When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

“There remains considerable doubt concerning the origin and nature of the Bronson bodies. Efforts are being made to determine their composition, but determinations are difficult, as they are non-luminous.

“The scientists of the world are in agreement that the course outlined above is the only logical one to pursue. Since the first approach of the Bronson bodies may be expected to take place with effect upon the tides and seaboard on and about the end of next summer, general migration should begin at once.”

On the morning succeeding the spread of this statement, Tony stood in the vast, populous waiting-room of the Grand Central Station. Yesterday there had been issued marching orders for fifteen hundred millions of human beings. If they did not now know that it was to be the end of the world, at least they were told that it was the end of the world as it had been.

He listened to fragments of the conversations in progress in his vicinity:

“I tell you, Henry, it’s silly, that’s all. If anybody expects me to give up my apartment and pack up my duds and move off one Hundred and Eighty-first Street just because a few gray-headed school-teachers happen to think there’s a comet coming, then they’re crazy.…”

“It’s the end, that’s what it is; and I for one am glad to see it. When the sea starts to rise and the earth starts to split open, I’m going to stand there and laugh. I’m going to say: ‘Now what’s the good of the Farm Relief? Now who’s going to collect my income-tax? Now what does it matter whether we have Prohibition or not? Now who’s going to stop your car and bawl you out because you drove on the wrong side of the street? Good-by, world.’ That’s what I’m going to say. ‘Good-by! Good riddance!’ I hope it wipes the whole damn’ thing as clean as a billiard ball.…”

“Don’t hold my hand so tight, Daddy. You hurt me.…”

“It’s ridiculous. They’ve been fighting about their fool figures for generations. They can’t even tell whether it’s going to rain or not to-morrow. How in the hell can they say this is going to happen? Give a scientist one idea, and a lot of trick figures, and he goes hay-wire, that’s all.…”

“So I says to him, the big oaf: ‘I’m a working-girl, and I’m gonna be a working-girl all my life, and you can tell me it doesn’t matter on account of the world’s coming to an end, and you can tell me the better I know you the better I’ll like you, till you’re blue in the face; but I’m gonna get out of this car right here and now, end of the world or no end of the world.’…”

“Laugh that off. Go ahead. Let me see you laugh that off. You’ve been laughing everything off ever since we were married. You laugh off the unpaid bills. You laugh off my ratty fur coat. You laugh off not being able to buy an automobile. Now let me see if you can laugh off an earthquake.…”

“I drew it all out and bought gold. I got two revolvers. I filled the house with canned goods. I said: ‘Here you are, Sarah. You’ve been telling me all your life how well you can run things. Take the money. Take the house. Take these two guns. I’m leaving. If we’ve only got a couple of months left, I’m going to see to it that I have a little fun, anyway.’ That’s what I said to her; and, by God, here I am.…”

Tony shook his head. Every word to which he had listened surfeited him with a sense of the immobility of humanity. Each individual related a cosmic circumstance to his particular case. Each individual planned to act independently not only of the rest of his fellows but of all signs and portents in the sky. Tony’s mind conceived a picture of huge cities on the verge of inundation—cities in which thousands and even millions refused to budge and went about the infinitesimal affairs of their little lives selfishly, with nothing but resentment for the facts which wiser men were futilely attempting to impress upon them. He heard his train announced, and walked to the gate.

He rode through a long dark tunnel and then out to the station at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. His eyes rested uncomfortably on the close-pressed accumulation of ugly houses. It had been taken for granted too long; and upon the spawn who inhabited it, the best thoughts and dreams of the race fell unheeded. They lived and died and did not matter. A pollution ate steadily upward in every body of society from these far-reaching honeycombs of disease, dirt, stupidity, these world-wide remainders from the Middle Ages.

Tony, who had never been religious in any conventional sense, had begun to share the feeling of Eve about what was going to happen. She had not been religious; but emotionally, at least, she accepted the idea that God Himself had sickened with our selfishness, stupidity and squalor, and in disgust had tossed two pebbles through the sky on their errand which, night by night now, was becoming more apparent.

The train moved past the final outpost tenements into a verdant landscape with the river on one side—the Hudson, in which tides soon would rise to sweep high and far over the Palisades. Tony glanced back, once, toward the teeming city. The first flood would not top those tallest towers etched there; the pinnacles of man’s triumphs would, for a while, rise above the tides; but all the rest? Tony turned away and looked out at the river, trying not to think of it.

CHAPTER 9—HOW THE WORLD TOOK IT

SETTLED in a chair, Tony glanced around the comfortable furnishings of the student’s room and then gazed at the student himself. A lanky youth with red hair, good-humored blue eyes and a sprinkling of freckles that carried into his attained maturity more than a memory of the childhood he had so recently left.

“Yes,” Tony repeated, “I’m from Cole Hendron. The dean told me about your academic work. Professor Gates showed me the thesis on Light which you turned in for your Ph.D. He said it was the finest thing he had had from the Graduate School since he’d held the chair of Physics.”

Dull red came in the young man’s face. “Nothing much. I just happened to have an idea. Probably never get another in my life.”

Tony smiled. “I understand you were stroke in the varsity crew two years ago.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s the year you were rowing everybody out of the water, isn’t it?”

“There weren’t any good crews that year. We just happened to have the least bad ones.”

Tony looked at the youth’s hands, nervously clenching and unclenching. They were powerful hands, which nevertheless seemed to possess the capacity for minute adjustments. Tony smiled. “No need of being so modest, old fellow. It’s just as I said. Cole Hendron in New York is getting together a bunch of people for some work he wants done during the next few months. It’s work of a very private nature. I can’t tell you what. I can’t even assure you that he will accept you, but I’m touring around in the attempt to send him some likely people. You understand that I’m not offering you a job in the sense that jobs have been offered in the past. I don’t know that any salary is attached to it at all. You will be supplied with a place to live, and provided with food, if you accept.”

The tall youth grinned. “I suppose you know that offering a chance to associate with Cole Hendron, to a man like me, is just like offering the job of secretary to St. Peter, to a bishop.”

“M-m-m. By the way, why did you stay here at the university when most of the graduate students have left?”

“No particular reason. I didn’t have anything better to do. The university is on high ground, so it didn’t seem sensible to move for that reason, and I thought I might as well go on with my work.”

“I see,” Tony replied.

His companion hesitated to say what was obviously on his mind, but finally broke the short silence. “Look here, Mr.—Mr.—”

“Drake. Tony Drake.”