When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

“Yes, about animals,” Tony urged.

“There is, naturally, still discussion. Our space is so limited, and there is most tremendous competition. Birds offer a somewhat simpler problem; but possibly you have heard some of the arguments over them.”

“I have,” said Tony, “and joined in them. I confess I argued for warblers—yellow warblers. I like them; I have always liked them; and meadow larks.”

“The matter of dogs and cats is the most difficult,” Hendron said, closing the subject. Air pumps murmured somewhere within the ship, which seemed half-alive. Electric generators hummed, and from somewhere came the high note of one of the electronic engines. Tony left Hendron and went from the ship.

That night, the emigrants from the Earth gathered again in the dining-hall. Hendron addressed them, outlining the general final preparations which were augmented by specific, printed instructions to meet such contingencies as could be foreseen.

The large ship, an exact duplicate of the original Ark with the exception of its greater proportions, stood on a concrete platform three hundred yards from its smaller companion.

After the meeting, the crowd moved outdoors and stood awhile, looking at the Bronson Bodies. As in their former approach their size had increased in diametric proportion during the last few days and nights, and they now dominated the heavens, Alpha eclipsed by Beta, which rushed toward the earth ahead of it, in the same position as that held by a planet in transit across the face of the sun. The spectacle was one of weird beauty, and one calculated to strike terror in the bravest. Bronson Alpha looked like the rising moon, except that it was much larger than any moon had ever seemed to be; and its edges, instead of being sharp, were furred with a luminous aura which indicated its atmosphere. Riding as if on the bosom of Bronson Alpha was its smaller comrade, and it was sometimes difficult for the eye to delineate it exactly, for both planets gave off a brilliant white light. On Beta dark irregular “continental” splashes could be seen, and similar areas of maximum brightness doubtless indicated great oceans.

It seemed as they rose over the horizon on that last night that they increased visibly in size as the onlookers regarded them.

And such might have been the case, for now the earth was no longer rushing away from the stranger bodies, but toward them.

Already the desolate and wounded surface of man’s world was stirring to their approach. Slight earthquake shocks were felt from time to time, and the very winds seemed to be moving in a consciousness of the awful cataclysm that was drawing near. All over the world, the tides—unnaturally absent since the shattering of the moon—rose again and licked up the sides of the fresh, raw shores; the people who huddled on mountains and prairie plateaus that night knew instinctively that this was indeed the end.

CHAPTER 23—THE LAST NIGHT ON EARTH

TONY sought out Eve.

“Come walk with me,” he said.

“I’d like to. It’s so strange to wait, with everything done that matters. For it’s all done, Tony; everything that we’re to take with us has been prepared and put in place. Except the animals and ourselves.”

“Dull lot of animals, mostly,” complained Tony. He was excited and on edge, with nerves which he tried to quiet and could not.

He did not want to talk to Eve to-night about animals; but he might as well, for people were all about, alone or in pairs, likewise restless and excited.

“It would be madness to try to bring the interesting animals along, wouldn’t it?” Eve said agreeably. “Like lions and tigers and leopards.”

“I know,” admitted Tony. “Meat-eaters. We can’t cart along meat for them, of course; and we can’t expect meat on Bronson Beta. All we can hope for is grass and moss; so we load up with a cow, and a young bull, of course; a pair of sheep of proved breeding ability, a couple of reindeer, and a colt and a young mare. Half humanity lived on horsemeat once and milked the mares. We’ll be allowed goats, too. And deer, if our big ship gets over. Do you supose there’ll be other ships starting from this side of the world tomorrow night and from the other side, the evening after?”

“Father doesn’t know. When the radios were working well, months ago, he broadcast the knowledge of David’s metal. It must have become obtainable from volcanic eruptions in other places. But we’ve no real news of any one else ready to start. One thing is certain. No party can count upon the arrival of any other. Each crew has to assume that it may be the only one that gets across to Bronson Beta.”

“And damn’ lucky if it lands, too,” agreed Tony. “However, I hope the Australians are making a try, and will start with a kangaroo. And if the South Africans have a ship, they ought to show some originality in animals, even if they too feel confined to grass- and moss-eaters. Who has a chance of sending up a ship, anyway?”

“The English, Father thinks, surely have preserved enough organization to build and equip one ship, and the French, the Germans and Italians ought to do the same. Then there are the Russians and the Japanese at least with the potential ability to do it. There’s a chance in Australia and another in South Africa—Lord Rhondin would head any party there, Father thinks.”

“Any one else?”

“A possibility in Argentina and also in China.”

“That makes twelve, counting our two.”

“Possibilities, that’s all. Of course, we know nothing about them. Father guesses that if twelve are trying, perhaps five may get ships out into space.”

“What five?” demanded Tony.

“He did not name them.”

“Five into space beyond the attraction of the world.”

“The world won’t be left then, Tony,” Eve reminded him.

“Right. Funny how one keeps forgetting that, isn’t it? So there’ll be no place for them to drop back to, if they miss Bronson Beta. They just stay—out there in space—in their rocket, with their air-purifiers and oxygen-machines and their compressed food and their seeds and insects and birds or birds’ eggs, and carefully chosen grass-eating animals.… I imagine they’ll eat the animals, at last, out there in space; and then—”