When Worlds Collide Page 23

  Tony looked at his number and found his place. Eve was near by him, with the two children beside her. She had sat up to welcome him. “I’ve been terribly nervous. Of course I knew you’d come, but it has been hard waiting here.”

  “We’re all set,” Tony said. “And the funniest thing in the world has just happened.” He began to tell about the arrival of Duquesne, and everybody in the circular room listened to his story. As he talked, he adjusted himself on the floor harness.

  Below, in the control-room, the men took their posts. Hendron strapped himself under the glass screen. He fixed his eyes to an optical instrument, across which were two hair lines. Very close to the point of their intersection was a small star. The instrument had been set so that when the star reached the center of the cross, the discharge was to be started. About him was a battery of switches which were controlled by a master switch, and a lever that worked not unlike a rheostat over a series of resistances. His control-room crew were fastened in their places with their arms free to manipulate various levers. Duquesne had taken the place reserved for one of the crew, and the man who had been displaced had been sent up to the passenger-cabins.

  The French scientist glanced at his watch and put it back into his pocket without speaking. Voluble though he was, he knew when it was time to be silent. His black, sparkling eyes darted appreciatively from one instrument to another in the chamber, and on his face was a rapt expression as his mind identified and explained what he saw. Hendron looked away from the optical instrument. “You religious, Duquesne?”

  The Frenchman shook his head and then said: “Nevertheless, I am praying.”

  Hendron turned to the crossed hairs and began to count. Every man in the room stiffened to attention.

  “One, two, three, four, five—” His hand went to the switch. The room was filled with a vibrating hum. “—Six, seven, eight, nine, ten—” The sound of the hum rose now to a feline shriek. “—Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—ready! Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty—” His hand moved to the instrument that was like a rheostat. His other hand was clenched, white-knuckled, on his straps. “Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five.” Simultaneously the crew shoved levers, and the rheostat moved up an inch. As he counted, signals flashed to the other ship. They must leave at the same moment.

  A roar redoubling that which had resounded below the ship on the night of the attack, deafened all other sound.

  Tony thought: “We’re leaving the earth!” But strangely, thought itself at such a moment supplied no sensation. The physical shocks were too overpowering.

  A quivering of the ship that jarred the soul. An upthrust on the feet. Hendron’s lips moving in counting that could no longer be heard. The eyes of the men of the crew watching those lips so that when they reached fifty, a second switch was touched, and the room was plunged into darkness relieved only by the dim rays of tiny bulbs over the instruments themselves. A slight change in the feeling of air-pressure against the eardrums. Another forward motion of the steady hand on the rheostat. An increase of the thrust against the feet, so that the whole body felt leaden. Augmentation of the hideous din outside.

  An exchange of glances between Hendron and Duquesne—both men’s eyes flashing with triumph.

  In the passenger-cabin, Tony’s recitation of the arrival of Duquesne was suddenly interrupted by the fiendish uproar. “We’ve started!” fifty voices shouted, and the words were soundless. The deck on which they lay pressed up against them. The glass screen overhead went dark. Tony reached toward Eve, and felt her hand stretching to meet his.

  CHAPTER 25—THE JOURNEY THROUGH SPACE

  ON the doomed earth, observers must have seen the Space Ship lying brass-bright in the light of the Bronson Bodies and the cantonment flood-lamps, as immobile as if part of the earth. They must have seen it surrounded abruptly in golden fire, fire that drove toward the earth and lifted in immense clouds which bellowed and eddied toward the other larger ship simultaneously rising above a similar cloud. They must have heard the hideous torrent of sound, and then they must have seen the ship rise rapidly into the air on its column of flame. They must have watched it gain altitude vertically. They would have realized that it gathered momentum as it rose, and they would have seen that long trail of fire beneath each ship stretch and stretch as the shimmering cylinder shot into the night until it detached itself from the earth. But—there were no known observers left immediately below. If any one from outside the camp had happened to approach too closely, he must certainly have been annihilated by the blast.

  Tony, clinging to his straps, thought of the father who had brought the children; and Tony hoped, irrationally, that he had fled far away. But what difference whether he was annihilated alone now—or in the wreck of all the world a little later?

  He could see the fiery trail of the second Ark rising skyward on its apex of scintillating vapor. Already it was miles away.

  Below, on the earth, fires broke out—a blaze that denoted a forest burning. In the place where the ship had been, the two gigantic blocks of concrete must have crumbled and collapsed. The power-house, left untended, continued to hum, supplying lights for no living thing. Far away to the south and west, the President of the United States, surrounded by his Cabinet, looked up from the new toil engendered by the recommencing earthquakes, and saw, separated by an immeasurable distance, two comets moving away from the earth. The President looked reverently at the phenomenon; then he said: “My friends, the greatest living American has but now left his home-land.”

  In the passenger-chamber the unendurable noise rose in a steady crescendo until all those who lay there felt that their vital organs would be rent asunder by the fury of that sound. They were pressed with increasing force upon the deck. Nauseated, terrified, overwhelmed, their senses foundered, and many of them lapsed into unconsciousness.

  Tony, who was still able to think, despite the awful acceleration of the ship, realized presently that the din was diminishing. From his rather scanty knowledge of physics he tried to deduce what was happening. Either the Ark had reached air so thin that it did not carry sound-waves, or else the Ark was traveling so fast that its sound could not catch up with it. The speed of that diminution seemed to increase. The chamber became quieter and quieter. Tony reflected, in spite of the fearful torment he was undergoing, that eventually the only sound which would afflict it would come from the breeches of the tubes in the control-rooms, and the rooms themselves would insulate that. Presently he realized that the ringing in his ears was louder than the noise made by the passage of the ship. Eve had relaxed the grip on his hand, but at that moment he felt a pressure.

  It was impossible to turn his head. He said, “Hello,” in an ordinary voice, and found he had been so deafened that it was inaudible. He tried to lift his hand, but the acceleration of the ship was so great that it required more effort than he was able yet to exert. Then he heard Eve’s voice and he realized that she was talking very loudly: “Are you all right, Tony? Speak to me.”

  He shouted back: “I’m all right. How are the children?” He could see them lying stupefied, with eyes wide open.

  “It’s horrible, isn’t it?” Eve cried.

  “Yes, but the worst is over. We’ll be accelerating for some time, though.”

  Energy returned to him. He struggled with the bonds that held his head, and presently spoke again to Eve. She was deathly pale. He looked at the other passengers. Many of them were still unconscious, most of them only partly aware of what was happening. He tried to lift his head from the floor, but the upward pressure still overpowered him. He lay supine. Then the lights in the cabin went out and the screen was illuminated. Across one side was a glimpse of the trail which they were leaving, a bright hurtling yellow stream, but it was not that which held his attention. In the center of the screen was part of a curved disk. Tony realized that he was staring up at half of the northern hemisphere of the Earth. The disk did not yet have the lumin
ous quality that the moon used to possess. It was in a sort of hazy darkness which grew light on its eastern edge.

  Tony thought he could make out the outline of Alaska on the west coast of the United States, and he saw pinpoints of light which at first he thought of as signs of human habitation, but which he presently realized must have represented vast brilliant areas. He identified them with the renewal of volcanic activity. The screen flashed. Another view appeared. Constellations of stars, such stars as he had never seen, blazing furiously in the velvet blackness of the outer sky. He realized that he was looking at the view to be had from the side of the ship. The light went out again, and a third of the four periscopes recorded its field. Again stars, but in their center and hanging away from them, as if in miraculous suspension, was a small round bright-red body which Tony recognized as Mars.

  Once again Eve pressed his hand, and Tony returned the pressure.

  In the control-room, Hendron still sat in the sling with his hand on the rheostat.

  His eyes traveled to a meter which showed their distance from the Earth. Then they moved on to a chronometer; then for an instant, as if in concession to his human curiosity, they darted to Duquesne. Duquesne had loosened himself from his sling and was lying on the floor, unable to rise. His expression in the dim light was extremely ludicrous. He struggled feebly, like a beetle that has been turned on its back, and Hendron smiled at him and pointed to the chronometer, but Duquesne did not seem to understand his meaning.

  The control-room was filled with the throb that was contained in the breeches, but Hendron could do nothing to alleviate it. He had already determined the time necessary for acceleration—one hundred and twelve minutes—and he could not shorten it. In the end, Duquesne managed to pull himself to a sitting position underneath the glass screen where he was perfectly content to sit and contemplate the heavens as they appeared in reflection from outer space.

  Tony felt that he had been lying on the floor for an eternity. His strength had come back, and he realized that it would be possible to sit up, even to move about, but they had been instructed to remain on the floor until the speed of their ascent was stabilized. Minutes dragged. It was becoming possible to converse in the chamber, but few people cared to say anything. Many of them were still violently ill. Others were glad to lie motionless, and watch the screen as Duquesne was doing several decks below.

  At three minutes of five, Hendron slowly moved back the handle of the rheostat, and almost abruptly conditions in the ship changed. The volume of sound radiating from the engine-room decreased. Hendron unbuckled his bonds and stepped from them. Duquesne stood up. He walked unsteadily across the floor to take the hand of Hendron.

  “Magnificent! Stunning! Beautiful! Perfect! How fast do we now travel?” He was compelled to shout to make himself heard.

  Hendron pointed at a meter; its indicator hovered between the figures 3,000 and 3,500.

  “Miles?” the Frenchman asked.

  Hendron nodded.

  “Per hour?”

  Hendron nodded again.

  The Frenchman made his mouth into the shape required for a whistle, although no note could be heard.

  Hendron operated the switch controlling the choice of periscopes. In the midst of the glass screen, the Earth now appeared as a round globe, its diameter in both directions clearly apparent. More than half of it lay in shadow, but the illuminated half was like a great relief map. The whole of the United States, part of Europe and the north polar regions, were revealed to their gaze. In wonder they regarded the world that had been their home. They could see clearly the colossal changes which had been wrought upon it. The great inland sea that occupied the Mississippi Valley sparkled in the morning sun. The myriad volcanoes which had sprung into being along the Western cordillera were for the most part hidden under a pall of smoke and clouds.

  Duquesne pointed solemnly to that part of Europe that was visible. Hendron, looking at the screen for the first time, was shocked to see the disappearance of the Lowland Plain.

  The Frenchman moved closer to him and shouted in his ear. “We abandoned the ship outside of Paris when we realized it was not on high enough ground. We started a new one in the Alps. I told those pigs: ‘Gentlemen, it will melt. It is but wax, I know it.’ They replied: ‘If it melts, we shall perish.’ I responded: ‘If you perish, it shall be without me.’” Suddenly the Frenchman popped out his watch. “Sapristi! The world has turned so that these fools are to leave now.” He moved his lips while he made a rapid calculation. “We shall observe, is it not so? In an hour my idiot friends will burn themselves to death. I shall laugh. I shall roar. I shall shout. It will be one grand joke. Yes, you will give me a focus upon France in this remarkable instrument of yours an hour from now, will you not?”

  Hendron nodded. He signaled a command to his crew, who had been standing unbuckled from their slings, at attention. They now seated themselves.

  Hendron shouted at the Frenchman: “Come on up with me. I’ll introduce you to the passengers. I’m anxious to know about them.”

  When Hendron reached the first deck of passengers’ quarters, he found them standing together comparing notes on the sensations of space-flying. Many of them were rubbing stiff arms and legs. Two or three, including Eliot James, were still lying on the padded deck in obvious discomfort. They had turned on the lights, apparently more interested in their own condition than in the astounding vista of the Earth below. Tony had just opened the doors of the larder and was on the point of distributing sandwiches.

  Hendron brought the shabby Duquesne into their midst.

  “I’d like to present my friend Professor Pierre Duquesne of the French Academy, a last-minute arrival. I assure you that except for its monotony, the trip will offer you no further great discomfort until we reach Bronson Beta, when we shall be under the necessity of repeating approximately the same maneuver. I want to call your attention to the following phenomena: In something less than an hour we are going to turn the periscope on France in an effort to observe the departure of the French equivalent of our ships. We are at the moment engaged in trying to locate our second Ark, which took its course at a distance from us to avoid any chance of collision, and being between us and the sun, is now temporarily lost in the glare of the sun.

  “I will have the sun thrown on the screen at intervals, as some of the phenomena are extremely spectacular. At about mid-point of our voyage we will concentrate our attention on the collision between the Earth and Bronson Alpha. I think at this point I may express my satisfaction in the behavior of the Ark. As you all are aware, we have escaped from the earth. We are still well within the field of its gravitational control, in the sense that if our propellent forces ceased, we undoubtedly would fall back upon the earth; but the pull of gravity is constantly weakening. It diminishes, as most of you know, not directly in relation to the distance, but in relation to the square of the distance. It is the great lessening of the pull of gravity which has ended our extreme distress.

  “Except for the small chance of striking an astrolite, we are quite safe and will continue so for some time. When we approach Bronson Beta, our situation will, of course, become more difficult. You will please excuse me now, as I wish to convey the same information to the passengers on the deck above.”

  Hendron departed, and his feet disappeared through the opening in the ceiling which contained the spiral staircase.

  Duquesne immediately made himself the center of attention, praising alternately Hendron’s ship and his own prowess in completing the journey from France. The reaction from the initial strain of the voyage took, in him, the form of saluting, shouting, joking with the men and flirting with the women.

  Tony saw to the distribution of food and water. The ship rushed through the void so steadily that cups of milk, which Eve held to the lips of the children, scarcely spilled over. The passengers, having eaten a little, found that they could move from floor to floor without great trouble, and several became garrulous. The ship was s
pinning very slowly, exposing one side after the other to the sun, and this served to equalize the temperature, which was fiery hot on the sun-side, deadly cold on the other.

  Fans distributed the air inside the ship. Outside, there was vacuum against which the airlocks were sealed. The air of the ship, breathed and “restored,” was not actually fresh, although chemically it was perfectly breathable. The soft roar of the rocket propulsion-tubes fuddled the senses. There was no sensation of external time, no appreciation of traveling from morn to night. The sun glared in a black sky studded with brilliant stars.… The sun showed its corona, its mighty, fiery prominences, its huge leaping tongues of flame.

  To the right of the sun, the great glowing crescents of Bronson Alpha and Bronson Beta loomed larger and larger.

  Eve sat with Tony as a periscope turned on them and displayed them on the screen. They could plainly see that Bronson Alpha was below and approaching the earth; Bronson Beta, slowly turning, was higher and much nearer the ship.

  “Do you see their relation?” she asked.

  “Between the Bronson Bodies?” said Tony. “Aren’t they nearer together than they have ever been before?”

  “Much nearer; and as Father—and Professor Bronson—calculated. Bronson Beta, being much the smaller and lighter, was revolving about Bronson Alpha. The orbit was not a circle; it was a very long ellipse. Sometimes, therefore, this brought Bronson Beta much closer to Alpha than at other times. When they went around the sun, the enormous force of the sun’s attraction further distorted the orbit, and Bronson Beta probably is nearer Alpha now than it ever was before. Also, notice it is at the point in its orbit which is most favorable for us.”

  “You mean for our landing on it?” asked Tony.

  “For that; and especially is it favorable to us, after we land—if we do,” amended Eve; and she gathered the children to her. She sat between them, an arm about each, gazing at the screen.