AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Thou turnest man to destruction; again thou sayest, Come again, ye children of men.”
Men and children of men on Bronson Beta too. Men millions and thousands of millions of years in the making. Azoic time—proterozoic time—hundreds of millions of years, while life slowly developed in the seas. Hundreds of millions more, while it emerged from the seas; a hundred million more, while reptiles ruled the land, the sky and water. Then they were swept away; mammals came; and man—a thousand millions years of birth and death and birth again before even the first brick could be laid in the oldest city on Bronson Beta, which men on earth had seen last night with their telescopes.
“For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday; seeing that is past as a watch in the night.
“For when thou art angry, all our days are gone; we bring our years to an end as it were a tale that is told.”
The sexton and old Hezekiah alone could not lift the box to lower it. Tony had to help them with it. He did; and his mother lay beside her husband.
To-night, when the huge Bronson Alpha and Bronson Beta with its visible cities of its own dead were on this side of the world again, the tide might rise over this hill. What matter? His mother lay where she would have chosen. A short time now, and all this world would end.
“I’ll take you away,” Tony was saying to the old minister and his wife and the older sexton. “We’re flying west to-night to the central plateau. We’ll manage somehow to take you with us.”
“Not me,” said the old sexton. “Do not take me from the will of the Lord!”
Nor would the minister and his wife be moved. They would journey to-day, when the water receded, into the higher hills; but that was all they would do.
CHAPTER 12—HENDRON’S ENCAMPMENT
THE airplane settled to earth on the high ground between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, just as the Bronson Bodies, appallingly large, rose over the eastern horizon. Nearly a thousand people came from the great cantonment to greet Tony and Hendron’s daughter. The scientist had given up his New Mexico venture entirely, and brought his congregation of human beings all to his Michigan retreat.
Greetings, however, were not fully made until the Bronson Bodies had been observed. Beta now exceeded the moon, and it shone with a pearly luster and a brilliance which the moon had never possessed. Around it was an aureole of soft radiance where its atmosphere, thawed by the warmth of the sun it so rapidly approached, had completely resumed its gaseous state.
But Bronson Beta did not compare with the spectacle of Alpha. Alpha was gigantic—bigger than the sun, and seemingly almost as bright, for the clouds which streamed up from every part of its surface threw back the sun’s light, dazzling, white and hard. There was no night. Neither Eve nor Tony had seen the camp in its completion; and when wonderment over the ascending bodies gave way to uneasy familiarity, Eliot James took them on a tour of inspection.
Hendron had prepared admirably for the days which he had known would lie ahead of his hand-picked community. There were two prodigious dining-halls, two buildings not unlike apartment houses in which the men and women were domiciled. In addition there was a building resembling a hangar set on end, which towered above the surrounding forests more than a hundred feet. At its side was the landing-field, space for the sheltering of the planes, and opposite the landing-field, a long row of shops which terminated in an iron works.
It was to the machine-shops and foundry that Eliot James last took his companions.
“The crew here,” he said to Eve, “has already finished part of the construction of the Ark which your father is planning. If we wanted to, we could build a battleship here; in the laboratories anything that has been done could be repeated; and a great many things have been accomplished that have never been done before. By to-morrow night I presume that the entire New York equipment will have been reinstalled here.”
Tony whistled. “It’s amazing. Genius, sheer genius! How about food?”
Eliot James smiled. “There is enough food for the entire congregation as long as we will need it.”
“Now show us the ‘Ark.’”
Eve’s father came out from the hangar to act as their guide.
From the hysterical white glare of the Bronson Bodies they were taken into a mighty chamber which rose seemingly to the sky itself, where the brilliance was even greater. A hundred things inside that chamber might have attracted their attention—its flood-lighting system, or the tremendous bracing of its metal walls; but their eyes were only for the object in its center. The Ark on that late July evening—the focal-point, the dream and hope of all those whom Hendron had gathered together—stood upright on a gigantic concrete block in a cradle of steel beams. Its length was one hundred and thirty-five feet. It was sixty-two feet in diameter, and its shape was cylindrical. Stream-lining was unnecessary for travel in the outer reaches of space, where there was no air to set up resistance. The metal which composed it was a special alloy eighteen inches in thickness, electro-plated on the outside with an alloy which shone like chromium.
After Tony had looked at it for a long time, he said: “It is by far the most spectacular object which mankind has ever achieved.”
Hendron glanced at him and continued his exposition. “A second shell, much smaller, goes inside; and between the inner shell and its outer guard are several layers of insulation material. Inside the shell will be engines which generate the current, which in turn releases the blast of atomic energy, store-chambers for everything to be carried, the mechanisms of control, the aeration plant, the heating units and the quarters for passengers.”
Tony tore his eyes from the sight. “How many will she carry?” he asked quietly.
Hendron hesitated; then he said: “For a trip of the duration I contemplate, she would be able to take about one hundred people.”
Tony’s voice was still quieter. “Then you have nine hundred idealists in your camp here.”
The older man smiled. “Unless I am greatly mistaken, I have a thousand.”
“They all know about the ship?”
“Something about it. Nearly half of them have been working on it, or on apparatus connected with it.”
“You pay no wages?”
