When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

“Contrarily. Safety surrounds you. Also charming good luck. I therefore prefer to stick.”

“Right. And thanks.”

Kyto padded softly away, and Tony stood thoughtfully in the center of his living-room for fully two minutes.

Next he called a number in Greenwich, Connecticut, waited an abnormally long time, then asked a maid for Mrs. Drake. His voice was warm and calm. “Hello, Mother. How are you?”

His mother’s reply was controlled, but nerves stabbed through every word she said. “Tony, darling! I’ve tried and tried to reach you. Oh! I’m just an inch short of fainting. I thought something had happened to you.”

“Sorry, Mother. I’ve been busy.”

“I know. Come right out and tell me all about it.”

“I can’t.”

There was a pause. “You can’t put it in words?”

“No.”

There was another long pause. Mrs. Drake’s voice was lower, more tremulous—and yet it was not the voice of an hysterical or an unreasoning woman. “Tell me, Tony, how bad is it now to be?”

“The same as it was to be yesterday, Mother.”

“Not hiding new developments, are you, Tony?”

“No, Mother; those we’ve announced that we expect, haven’t really begun to happen yet.”

“Yet you know more; I can feel you know more than you have ever told me.”

“Mother, I swear you’re being morbid—” How could he tell her that for her there was annihilation, but for himself some chance of escape? She would wish it for him, whatever happened to herself; but he could not accept it. A berth in the Space Ship, leaving her here! Leaving here millions of mothers—and children too!

Hendron did not permit himself such reflections; Hendron hardened himself and forbade it. He had to. If he began to let himself even consider the saving of individuals, and allowed himself personal judgment as to who should go,—as individuals,—he’d go mad. Stark, raving, crazy! He simply had to confine himself to selection on the sole point of saving the species—the race.

But probably no one at all would be saved, Tony recollected almost with relief. Work on the Space Ship, in recent days, was not really advancing. They were held up from lack of a material to withstand the power that science now could loose from the atom. The idea of escape was probably only a fantasy, utterly vain. So thinking, Tony ended his talk, and put up the receiver.

Taxicabs had been sent for Tony and his party. They made their way immediately downtown to the big building which housed the Hendron laboratories. The cab had covered a few blocks when Tony realized that not only on the waterfront, but throughout its length and breadth, Manhattan had been depopulated. Here and there a lone figure was visible—usually a figure in the uniform of a policeman or a soldier. Once he thought he caught sight of a man skulking in the shadows of a doorway. But he was not sure. And there were no women, no children.

After the sun had set, it was easy to appreciate why the last recalcitrant thousands of New York’s populace had departed. The Bronson bodies, on this night, rose in frightful majesty: a sphere of lustrous white larger than the moon, and a second sphere much smaller, but equally brilliant. Their awesome illumination flooded the city, rendered superfluous the street-lights which, however, remained stubbornly burning. News of this augmented size had undoubtedly reached New York during the day—and the last unbeliever must surely have been convinced if he remained to witness the phenomenon.

There were few lights in the skyscrapers. As the taxies bowled through the murk and dark, unchecked by traffic signals, Tony and Jack Taylor shuddered involuntarily to see the black buildings which man had deserted. Had they but known, a second shudder might have seized them—for already the tide was lapping the sea-wall at the Battery.

At the elevator they were met by Eve. She kissed Tony, in an ecstasy of defiance, and then hurried to assist his group in the removal of their baggage, and in directing its disposal. Every one left the street reluctantly. The Bronson bodies were hypnotic.

In the laboratories there was the utmost confusion. No longer was the inner door closed. Only a skeleton crew had remained in New York, under Hendron. The scientist himself was introduced by Tony to each of the new arrivals, and to each he said a few words of welcome. Several were already known to him.

Then Hendron made an announcement to all of them—a statement which was repeated afterward in French and German. “Ladies and gentlemen—you will sleep in the dormitories above here to-night. To-morrow we will remove by airplane to my field station in Michigan. The others are already there. In bidding you good-night, I must also request no one to leave the building. A splendid view of the firmament may be had from the roof. But the streets are entirely unsafe. The last wave of emigration left New York at sundown this evening. The people who remain are either law officers or marauders. I regret that I will be unable to entertain you myself, but I leave you in the hands of my assistants.”

Jack Taylor was beside Tony when they reached the roof.

“As God lives, that’s a marvelous thing!” He stared at the two yellow discs in the sky. “Think of it! The heavens are falling upon us—and a few hundred men, here and there, are sitting on this stymied golf-ball figuring how to get away!”

CHAPTER 11—THE LAST NIGHT IN NEW YORK

“LOOK down, now,” said a different voice, “at the street.” It was a young man’s voice, carefully controlled, but in spite of its constraint, ringing with an unusually vibrant and vital quality.

Tony looked about at the speaker before he gazed down, and he recognized a recruit whom he had not himself selected. It was Eliot James, an Englishman from Oxford, and a poet. By profession and by nature, he was the most impractical of all the company; and one of the most attractive, in spite of his affectation—if it was that—of a small beard. The beard became him. He was tall, broad-shouldered, aquiline in feature, brown.

The baleful moonlight of the Bronson Bodies glinted up from the street.