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The days did not suffice for the work to be done, particularly in preparation of the Space Ship.
Hendron had the power. Under the pressure of impending doom, the group laboring under him had “liberated” the amazing energy in the atom—under laboratory conditions. They had possessed, therefore, a potential driving power enormously in excess of that ever made available before. They could “break up” the atom at will, and set its almost endless energies to work; but what material could harness that energy and direct it into a driving force for the Space Ship?
Hendron and his group experimented for hour after desperate hour through their days, with one metal, another alloy and another after another.
At night, in the reaction of relaxation, there were games, motion pictures which had been preserved, and a variety of private enterprises which included organization and rehearsal of a very fine orchestra. There were dances, too; and while the thin crescents of the Bronson Bodies hung in the sky like cosmic swords of Damocles, there were plays satirizing human hopes and fates in the shed next to that wherein the Space Ship, still lacking its engine, was being prepared.
The excellent temper of the colony was flawed rarely. However, there were occasional lapses. One night during a dance a girl from California suddenly became hysterical and was carried from the hall shouting: “I won’t die!” On another occasion a Berlin astronomer was found dead in his bed—beside him an empty bottle of sleeping-powders holding down a note which read: “Esteemed friends: The vitality of youth is required to meet the tension of these terrible days with calmness. I salute you.” The astronomer was buried with honors.
Tony perceived an evidence of the increasing tension in Eve when they walked, late one afternoon, through the nearby woods.
She saw on the pine-needle carpet of the forest a white flower. She plucked it, looked at it, smelled it and carried it away. After they had proceeded silently for some distance, she said: “It’s strange to think about matters like this flower. To think that there will never be any more flowers like this again in the universe—unless we take seeds with us!”
“That impresses you, perhaps,” said Tony, “because we can come closer to realizing the verdict—no more flowers—than we can the verdict ‘no more us.’”
“I suppose so, Tony. Did David ever tell you that, in his first conference at Capetown with Lord Rhondin and Professor Bronson, they were excited over realizing there would be no more lions?”
“No,” said Tony, very quietly. “He never mentioned it to me.”
“Tell me, Tony,” she asked quickly, “you aren’t jealous?”
“How, under the conditions laid down by your father,” retorted Tony, “could anybody be ‘jealous’? You’re not going to be free to pick or choose your own husband—or mate—or whatever he’ll be called, on Bronson Beta. And if we never get there, certainly I’ll have nothing to be jealous about.”
The strain was telling, too, on Tony.
“He may not even return to us here,” Eve reminded. “And we would never know what happened to the three of them.”
“It would have to be a good deal, to stop them. Each one’s damn’ resourceful in his own way; and Ransdell is sure a flyer,” Tony granted ungrudgingly. “Yet if the plane cracked, they’d never get back. There’s not a road ten miles long that isn’t broken by some sort of landslip or a chasm. Land travel has simply ceased. It isn’t possible that there’s a railroad of any length anywhere in operation; and a car would have to be an amphibian as well as a tank to get anywhere.
“Sometimes, when day follows day and nobody arrives or passes, I think it must mean that every one else in the world is dead; then I remember the look of the land—especially of the roads, and I understand it. This certainly has become a mess of a world; and I suppose the best we can expect is some such state awaiting us,” Tony smiled grimly, “if we get across to Bronson Beta.
“No; that’s one of the funny things about our possible future situation. If we get across to Bronson Beta, we’ll find far less damage there.”
“Why?” Tony had not happened to be with the scientists when this had been discussed.
“Because Bronson Beta seems certain to be a world a lot like this; and it has never been as close as we have been to Bronson Alpha. It wasn’t the passing of Bronson Beta that tore us up so badly; it was the passing of the big one, Bronson Alpha. Now, Bronson Beta has never been nearly so close to Bronson Alpha, as we have been. Beta circles Alpha, but never gets within half a million miles of it. So if we ever step upon that world, we’ll find it about as it has been.”
“As it has been—for how many years?” Tony asked.
“The ages and epochs of travel through space.… You ought to talk more with Professor Bronson, Tony. He just lives there. He’s so sure we’ll get there! Exactly how, he doesn’t bother about; he’s passed that on to Father. His work assumes we can get across space in the Ship, and land. He starts with the landing; what may we reasonably expect to find there, beyond water and air—and soil? Which of us, who may make up the possible crew of the ship, will have most chances to survive under the probable conditions? What immediate supplies and implements—food and so on—must we have with us? What ultimate supplies—seeds and seedlings to furnish us with food later? What animals, what birds and insects and crustacea, should we take along?
“You see, that world must be dead, Tony. It must have been dead, preserved in the frightful, complete cold of absolute zero for millions of years.… You’d be surprised at some of the assumptions Professor Bronson makes.
“He assumes, among other things, that we can find some edible food—some sort of grain, probably, which absolute zero would have preserved. He assumes that some vegetable life—the vegetation that springs from spores, which mere cold cannot destroy—will spring to life automatically.
“Tony, you must see his lists of the most essential things to take with us. His work is the most fascinating here. What animals, do you supose, he’s figured we must take with us to help us to survive?”
* * *
On the tenth of September, the inhabitants of the strangely isolated station which existed for the perfection of the Space Ship, began to look—although prematurely—for the return of the explorers into the world which had been theirs.
The three had agreed on the fourteenth as the first possible day for their return; but so great was the longing to learn the state of the outside world, that on the twelfth even those who felt no particular concern for the men who ventured in the airplane, began to watch the sky, casting upward glances as their duties took them out of doors.
It was difficult for anyone to work on the appointed day. The fourteenth was bright. The wind was gentle and visibility good—although the weather had never returned to what would have been considered normal for northern Michigan in the summer. There was always a moderate amount of haze. Sometimes the sky was obscured by new and interminable clouds of volcanic dust. The thermometer ranged between eighty and ninety-five, seldom falling below the first figure. From the laboratory, the dining-halls, the shops, powerhouse, kitchens and the hangar, men and women constantly emerged into the outdoors to stand silently, inspecting the sky.
No one went to bed that night until long after the usual hour. Then, reluctantly, those overwearied, those who had arduous tasks and heavy responsibilities on the morrow, regretfully withdrew. Fears now had voices.
“They’re so damn’ resourceful, I can’t believe they could miss out.”
