Worlds Apart by J. T. McIntosh Page B

feet, looking round to get his bearings -- over the rim of the valley where the sun had set, along it to get the line of north and south.
    "Yes, it's a new one," he said in a hard voice. "At least, it's an old one with its power stepped up. That's the sun, Toni. /The/ sun. The sun that used to waken me in the mornings when I was only a year or two younger than you are now."
    "But what. "
    "I don't know what's happened. We knew Earth was going to be destroyed, but not that the sun, too, was going to blow up. It doesn't really matter what caused it -- something did, and we can see with the naked eye that Earth's gone. Maybe that's the history of all novas -- a so-called intelligent race develops atomic physics."
    He dropped to the ground.again. "Oh, well," he said philosophically, "it only proves what we were taking for granted anyway."
    He saw that Toni was not really very much interested. Her sole concern was the effect of the affair on him.
    That was another thing in which the founders and their children had always differed, he realized. The older people had said openly that Earth was destroyed and Mundis was the last hope, the last stand of the human race.
    But they never quite believed it~ They had continued to hope that by some accident, some freak, radioactivity would suddenly decide not to be dangerous and Earth would he there, green and lovely and safe, if ever they went back from Mundis.
    The young people, on the other hand, with no fixation on Earth, no particular feelings about it, believed what they were told, and counted Earth out of their calculations. Earth was not, as it would always be to the founder colonists, /home/. Home was Mundis. The young people called themselves Mundans. They were human too; they had no idea, as the founders had, that the only real place for humans was Earth.
    No, this would mean nothing to the youngsters, Pertwee realized. But it meant a lot to the people who had been born on Earth.
    4
    Bentley sat in his chair as before. He had even arranged that Dick and Rog and June would come along and hear more of the story of Earth that had led up to the story of Mundis. They would have been there now -- if last night a new star had not suddenly blazed in the sky.
    The Council fell into a panic -- at least, the founder colonist part of it did. This was final proof of the utter deadliness of atomic power. Not only had it destroyed Earth, but Earth's very sun. Probably the region where Earth had been was now filled with gases at a billion degrees centigrade. Bentley didn't think it worth while to deliver a lecture as a physicist. In any case, obviously Earth no longer existed in any recognizable form.
    Mary came out and joined him. "You think they should have let you go on as you planned, don't you?" she said.
    Bentley shrugged. "This makes no difference," he said. "It was fourteen years ago, anyway."
    Mary was silent. Bentley realized with a slightly hurt feeling that for the first time they were not in agreement.
    "You think they were right to forbid me to tell the young people any more?" he asked.
    "Yes," she said quietly.
    "In heaven's name, why? I only meant to tell them a little more of the truth. So that they would see for themselves that it was unwise to meddle with atomic power."
    "Won't they see that for themselves, now?"
    "Not without some explanation."
    Mary sighed. "I never believed explanation was so very important," she admitted.
    "But tell me," asked Bentley doggedly. "What difference does this make?"
    "That we know it's up to us now."
    "Well, weren't we working on that basis anyway?"
    "Of course, but . . . " She tried to put into words what she felt in her heart. The words wouldn't come. She shook her head and left him.
    Bentley's hurt grew. So even Mary was going to go around moaning, apathetic, because what they had expected for so many years had happened,
    He tried to work out what had happened, and when. They had left Earth thirty-eight years before. The sun had blazed with