“You see, it really meant nothing to them originally; it stirred only a sort of excitement to close the Exchange and give everybody a hilarious holiday.
“Then I told them that, before the encounter, both of these moving bodies—Bronson Alpha and Bronson Beta—would first pass us close by and cause tides that would rise six hundred feet over us, from New York to San Francisco—and, of course, London and Paris and all sea-coasts everywhere.
“They began to oppose that, because they could understand it. I told them that the passing of the Bronson bodies would cause earthquakes on a scale unimaginable; half the inland cities would be shaken down, and the effect below the crust would set volcanoes into activity everywhere, and as never since the world began. I said, perhaps a fifth of the people would survive the first passing of the Bronson bodies. I tried to point out some of the areas on the surface of the earth which would be completely safe.
“I could not designate New York or Philadelphia or Boston.… They told me that to-morrow I must make a more reassuring statement.”
Cole Hendron gazed down again at his plates.
“I suppose, after all, it doesn’t make much difference whether or not we succeed in moving a few million more people into the safer areas. They will be safe for only eight months more, in any case. For eight months later, we meet Bronson Alpha on the other side of the sun. And no one on earth will escape.
“But there is a chance that a few individuals may leave the earth and live. I am not a religious man, as you know, Tony; but as Eve said to you, it seems that it cannot be mere chance that there comes to us, out of space, not merely the sphere that will destroy us, but that ahead of it there spins a world like our own which some of us—some of us—may reach and be safe.”
CHAPTER 6—FIRST EFFECTS
TONY took Dave Ransdell home with him. The South African wanted to “see” New York.
They awoke late; or at least Tony did, and for a few moments lay contentedly lazy, without recollection of the amazing developments of the day that was past.
Only a vague uneasiness warned him that, when he finally roused, it would be to some sort of trouble. Tony, being a healthy and highly vigorous young man, had drowsed through such semirecollections before.… He had fought with and “put out” another policeman, perhaps? Tony became able to recollect “showing” some one the city; but who?
Now Tony could visualize him—a tanned, quiet-humored, solid chap who could look out for himself anywhere. And girls liked him; but he was wary, even if he hadn’t been to New York before. Even if he did come from South Africa!
There, Tony had it! Dave Ransdell, the Pretoria flyer, who had brought the plates of the sky from Capetown to New York. Why? Because there were two little specks on those plates of the southern skies, which meant that two strange planetary bodies were approaching the earth—to wipe it out!
That was the trouble Tony had to remember when he fully awoke. It wasn’t that he’d knocked another policeman for a goal. It was that—that this room, and the bed, and the chair, everything outside, everywhere and every one, including you yourself, were simply going to cease to exist after a while. After a very definite and limited time, indeed, though the exact period he did not know.
Eve had refused to tell him; and so had Dr. Hendron. No; the exact amount of time left for every one on the world, the members of the League of the Last Days would not yet impart.
Tony stirred; and Kyto, hearing him, came in and began to draw his bath.
“All right, Kyto; never mind,” Tony greeted him. “I’ll take a shower this morning. Is Mr. Ransdell up?”
“Oh, entirely!”
“Has he had breakfast yet, Kyto?”
“Only one.”
“You mean?”
“He said he would have a little now—that was an hour ago—and finish breakfast with you.”
“Oh. All right. I’ll hurry.” And Tony did so, but forgetting Ransdell, mostly, for his thinking of Eve.
To have held her close to him, to have caught her against him while she clung to him, her lips on his—and then to be forbidden her! To be finally and completely forbidden to love her!
Tony arose defiantly. Last night he had been rebellious; this morning he was only more so. Never had he known or dreamed of such dear delight as when he had claimed her lithe body with his arms, and she had clung to him; the two of them together against all the world—even against the end of all the world, against the utter annihilation!
It was, he realized now, the terror of the approaching destruction which had thrown her so unquestioningly into his arms. Who could stand alone and look at doom? All nature, every instinct and impulse, opposed loneliness in danger. The first law of living things is self-perpetuation. Save yourself; and when you cannot, preserve your kind! Mate and beget—or give birth—before you die!
Nothing less elemental, less overwhelming, than this threw Eve Hendron and Tony Drake together; and no joy compared with the result. What had he heard said, that he understood now: “There is no happiness like that snatched under the shadow of the sword!”
But her father forbade that joy. He not only forbade it, but denied its further possibility for them. And her father controlled her, not merely as her father, but as a leader of this strange society, the uncanny power of which Tony Drake was just beginning to feel: The League of the Last Days!
A pledged and sworn circle of men, first in science all over the world, who devoted themselves to their purposes with a sternness and a discipline that recalled the steadfastness of the early Christians, who submitted to any martyrdom to found the Church. They demanded and commanded a complete allegiance. To this tyrannical society Eve was sworn; and when Cole Hendron had spoken to her, he commanded her and forbade not only as her father but as her captian in the League of the Last Days.…
Tony found Ransdell at a window of the living-room. The morning paper was spread over a table.