firearms useful, but imagination made the possession of a gun a great comfort, and Hendron had insisted he take it.

As the two men started, the sound of hammering was already audible inside the Ark, and most of the members of the company were engaged in useful work.

A few watched their start. Tony reached into his pocket and took out a quarter. “I’ve carried this from Earth,” he said to Higgins, “for just such emergencies. Heads we go inland; tails we go along the coast.”

The coin landed with the eagle up. Tony flipped it again, saying as it spun in the air: “Heads we go north, tails we go south.” Again the eagle. Tony pointed toward the coastline and said: “Forward.”

The people who were seeing them off waved and called: “Good luck!”

“You’ll have to abandon your botanical pursuits, I’m afraid,” Tony said to the elderly scientist. “I usually hit a pretty fast pace. If I go too fast, let me know.”

“Very well,” Higgins said, and he chuckled dryly. “But I’d like to tell you, young man, that I’ve spent three sabbatical years climbing mountains in Tibet and Switzerland and the Canadian Northwest, and I dare say I’ll be able to keep up with you.”

Tony glanced at the scrawny, pedagogical little man at his side, and once more he felt almost reverent toward Hendron. Who would have thought that this student of plants, this desiccated college professor, was also a mountain-climber? Yet, since a plant biologist of the highest capabilities was essential to the company of the Ark, how much better it was to take a man who not only knew his subject magnificently, but who also could scale rugged peaks!

For an hour they walked along the bluff that faced the sea—a continuation of the landscape upon which the Ark had landed. It was rocky and barren, except for such ferns and mosses as they had already observed. Of dead vegetation there seemed to be nothing which had grown as large as a tree or indeed even a bush. The whole area appeared to have been what on earth would have been called a moor—though Higgins could recall no earthly moor of this character or evident extent. The ground inland was a plateau ranged with low hills, and in the remote distance the tops of a mountain-range could be seen.

At the end of an hour they saw ahead of them an arm of hills that ran at right angles down to the ocean and extended out in a long rocky promontory. At the foot of the promontory was a cove, and in the cove were beaches. They climbed to the highest near-by elevation and surveyed the arid, rock-strewn plateau.

“I don’t believe,” said Tony, “that there is any farm land in this area.”

Higgins shook his head. “I think if we can find a place to get down over the cliff to the edge, we can go around that point at water level.”

They continued along a little way, and presently Higgins pointed to a “chimney” in the precipice. He looked at Tony with a twinkle in his eyes. “How about it?”

Tony stared into the narrow slit in the rock. It was almost perpendicular, and only the smallest cracks and outcroppings afforded footholds and handholds. He was on the point of suggesting that they find a more suitable place to descend, when he realized that the older man was laughing at him.

Tony set his jaw. “Fine!”

Higgins started down the chimney. He had not let himself over the edge before it was apparent that he was not only a skillful climber, but a man of considerable wiry strength.

Tony had always felt an instinctive alarm in high places, and he had no desire for the task ahead of him. Perspiration oozed from him, and his muscles quivered, as he lowered himself into position for the descent. It was ticklish, dangerous work. Two hundred feet below them lay a heap of jagged rocks, and around that the beach. Tony did not dare look down, and yet it was necessary to look for places to put his feet; and from the corner of his eye he was continually catching glimpses of the depth of the abyss below. His composure was by no means

increased when the Professor below him called: “Maybe I should have gone last, because if you fall where you are now, you’ll probably knock me off.”

Tony said nothing. Twenty minutes later, however, he felt horizontal ground under his feet. He was standing on the beach. He was covered with perspiration; his clothes were soaked. His face was white. He looked up at the precipice which they had descended; and he said, with his best possible assumption of carelessness: “I thought that was going to be difficult. There was nothing to it.”

The Professor gave him a resounding clap on the back. “My boy,” he exclaimed, “you’re all right! That was one of the nastiest little jobs I’ve ever undertaken.”