When Worlds Collide Page 13

  The electrician nodded. “We will. Some of the big shots are inside. Shall I tell them to come out to see you?”

  An idea suddenly struck Tony. “Look here. Why shouldn’t I go see them if I want to? Why is it you expect them to come out and see me?”

  “You’re the boss, aren’t you?”

  “What makes you think I’m the boss?”

  The man looked at him quizzically. “Why, it said so in the instruction-book we got when we were all sent out here. Everybody got a copy. It said you were second in command in any emergency to Mr. Hendron; and this is an emergency, isn’t it?”

  Tony was staggered by this new information. “It said that in a book?”

  “Right. In the book of rules that everybody that lives here got the day they came. I had one in my pocket, but I lost pocket, book and all, out there on the landing-field.”

  Tony conquered his surprise. It flashed through his mind that Hendron was training him to be in command of those who stayed behind and launched the Space Ship. He was conscious of a naïve pride at this indication of the great scientist’s confidence in him. “I won’t bother the men here,” he said. “Just so long as we get as many lights as possible in operation, as fast as possible.”

  He found a group of men standing speculatively in front of the men’s hall. One of the side walls had been shattered, and bricks had cascaded from the front walls to the ground. Tony looked at the building critically, and then said: “I don’t think anybody should occupy it.”

  “There are a good many men in there asleep right now. Probably they entered in the dark without noticing the condition of the building.”

  Tony addressed the crowd. “If two or three of you care to volunteer to go in with me, we’ll get them all out. The men will sleep for the time being on the floor in the south dining-hall.”

  He went into the insecure building, and practically all of the men who had been regarding it from the outside accompanied him. They roused the sleepers.

  The floor of the dining-hall was dry: men in dozens, and then in scores, without speech, among themselves, pushed aside the tables and stretched out on the bare boards, falling instantly to sleep.

  Next Tony went to the kitchen. Fires were going in two stoves; more coffee was ready, the supply of sandwiches had overtaken the demand, and kettles of soup augmented it. Taylor was still in charge, and he made his report as soon as he saw Tony.

  “The big storehouses are half underground, as you probably know, and I don’t think the food in them has been hurt much, although it has been shaken up. I didn’t know anything about the feeding arrangements, but I’ve located a bunch of men who did. There’s apparently a large herd of livestock and a lot of poultry about a quarter of a mile in the woods. I’ve sent men there to take charge. They already reported that the sheep and goats and steers didn’t budge, although their pens and corrals were destroyed. They’re putting up barbed-wire for the time being. Everything got shaken up pretty badly, and the water and mud spoiled whatever it got into, but most of the stuff was in big containers. The main that carried the water from the reservoir is all smashed to hell, and I guess the water in the reservoir isn’t any good anyway. I’m boiling all that I use, but somebody has just got the bright idea of using the fire apparatus and hoses from some of these young lakes.”

  “You’ve done damned well, Taylor,” Tony said. “Do you think you can carry on for a few hours more?”

  “Sure. I’m good for a week of this.”

  Tony watched the innumerable chores which were being done by men under Taylor’s instruction. He noticed for the first time that the work of reclaiming the human habitations was not being done altogether by the young men, the mechanics and the helpers whom Hendron had enlisted. Among Taylor’s group were a dozen middle-aged scientists whose names had been august in the world three months before that day. Unable for the time to carry on their own tasks, they were laboring for the common weal with mops and brooms and pails and shovels.

  When Tony went outdoors again, it was four o’clock, though he had no means of knowing the time. Once again he noticed that the air was cooler. He made his way down the almost impassable trail to the stockyards, and found another group of men working feverishly with the frightened animals and the clamorous poultry. Then he walked back to the “village green.” So far as he could determine, every effort was being bent toward reorganizing the important affairs of the community. He had at last the leisure in which to consider himself and the world around him.

  Perspiration had carried away the dirt on his face and hands, but his clothes were still mucky. The dampness of the air had prevented that mud from drying. His hair was still caked. He walked in the direction of the flying-field, and presently found what he sought—a depression in the ground which had been filled with water to a depth of three or four feet, and in which water the mud had settled. He waded into the pool carefully so as not to disturb the silt on the bottom. The water was warm. He ducked his head below the surface and laved his face with his hands.

  When he stepped out, he was relatively clean, though his feet became immediately encased in mud again.

  Slowly he walked to the top of the small hill from which he had watched the Bronson Bodies on the evening before. He felt a diminution of the sulphur and other vapors in the air, His throat was raw, but each breath did not sting his lungs as it had during the last hours when they had been lying in the open field. He noticed again a quality of thinness in the air which persisted in spite of the heat and moisture. He wondered if the entire chemistry of the earth’s atmosphere had been changed—if, for example a definite percentage of its normal oxygen had been consumed. That problem, however, was unsolvable, at least for the time.

  By straining his eyes into the distance, and aiding their perceptions with imagination, he could deduce the general changes in the local landscape. The hurricane had uprooted, disheveled and destroyed the surrounding portions except where hill-crests protected small patches of standing trees. One-half of the flying-field had been lifted eight or ten feet above the other, so that its surface looked like two books of unequal thickness lying edge to edge. The open space inside the “U” of buildings which Hendron had constructed was littered with rubbish, most of it tree-branches. One dining-hall had collapsed. The men’s dormitory was unsafe until it could be repaired. Everywhere was an even coat of soft brown mud which on the level must have attained a depth of ten inches—and the rain which still fell in occasional interludes continued to bring down detritus from the skies.

  What had happened to the rest of the world, to what had been Michigan, to the United States, to the continents and the oceans would have to be determined at some future time.

  For the moment, calm had come. The Bronson Bodies not only had passed and withdrawn toward the sun, but they shone no longer in the night sky. If atmospheric conditions permitted, they would be visible dimly by day; but only by day. As a matter of fact, from the camp they were completely invisible; not even the sun could be clearly seen.

  But the night came on clear—clear and almost calm. The mists had settled, and the clouds moved away. Dust and gases hung in the air; still the stars showed.

  The moon, too, should be shining, Tony thought. Tonight there should be a full moon; but only stars were in the sky. Had he reckoned wrong?

  He was standing alone, looking up and checking his mental calculations, when some one stopped beside him.

  “What is it, Tony?” Hendron said.

  “Where’s the moon to-night?”

  “Where—that’s it: where? That’s what we’d like to know—exactly what happened. We had to miss it, you see; probably nowhere in the world were conditions that permitted observation when the collision occurred; and what a thing to see!”

  “The collision!” said Tony.

  “When Bronson Alpha took out the moon! I thought you knew it was going to happen, Tony. I thought I told you.”

  “Bronson Alpha took out the moon!… You told me that
it would take out the world when we meet it next on the other side of the sun; but you didn’t mention the moon!”

  “Didn’t I? I meant to. It was minor, of course; but I’d have given much to have been able to see it. Bronson Alpha, if our calculations proved correct, collided with the moon in a glancing blow. That is, it was not a center collision; but it surely broke up the moon into fragments. Most of them may have merged with the far greater body; but others we may see later. There are conditions under which they would form a band of dust and fragments about the earth like the rings about Saturn. In any case, there is no use looking for the moon, Tony. The moon has met its end; it is forever gone. I wish we could have seen it.”

  Tony was silent. Strange to stare into a sky into which never again the moon would rise! Strange to think that now that the terrible tides raised by the Bronson Bodies had fallen, there would not be any tide at all. Even the moon tides were gone. The seas, so enormously upsucked and swept back and forth, were left to lap at their shores in this unnatural, moonless calm.

  “However,” said Hendron, “when the world encounters Bronson Alpha, we’ll see that, I hope.”

  “See it—from the world?” said Tony.

  “From space, I hope, if we succeed with our ship—from space on our way to Bronson Beta. What a show that will be, Tony, from space with no clouds to cut if off! And then landing on that other world, whose cities we have seen!”

  “Yes,” said Tony.

  CHAPTER 15—RECONNAISSANCE

  SO through the darkness of that moon-lost night, Tony continued to work. He mustered new gangs for the dreary tasks of salvage, and of rehabilitating and reconstructing the shelters.

  He organized, directed, exhorted and cheered men on, wondering at them as they responded and redoubled their efforts. He wondered no less at himself. What use, in the end, was all this labor? A few months, and they would meet the Bronson Bodies again; and this time, Bronson Alpha would not pass the world. As it had extinguished the moon, it would annihilate the earth too! This solid ground!

  Tony stamped upon it.

  No wonder, really, that these men responded and that he exhorted and urged them on. They, and he, could not realize that the world was doomed, any more than a man could realize that he himself must die. Death is what happens to others! So other worlds may perish; but not ours, on which we stand!

  Tony clapped his hands together loudly. “All right, fellows! Come on! Come on!” Clouds gathered again, and rain was pouring down.

  When light began again to filter through the darkly streaming heavens, Hendron re-awoke. He found Tony drunk with fatigue, carrying on by sheer effort of will, and refusing to rest.

  Hendron called some of the men who had been taking Tony’s commands, and had him carried bodily to bed.…

  Tony opened his eyes. One by one he collected all the disjointed memories of the past days. He perceived that he was lying on a couch in Hendron’s offices in the west end of the machine-shop and laboratory building. He sat up and looked out the window. It was notably lighter, although the clouds were still dense; and as he looked, a stained mist commenced to descend. A slight noise in one corner of the room attracted his attention. A man sat there at a desk quietly scribbling. He raised his eyes when Tony looked at him. He was a tall, very thin man, with dark curly hair and long-lashed blue eyes. His age might have been thirty-five—or fifty. He had a remarkably high forehead and slim, tactile hands. He smiled at Tony, and spoke with a trace of accent.

  “Good morning, Mr. Drake. It is not necessary to ask if you slept well. Your sleep was patently of the most profound order.”

  Tony swung his feet onto the floor. “Yes, I think I did sleep well. We haven’t met, have we?”

  The other man shook his head. “No, we haven’t; but I’ve heard about you, and I should imagine that you have heard my name once or twice in the last few weeks.” A smile flickered on his face. “I am Sven Bronson.”

  “Good Lord!” Tony walked across the room and held out his hand. “I’m surely delighted to meet the man who—” He hesitated.

  The Scandinavian’s smile returned. “You were going to say, ‘the man who was responsible for all this.’”

  Tony chuckled, shook Bronson’s hand, and then looked down at the bedraggled garments which only partially covered him. “I’ve got to find some clothes and get shaved.”

  “It’s all been prepared,” Bronson said. “In the private office, there’s a bath of sorts ready for you, and some clean clothes and a razor.”

  “Somebody has taken terribly good care of me,” Tony said. He yawned and stretched. “I feel fine.” At the door he hesitated. “What’s the news, by the way? How are things? How is everybody?”

  Bronson tapped his desk with his pencil. “Everybody is doing nicely. There are only a dozen people left in the hospital now. Your friend Taylor has the commissary completely rehabilitated, and everybody here is saying pleasant things about him. I don’t know all the news, but it is picturesque, to say the least. Appalling, too! For instance the spot on which we now reside was very considerably raised last week. It has apparently been lifted again, together with no one knows how much surrounding territory, so the elevator sensations we felt in the field were decidedly accurate. We presume that many thousands of square miles may have been raised simultaneously; otherwise there would have been more local fracture. The radio station has been functioning again.”

  “Good Lord!” Tony exclaimed. “I forgot all about the radio station last night—that is to say, to-day is to-morrow, isn’t it? What day is this?”

  “This is the twenty-ninth.” Tony realized that he has been asleep for twenty-four hours. “The man in the wireless division went to work on the station immediately. Anyway, not much has come in, though we picked up a station in New Mexico, and a very feeble station somewhere in Ohio. The New Mexico station reports some sort of extraordinary phenomena, together with a violent eruption of a volcanic nature in their district; the one in Ohio merely appealed steadily for help.”

  At once Tony inferred the import of Bronson’s words. “You mean to say that you’ve only heard two stations in all this country?”

  “You deduce things quickly, Mr. Drake. Of course the static is so tremendous still that it would be impossible to hear anything from any foreign country; and doubtless other stations are working which we will pick up later, as well as many which will be reconditioned in the future; but so far, we have received only two calls.”

  Tony opened the door to the adjacent office. “That means, then, that nearly everybody has been—”

  The Scandinavian’s long white hands locked, and his eyes affirmed Tony’s speculation.…

  “I’ll get myself cleaned up,” said Tony.

  And he stepped into a big galvanized tub of water that had been kept warm by a small electric heater. He bathed, shaved and dressed in his own clothes, which had been brought from his quarters in the partly demolished men’s dormitory. Afterward he went to the laboratories and found Hendron.

  “By George, you look fit, Tony!” were Hendron’s first words. “Eve is impatiently waiting for you. She’s at the dining-hall.”

  Tony found Eve cheerful and bright-eyed. With a dozen or more women, she was rearranging and redecorating the dining-hall, which had been immaculately cleaned. She went out on the long veranda with him.

  “Notice how much clearer the air is?” Eve asked. “Most of the fumes have disappeared.… It’s hard to shake the superstition that natural disasters are directed at you, isn’t it, Tony?”

  “Are we sure it’s a superstition, Eve?”

  “After all, what has happened to us is only the sort of thing that has happened before, thousands of times, on this earth of ours, Tony, on a smaller scale—at Pompeii, at Mt. Pelée and Krakatao and at other places. What can be the differences in the scale of the God of the cosmos, whether He shakes down San Francisco and Tokio twenty years apart, buries Pompeii when Titus was ruling Rome, and blows up Krakatao eighte
en hundred years later—or whether he decides to smash it all at once? It’s all the same sort of thing.”

  “Yes,” agreed Tony. “It’s only the scale of the performance that’s different. Anyway, we’ve survived so far. I heard you were safe, Eve; and then when I could hear no more, I supposed you were safe. You had to be safe.”

  “Why, Tony?”

  “If anything was to keep any meaning for me.” He stared at her, himself amazed at what he said. “The moon’s gone, I suppose you know!”

  “Yes. It was known that it would go.”

  “And we—the world goes like the moon, with the return of Bronson Alpha!”

  “That’s still true, Tony,” she said, standing before him, and quivering as he did.

  He gestured about. “They all know that now.”

  “Yes,” she said. “They’ve been told it.”

  “But they don’t know it. They can’t know a thing like that just from being told—or even from what they’ve just been through.”

  “Neither can we, Tony.”

  “No; we think we—you and I, at least—are going to be safe somehow. We are sure, down in our hearts—aren’t we, Eve?—that you and I will pull through. There’ll be some error in the calculations that will save us; or the Space Ship will take us away; or—something.”

  She nodded. “There’s no error in the calculations, Tony. Too many good men have made them, independently of each other.”

  “Did they all count in the collision with the moon, Eve?”

  “All the good ones did, dear. There’s no chance of escape because of the encounter with the moon. It deflected the Bronson Bodies a little, of course; but not enough to save the world. I know that with my head, Tony; but—you’re right—I don’t know it with my heart. I don’t know it with—me.”

  Tony seized and held her with a fierceness and with a tenderness in his ferocity, neither of which he had ever known before. He looked down at her in his arms, and it was difficult to believe that any one so exquisite, so splendidly fragile, could have survived the orgy of elemental passion through which they all had passed. Yet that—he knew—was nothing to what would be.