When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

“‘They brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God; and the king, and his princes, his wives and his concubines, drank in them.

“‘They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.’

“Isn’t that a good deal like what we’ve—most of us—been doing, Tony?”

“‘Now in the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.

“‘Then the king’s countenance was changed; his knees smote together. The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans and the soothsayers.’

“And Daniel, you may remember, interpreted the writing on the wall. ‘Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting. And in that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain.’

“It is something very like that which is happening to us now, Tony; only the Finger, instead of writing again on the wall, this time has taken to writing in the sky—over our heads. The Finger of God, Tony, has traced two little streaks in the sky—two objects moving toward us, where nothing ought to move; and the message of one of them is perfectly plain.

“‘Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting,’ that one says to us on this world. ‘God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it.’ But what does the other streak say?

“That is the strange one, Tony—the one that gives you the creeps and the thrills when you think of it. For that is the afterthought of God—the chance He is sending us!

“Remember how the Old Testament showed God to us, stern and merciless. ‘God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth!’ it said. ‘And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth. And the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth; both man, and beast and the creeping things, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. And then, God thought it over and softened a little; and He warned Noah to build the ark to save himself and some of the beasts, so that they could start all over again.

“Well, Tony, it seemed to me the second streak in the sky says that God is doing the same thing once more. He hasn’t changed His nature since Genesis; not in that short time. Why should He? It seemed to me, Tony, He looked us all over again and got disgusted.

“Evolution, you know, has been going on upon this world for maybe five hundred million years; and I guess God thought that, if all we’d reached in all that time was what we have now, He’d wipe u

s out forever. So He started that streak toward us to meet us, and destroy us utterly. That’s Bronson Alpha. But before He sent it too far on its way, maybe He thought it all over again and decided to send Bronson Beta along too.

“You see, after all, God had been working on the world for five hundred millions of years; and that must be an appreciable time, even to God. So I think He said, ‘I’ll wipe them out; but I’ll give some of them a chance. If they’re good enough to take the chance and transfer to the other world I’m sending them, maybe they’re worth another trial. And I’ll save five hundred millions of years.’ For we’ll start on the other world, Tony, where we left off here.”

“I see that,” Tony said. “What’s in that to forbid my loving you now, my taking you in my arms, my—”

“I wish we could, Tony!”

“Then why not?”

“No reason not, if we were surely to die here, Tony—with all the rest of the world; but every reason not to, if we go on the Space Ship.”

“I don’t see that!”

“Don’t you? Do you suppose, Tony, that the second streak in the sky—the streak that we call Bronson Beta which will come close to this world, and possibly receive us safe, before Bronson Alpha wipes out all the rest—do you suppose, Tony, that it was sent just for you and me?”

“I don’t suppose it was sent at all,” objected Tony impatiently. “I don’t believe in a God Who plans and repents and wipes out worlds He made.”

“I do. A few months ago, I wouldn’t have believed in Him; but since this has happened, I do. What is coming is altogether too precise and exact to be unplanned by Intelligence somewhere, or to be purposeless. For those two streaks—the Bronson bodies—aren’t cutting in on our little system out by Neptune or Jupiter, where they’d find no living thing. They’ve chosen, out of all space near us, the single sphere that’s inhabited—they’re directed for us. Directed—sent, that is, Tony. And if the big one is sent to wipe out the world, I don’t believe the other is sent just to let me go on loving you and you go on loving me.”

“What is your idea, then?”

“It’s sent to save, perhaps, some of the results of five hundred million years of life on this world; but not you and me, Tony.”

“Why not? What are we?”

Eve smiled faintly. “We’re some of the results, of course. As such, we may go on the Space Ship. But if we go, we cease to be ourselves, don’t you see?”

“I don’t,” persisted Tony stubbornly.

“I mean, when we arrive on that strange empty world,—if we do,—we can’t possibly arrive as Tony Drake and Eve Hendron, to continue a love and a marriage started here. How insane that would be!”

“Insane?”

“Yes. Suppose one Space Ship got across with, say, thirty in its crew. We land and begin to live—thirty alone on an empty world as large as this. What, on that world, would we be? Individuals paired and set off, each from the others, as here? No; we become bits of biology, bearing within us seeds far more important than ourselves—far more important than our prejudices and loves and hates. We cannot then think of ourselves, only to preserve ourselves while we establish our kind.”