Philip Wylie & Edwin Balmer - After Worlds Collide

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm

After Worlds Collide

By

Philip Wylie

And

Edwin Balmer

FOREWORD

Early in the middle third of the twentieth century a brilliant astronomer named

Sven Bronson observed through a telescope in South Africa that two bodies

were moving through space toward the solar system.

Bronson's calculations revealed to him that these wandering spheres would

pass very close to the earth, make a circuit of our sun, and turn back toward

space and infinity. The larger of the two wandering worlds would strike and

annihilate the earth. Finer and more delicate calculations tended to show that

the smaller body, which was of the same magnitude as the earth, would be

"caught" by the sun and held in an orbit between the courses of Mars and

Venus.

In other words, Bronson's discovery was an announcement of the end of the

world.

It would be an end of the world preceded by the close passage of two mighty

planets from some sun lost in the void— two planets which had been pulled

from their pathways ages ago by a passing star. The world would be replaced by

a new earth whose pathway would take it alternately out to the cold orbit of

Mars and back again to the vicinity of Venus.

The bodies were named for their discoverer: the larger one, Bronson Alpha, and

the smaller, Bronson Beta.

Sven Bronson knew the horrors that would attend the announcement of his

awful findings.

He and Lord Rhondin, the Governor of the South African Dominion, summoned

David Ransdell, a war veteran and flier, to carry the tangible demonstration to

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm (1 of 194)18-1-2007 23:06:55

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm

an American scientist, Cole Hendron. Ransdell started out with photographic

plates which proved the discovery.

Cole Hendron, the greatest astrophysicist and engineer of the century, had

already been notified of the approaching doom. He and his daughter Eve, who

acted as his assistant, checked Bronson's calculations.

There was no doubt. The earth was doomed.

Hendron, Bronson and others united the foremost scientists of the world in a

secret organization known as "The League of the Last Days" and these men

kept the information from the public for some time. Among the first laymen to

know, or guess the truth were Ransdell, the flier, and Anthony Drake, a young

New York man-about-town who was in love with Eve Hendron.

Most of the informed scientists were ready to resign themselves to universal

destruction. Cole Hendron, however, perceived a possibility of escape: if the

planet which was to occupy the earth's position were habitable, and if a vessel

capable of transporting human beings and their possessions through a few

hundred thousand miles of space could be made, a small and select group of

people might "jump" from the doomed earth to the new arrival in the solar

system. This group could then set about reestablishing mankind on a new

earth.

Hendron and his assistants set to work at once. Atomic energy adequate to

drive such a vessel exactly as a rocket is propelled was released in his

laboratories. At first it could not be harnessed, as it fused everything with

which it came in contact. Nevertheless Hendron persisted in his plans for the

space ship. The "Ark" was the name given to the ship eventually built.

For its construction, Hendron established a vast manufacturing city in

Michigan, and to it he took a thousand selected human beings—men and

women with scientific training, healthy physiques, and great courage.

While Hendron labored frantically, the world found out what was in store for it.

Society disintegrated. The first, and relatively harmless "passage" of the

Bronson bodies would be sufficiently close to cause vast terrestrial disturbances

—tides, cyclones, terrific volcanic disturbances, and earthquakes. All the

seacoast cities of the world were evacuated. New York, Boston, Philadelphia

were cleared of their population, which was moved inland at the order of the

President.

One bit of fortune came in the discovery of a new metal in the material forced

from the depths of the earth during the great eruptions. Ransdell found it and

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm (2 of 194)18-1-2007 23:06:55

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm

brought it to camp where Hendron tested it. This metal proved able to

withstand the heat of the atomic blast. The problem of propulsion of the "Ark"

was solved.

In the fantastic days that followed, Hendron and his band manufactured the

Ark, and found time and materials to make a second ship so that the balance of

their heroic group could be transported to Bronson Beta and not sacrificed. The

Michigan cantonment was attacked by bloodthirsty and hungry mobs. The first

passage killed more than half of the people of the earth. Continents split apart.

Seas rose. The internal fires of the earth burst to the surface. The moon was

smashed to atoms.

Months afterward the celestial wanderers rounded the sun and returned.

Hendron's two ships "took off" for Bronson Beta. Other ships, frantically

constructed by other nations, also leaped into space as doom fell upon our

world.

Bronson Alpha annihilated the earth and moved into the void.

Bronson Beta swung into a course about our sun.

Upon it, Hendron brought down the "Ark." With him was a company of a

hundred and three human beings. Tony Drake was one of them, and his

Japanese servant, Kyto. Eliot James, the diarist and historian of the party was

in the "Ark." So was Dodson, the surgeon, and Duquesne, the French physicist

who had been saved at the eleventh hour as the Ark stood ready to rise from

Holocaust.

A safe landing was made. The air of Bronson Beta was found to be breathable.

But there was no word of the second ship—the vessel under Ransdell's

command which had left with them. It was given up for lost Ransdell, who also

loved Eve, was presumed to have died somewhere in space with his brave

companions— Jack Taylor, the college boy who had become one of Tony's best

friends, and Peter Vanderbilt, the cynical and fearless New Yorker, and Greve

and Smith, and four hundred others.

The arrivals on Bronson Beta could rouse no answer to their radio signals.

They were forced into the awful realization that of all humanity they alone

survived. They were alone on an unknown world where a nameless and dead

race had once built cities—on a world which had been drifting through the

absolute zero of space for nameless millenia. They faced the problem of

survival. Responsibility for the future of the species was theirs.

Resolutely, they turned to their prodigious task.

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm (3 of 194)18-1-2007 23:06:55

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm

CHAPTER I THE FIRST DAY ON THE NEW PLANET

Eliot James sat at a metal desk inside the space ship which had conveyed a few

score human beings from the doomed earth to safety on the sun's new planet

Bronson Beta. In front of Eliot James was his already immemorial diary, and

over it he poised a fountain pen.

He had written several paragraphs:

"April—what shall I call it? Is it the 2nd day of April, or is it the first? Have we,

the last survivors of the earth, landed upon our new planet on All Fools Day?

That would be ironic, and yet trivial in the face of all that has happened. But as

I meditate on the date, I am in doubt about how to express time in my diary.

"The earth is gone—smashed to fragments; and the companion of its destroying

angel, upon which our band of one hundred and three Argonauts holds so brief

and hazardous a residence, is still without names, seasons and months. But

April has vanished with the earth; and for all I know, spring, winter, summer

and fall may also be absent in the new world.

"I have pledged myself to write in this diary every day, as Hendron assures me

there will be no other record of our adventures here until we have become well

enough established to permit the compilation of a formal history. And yet it is

with the most profound difficulty that I compel myself to set down words on

this, man's first morning in his new home.

"What shall I say?

"That question in truth must be read by the future generations as a cry at once

of ecstasy and despair. Ecstasy because even while the heavens fell upon them,

my companions remained firm and courageous—because in the face of

earthquakes, tornadoes, bloody battles and the unimaginable holocaust of

Destruction Day itself, they not only preserved whatever claims the race of man

may have to majesty, but by their ingenuity they escaped from the earth to this

new planet, which has invaded and attached itself to our solar system.

"And I am in despair not only because, so far as we can tell, all but one

hundred and three members of the human race have perished, not only

because my friends, my home, the cities that were familiar to me, the trees and

flowers I knew, the rivers and the oceans, the scent of the wind and the

accustomed aspects of the sky have forevermore disappeared from the universe,

and not only because I am incapable of setting down the emotions to which

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm (4 of 194)18-1-2007 23:06:55

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm

those cosmic calamities give rise, but for another reason: as vast, as stirring, as

overwhelming to the mind as those foregoing, the responsibility for half a billion

years of evolution which terminated in man rests upon myself and one hundred

and two others.

"They stand there in the sunshine under the strange sky on our brown earth—

forty-three men, fifty-seven women, two children. They have been singing—a

medley of songs which under other circumstances might seem irrelevant. Many

of them are foreigners and do not know the words, but they also sing—with

tears streaming down their faces and a catch in their voices. They sang ‘The

Processional' and they sang 'Nearer, My God, to Thee.' After that they sang

'Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here.' Then they sang 'The Marseillaise' with

Duquesne leading—leading and bellowing the words, and weeping.

"What a spectacle! Beside it, the picture of Leif Ericsson or Columbus reaching

green shores at last is dimmed to insignificance. For those ancient explorers

found the path to a mere continent, while this band has blazed a trail of fire

through space to a new planet.

"Cole Hendron is there, his magnificent head thrown back, and his face grave

under its thatch of newly whitened hair. No doubt replicas of Hendron's head

will be handed down through the ages, if ages are to follow us. His daughter

Eve has been near him, and near to Tony Drake. In young Drake one sees the

essence of the change which has taken place in all the members of our

company. The fashionable, gay-hearted New Yorker is greatly changed. So

many times in the past two years has he resigned himself to death, and so

many times has he escaped from it only through courage, audacity and good

fortune, that he seems superior to death. His face is no longer precisely young,

and it contains, side by side, elements of the stoniest inflexibility and the most

willing unselfishness. I have no doubt that if this colony survives, when the

time comes to bury our leader and our hero,—the incomparable Cole Hendron,

—it will be Drake who supersedes him in command. For by that day I am sure

the great person in that young man will have availed itself of all our technical

knowledge as a mere corollary of his remarkable character.

"And now,"—the pen wavered,—"to what I imagine whimsically as the new

future readers of my notes, I make an apology. This is our first day on Bronson

Beta. My impatience has exhausted my conscience. I must lay down my pen,

leave the remarkable ship wherein I write, and go but upon the face of this

earth untrod by man. I can restrain myself no longer."

Eliot James stepped to the gangplank that had been laid down from the Ark.

The earth around the huge metal cylinder had been melted by the blasts of its

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm (5 of 194)18-1-2007 23:06:55

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm

atomic propulsion-jets. But now it was cool again. A space of two or three

hundred yards lay between the Ark and the cliff which beetled over the

unknown sea. In that space were the planetary pilgrims. They had stopped

singing. Half of them stood on the top of the precipice regarding the waters that

rolled in from a nameless horizon. The others were distributed over the

landscape. With a smile James noted the botanist, Higgins, leaping from rock

to rock, his pockets and his hands full of specimens of ferns and mosses which

he had collected. Every few seconds his eye lighted upon a new species of

vegetation, and be knelt to gather it. But his greediness resulted invariably in

the spilling of specimens already collected, and the result was that he

continued hopping about, dropping things and picking them up, with all the

energy and disorganization of a distracted bird.

James walked down the gangplank and joined Tony, Eve and Cole Hendron.

The leader of the expedition nodded to the writer. "You certainly are a

persistant fellow, James. Some day I hope to find a situation so violent and

unique that it keeps you from working on your diary."

"We have been through a number of such situations," James answered.

"Nevertheless—" Hendron said. He checked himself. Several of the people on the

edge of the cliff had turned toward the Ark and were marching toward him.

"Hendron!" they hailed him again. "Hendron! Cole Hendron!"

Their hysteria had not yet cleared away; they remained in the emotional

excitement of the earth-cataclysm they had escaped but witnessed, and of the

incomparable adventure of their flight.

"Hendron! Hendron! What do you want us now to do?" they demanded; for their

discipline, too, yet clung to them— the stern, uncompromising discipline

demanded of them during the preparation of the Ship of Escape, the discipline

of the League of the Last Days.

Too, the amazements of this new place paralyzed them; and for that they were

not to be blamed. The wonder was that they had survived, as well, the

emotional shocks; so they surrounded again their leader, who throughout had

seen farther ahead and more clearly than them all; and who, through

Doomsday itself, had never failed them.

Hendron stepped upon an outcrop of stone, and smiled down at them. "I have

made too many speeches," he said. "And this morning is scarcely a suitable

hour for further thanksgiving. It may be proper and pleasant, later, to devote

such a day as the Pilgrims, from one side of our earth to another, did; but like

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm (6 of 194)18-1-2007 23:06:55

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm

them, it is better to wait until we feel ourselves more securely installed. When

such a time arrives, I will appoint an official day, and we shall hope to observe

it each year."

He cast his eyes over the throng and continued: "I don't know at the moment

how to express my thoughts. While I am not myself a believer in a personal

God, it seems evident to me in this hour that there was a purpose in the

invention of man. Otherwise it is difficult to understand why we were permitted

to survive. Whether you as individuals consider that survival the work of a God,

or merely an indication that we had reached a plane of sufficient fitness to

preserve ourselves, is of small moment to me now. And since I know all of you

so well, I feel it unnecessary to say that in the days ahead lies a necessity for a

prodigious amount of work.

"Your tempers and intelligences will be tried sorely by the new order which

must exist. Our first duty will be to provide ourselves with suitable homes, and

with a source of food and clothing. Our next duty will be to arrange for the

gathering of the basic materials of the technical side of our civilization-to-be. In

all your minds, I know, lies the problem of perpetuating our kind. We have,

partly through accident, a larger number of women than men. I wish to

discontinue the use of the word morality; but what I must insist on calling our

biological continuum will be the subject of a very present discussion.

"In all your minds, too, is a burning interest in the nature and features of this

new planet. We have already observed through our telescopes that it once

contained cities. To study those cities will be an early undertaking. While there

is little hope that others who attempted the flight to this planet have escaped

disaster, radio listening must be maintained. Moreover, the existence of living

material on this planet gives rise to a variety of possibilities. Some of the flora

which has sprung up may be poisonous, even dangerous, to human life. What

forms it will take and what novelties it will produce, we must ascertain as soon

as possible. I think we are safe in believing that no form of animal life can have

existed here, whether benign or perilous; but we cannot ignore the possibility

that the plant life may be dangerous. I will set no tasks for this day,— it shall

be one of rest and rejoicing,—except that I will delegate listeners for radio

messages, and cooks to prepare food for us. To-morrow, and I use an

Americanism which will become our watchword, we will all 'get busy.' "

There was a pause, then cheering. Cole Hendron stepped down from the stone.

Eve turned to Tony and took his arm. "I am glad we don't have to work today."

"No," said Tony. "Your father knows better. He realizes that, in our reaction, we

could accomplish nothing. It is the time for us to attempt to relax."

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm (7 of 194)18-1-2007 23:06:55

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm

"Can you relax, Tony?"

"No," he confessed, "and I don't want even to attempt to; but neither do I want

to apply myself to anything. Do you?"

Eve shook her head. "1 can't. My mind flies in a thousand different directions

simultaneously, it seems. Where are those cities which, from the world—our

ended world, Tony—our telescopes showed us here? What remains may we find

of their people? Of their goods and their gods and their machines? . .. What,

when they found themselves being torn away from their sun, did they do? . . .

That monument beside the road that we found, Tony—what was it? What did it

mean? ... Then I think of myself. Am I, Tony, to have children—here?"

Tony tightened his clasp upon her arm. Through all the terrors and triumphs,

through all their consternations and amazements, instincts, he found,

survived. "We will not speak of such things now," he said. "We will satisfy the

more immediate needs, such as food—deviled eggs and sandwiches; and coffee!

As if we were on earth, Eve. For once more we are on earth—this strange,

strange earth. But we have brought our identical bodies with us."

"Sardines!" Duquesne said. He patted his vast expanse of abdomen—an

abdomen which in his native land he had often maintained, and was frequently

to assert with pride on Bronson Beta, consisted not of fat but of superior

muscle. Indeed, although Duquesne was short of stature and some fifty years of

age, he often demonstrated that he was possessed not only of unquenchable

nervous energy, but of great physical strength and endurance. "Sardines!" He

rolled his eyes at half a dozen women and several of the men who were

standing near him. He took another bite of the sandwich in his hand.

Eve giggled and said privately to Tony: "All this expedition needed to make it

complete was a comedian."

Tony grinned as he too bit a crescent in a sandwich. "A comedian is a great

asset, and a comedian who was able even years ago to help Einstein solve

equations, is quite a considerable asset."

"So many things like Duquesne's arrival have happened to us," Eve said.

"Purely fortuitous accidents."

"Not all of them good."

"Who's in charge of lunch?" Eve asked a moment later.

Tony chuckled. "Who but Kyto? He, and an astronomer, and a mechanical

engineer, and a woman who is a plant biologist like Higgins, are all working in

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm (8 of 194)18-1-2007 23:06:55

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm

happy harmony. Kyto seems to understand exactly what has taken place. In

fact, there are moments when I think he is a high-born person. I had a friend

once who had a Japanese servant like Kyto, who after seven years of service

resigned. When my friend asked what he was going to do, the Japanese

informed him that he had been offered the chair of Behavioristic Psychology at

a Middle Western university. He had been going to Columbia at night for years.

Sometimes I think Kyto may be like that."

Eve did not make any response at the moment, because Duquesne was again

talking in his loud bombastic voice. He had attracted the attention of Cole

Hendron and of several others, including Dr. Dodson.

Dodson's presence on the Ark was due to the courage of a girl named Shirley

Cotton. On the night of the gory raid on Hendron's encampment, Dodson had

been given up for dead by Tony. The great surgeon's last gesture, in fact, had

been to wave to Tony to carry his still living human burden to safety. However,

before the Ark rose to sear and slay the savage hordes of marauders, Shirley

Cotton had found the dying man.

In the space of a few moments she had put a turniquet around his arm, partly

stanched a deep abdominal wound, and dragged him to a cellar in the machine-

shop, intending to hide him there. It saved both their lives, for soon afterward

the whole region was deluged by the atomic blast of the Ark as it rose and

methodically obliterated the attackers of the camp.

Dodson had recovered, but he had lost one arm. As Tony was Hendron's chief

in the direction of physical activities, Dodson became his creator of policies. He

listened now to Duquesne.

"A picnic in the summer-time on Bronson Beta, children," Duquesne boomed.

"And it is summer-time, you know. Fortunately, but inevitably from the nature

of events, still summer. My observations of the collision check quite accurately

with my calculations of what would happen; and if the deductions I made from

those calculations are correct, quite extraordinary things will happen." He

glanced at Hendron.

The leader of the expedition frowned faintly, as if Duquesne were going to say

something he did not wish to have expressed. Then he shrugged.

"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

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm (9 of 194)18-1-2007 23:06:55

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm

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?"

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Philip%20Wylie%20&%20Edwin%20Balmer%20-%20After%20Worlds%20Collide.htm (10 of 194)18-1-2007 23:06:55

Philip Wylie & Edwin Balmer - After Worlds Collide

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: