When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

Along the Pacific Coast he observed the preparations being made for the withdrawal from the western ocean. Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, the cities inevitably doomed, were digging up their roots. Millionaires drove eastward in great limousines with their most priceless treasures heaped around them; and small urchins cast an anxious eye at the Pacific and turned to look with uncomprehending hope toward the mountains that ranged beside it.

Every citizen in the United States had some part in the migration. Relief maps of the United States were supplied by the Government, so that any man by looking at one could tell whether he had put a thousand feet or five thousand of altitude between himself and the menacing waters.

Tony’s work was varied. He continued to send back by ones and twos those scientists whose counsel Hendron desired, and the flower of the young men and women who might be useful in the event of a great cataclysm.

Hendron’s own ideas were still uncrystallized: he felt with increasing intensity the need for gathering together the best brains, the healthiest bodies and the stanchest hearts that could be found. He had a variety of plans. He had founded two stations in the United States, and was in the process of equipping them for all emergencies. Under the best conditions, the personality of his group might divide into two parts and move to those stations, there to remain until the first crisis passed so that afterward they could emerge as leaders in the final effort against doom.

Under the pressure of the impending destruction, his scientists had pushed their experiments in obtaining power from atomic disintegration to a point where the power of the atom could be utilized, within limits, as a propulsive force.

Hendron had thereupon succeeded in bombarding the surface of the moon with a projectile that was, in its essentials, a small rocket. He had settled the problems of hull composition, insulation and aeration, which would arise in such a vessel if made in a size to be occupied by men. He had devised rockets which could be directed. He had constructed a rocket with vents at both ends so that a discharge in the opposite direction would break its fall. Several such rockets he actually dispatched under remote control, hurtling many miles into the air, turning, descending part way under full force of their stern “engines,” and checking their fall by forward discharges at the end of their flight, so that their actual landing had not destroyed even the delicate instruments they contained.

The chief problem that remained unsolved was a metal sufficiently resistant to the awful force Hendron employed. Even the experimental rockets often failed in their flight because the heat generated by the atomic combustion within them melted and blew away the walls intended to retain it. So, at the Hendron laboratories, the world’s metallurgists concentrated their efforts upon finding an alloy capable of withstanding the temperatures and pressures involved in employing atomic energy as a driving force.

Tony visited both of Hendron’s stations. One was in Michigan and one in New Mexico. He brought back reports on the progress being made there in the construction of laboratories, machine-shops and dormitories. He returned on the day on which the President made his impassioned and soul-searching speech on courage. More than forty million persons heard the President’s voice as it came over the radio. Tony, standing in the crowded aisle of a train between Philadelphia and New York, caught some of the President’s words:

“The world is facing an august manifestation of the handiwork of Almighty God. Whether this handiwork is provided as punishment for our failure to pursue His ways, or whether Nature in her inscrutable processes is testing the courage of her most tender product—man—we shall never know. But we stand on the brink of a situation from which we cannot hide, and which we cannot escape. We must meet this situation with fortitude, with generosity, with patience and endurance. We have provided punishments in our emergency decrees for the selfish. But so impoverished have our human resources become, that we can provide no reward for the noble, save that which they find in their own hearts.

“Many nations have already faltered and fallen in the outpouring of their own blood. Some nations, with obtuse stubbornness, have failed to accept the truth, and in stupid carelessness are endeavoring to ignore that which will presently devour them. America, recognizing the magnitude of the coming upheavals, has taken every step, bent every effort, and enlisted every man and woman and child to do his and her utmost, not only, as a great predecessor in my office has said, ‘that the Nation shall not perish from the earth,’ but that humanity itself shall not perish from the earth. To you, my fellow-countrymen, I can offer but one word of advice, one single lamp to penetrate the onrushing gloom”—and his voice sank to a whisper more penetrating than any shout—“Courage.”

As Tony listened, his heart swelled with pride, and he saw in the abstracted eyes of his fellow-passengers a new light appear.

Courage! Courage was needed.

When Tony reached New York, he found Hendron sleepless and icily calm in the midst of his multitudinous enterprises.

But Eve showed the strain more than her father, and during the first evening, which they spent together, she expressed her fear: “Father’s greatest hope was that his ship would be successful. There is more information than has been given out about the Bronson bodies. We admit that they will come very close. Terribly close. We do not admit yet precisely how close.”

They were standing together on the balcony overlooking the brightly lighted and still noisy city. Their arms were locked together in defiance of their oath to the league.

“He’ll succeed,” Tony said.

“He has succeeded, except that every rocket he builds is limited in the distance it can fly and the power it can use by the fact that its propulsive tubes melt. There isn’t a metal nor an alloy in the world that will withstand that heat.”

Tony did not answer. After a long silence she spoke again. “It’s an awful thing, Tony. Look down there. Look down on the city. Think of the people. Look at the lights, and then imagine water, mountains of it. Water that would reach to here!”

Tony held her arm more tightly. “Don’t torture yourself, Eve.

”

“I can’t help it. Oh, Tony, just think of it!”

“Well, that’s the way things have to be, Eve.” He could not say any more.

When Tony went down, the street was still filled with people. All the people were talking. They walked, but it did not seem to matter to them what direction they took or what chance company they shared.

The strange small moon, growing larger each night, shone palely in the sky.

Tony hailed a cab. His eyes settled on his shoes when he sat down. He thought grayly and without rhythm. Into every thought darted the face of Eve as he had last seen it—a face growing hourly more haggard. He remembered the downcasting of her eyes.

When he arrived at his apartment, Kyto was waiting. There was an expression of distinct anxiety on his usually inscrutable face. The emotion made him ludicrous—but Tony was more surprised than amused and Kyto commenced to talk immediately.

“All people frightful, now.”

Tony tossed his hat aside. “Yes.”

“Serious consequences close, you will inform me?”

“Of course. Do you want to leave now?”