several short stories. the only one i can remember off hand is an alien spacecraft lands on earth only hours before it impacts with the the moon. they travel miles underground and find a vast libray. then minutes befor impact, 10's of thousands of ships launch from all over the planet. most make some dont. any idea?

This isn't "The Off Season," or any other story I recognize of Bradbury's.

In reply, Alexei & Cory Panshin posted to rec.arts.books.childrens:

The description reminds me of a story I read many years ago, which I'm pretty sure was "The Tunnel Under the World" by Frederik Pohl. Perhaps that's the one your person is looking for.
Cory Panshin

This answer came from Barbara-MLG at "Ex Libris, the Lost Boards" at MSN Groups:
Ummm ... this sounds like part of After Worlds Collide, by Philip Wylie and Edward Balmer, but that's a book. It's the sequel to When Worlds Collide, if you remember the movie, a wandering planet comes close enough to Earth that the gravitational pull, etc. will destroy the Earth. A ship (possibly several) escapes from Earth to the new planet. It seems to me that on the new planet they discover buildings, including a school and a library. I'll see if I can find a copy and check this.

This reply came from Rich Horton by way of rec.arts.sf.written:
That one's by Frederick Pohl.� "The Tunnel Under the World".

This reply came from Robert Carnegie by way of rec.arts.sf.written at Google Groups:
This is "Rescue Party", first published story by Arthur C. Clarke, in 1946 apparently and written the previous year ("a depressing number of people still consider it my best", he wrote in his collection _Reach for Tomorrow_, 1956(?)) and otherwise collected as reported by http://www.isfdb.org/ if it's still there.

Except that in Clarke's story it's a nova coming (the sun blowing up), the Federation starship full of aliens (yes, in 1946, but they don't have a Transporter) finds that Earth is deserted, the landing party (it's Next Generation Star Trek, the captain stays on the ship) finds the library and gets stuck in an intercontinental subway train, and one theory is that the humans are all hiding underground in a vain attempt to escape the disaster, but there isn't a last-minute flight of Earth ships (that may have come from another story) -

(incidentally, does anyone know if Gene Roddenberry actually did pinch a lot of stuff from this particular story for _Star Trek_ - excuse me, was inspired by it?)


SPOILER


at the end the aliens follow the directed transmission into space from an abandoned tv station to find our fleet of "thousands" of huge rocket ships - generation ships - which are already a very long way away from Earth. They are quite impressed by the size of the undertaking - and the last line indicates that the introduction of humans to the Federation turns the Galactic culture upside down - was it in _Astounding Science Fiction_ particularly (apparent first venue for "RP") that human superiority over aliens was the editorial mandate, prompting Asimov to produce stories without aliens? (_Foundation_.)

Anyway, also according to Clarke's preface to _RfT_, his ' "History Lesson" and "Rescue Party" both stemmed from the same forgotten original, though now it would be difficult to find two more
contrasting endings." "HL" presumably then has something of a bummer ending. Nor is it the last time he's destroyed the Earth...

Robert Carnegie