When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

He went directly to Hendron. “First estimates ready,” he said.

Hendron’s voice was tense: “Tell us.”

“I thought perhaps—”

“Go ahead, Von Beitz. These people aren’t children; besides, they have given up all expectations of the earth.”

“They have seen the first result,” Von Beitz replied. “The earth is shattered. Unquestionably much of its material merged with Bronson Alpha; but most is scattered in fragments of various masses which will assume orbits of their own about the sun.”

“And Bronson Alpha?”

“We have made only a preliminary estimate of its deceleration and its deviation from its original course; but it seems to have been deflected so that it will follow a hyperbola into space.”

“Hyperbola, eh?”

“Probably.”

“That means,” Hendron explained loudly, “we will have seen the last of Bronson Alpha. It will not return to the sun. It will leave our solar system forever. —And Bronson Beta?” Hendron turned to the German.

“As we have hoped, the influence of Bronson Alpha over Bronson Beta is terminated. The collision occurred at a moment which found Bronson Beta at a favorable point in its orbit around Bronson Alpha. Favorable, I mean, for us. Bronson Beta will not follow Alpha into space. Its orbit becomes independent; Bronson Beta, almost surely, will circle the sun.”

Some of the women burst out crying in a hysteria of relief. The world was gone; they had seen it shattered; but another would take its place. For the first time they succeeded in feeling this.

A short time later, a man arose to bring the women water; he remained suspended in the air!

Tony reached up and turned on the lights. The man who floated was sinking slowly toward the floor, his face blank with amazement.

“We have come,” announced Tony loudly, “very close to the point between Bronson Beta and Bronson Alpha where the gravity of one neutralizes the gravity of the other. Bronson Alpha and the fragments of our world, pulling one way, strike an equilibrium here with the pull of Bronson Beta, which we are approaching.”

He saw Eve lifting the children and leaving them suspended in the air. For an instant they enjoyed it; then it frightened them. A strange panic ensued. Tony’s heart raced. It was difficult to breathe. When he swallowed, it choked him; and as he swam through the air with every step, he felt himself growing faint, dizzy and nauseated.

He saw Eve, as if through a mist, make a motion to reach for the children, and rise slowly into the air, where she stretched at full length groping wildly for the children. Tony swam over to her and pushed them into her arms. His brain roared; but he thought: “Is this psychological or physical? Was it a physical result of lack of all weight or was it the oppressiveness of sensation?” He shouted the question to Eve, who did not reply.

The air was becoming filled with people. Almost no one was on the deck. The slightest motion was sufficient to cause one to depart from whatever anchorage one had. Hands and feet were outthrust. On every face was a sick and pallid expression. Tony saw Hendron going hand over hand on the cable through the stair, ascending head foremost, his feet trailing out behind him.

That was all he remembered. He fell into coma.

When his senses returned, he found himself lying on the deck under half a dozen other people, but their weight was not oppressive. The pile above him would have crushed any one on Earth, but here it made no difference. His limbs felt cold and weak; his heart still beat furiously. He struggled to free himself, and succeeded with remarkable ease. A wave of nausea brought him to his knees, and he fainted again, striking the floor lightly and bouncing into the air several times before he came to rest.…

Again consciousness returned.

This time he rolled over carefully and did not attempt to rise. He was lying on something hard and cold. He explored it with his fingers, and realized

dully that it was the glass screen which projected the periscope views. It was the ceiling, then, on which the passengers were lying in a tangled heap, and not the deck. Their positions had been reversed. He thought that he was stone deaf, and then perceived that the noise of the motors had stopped entirely. They were falling toward Bronson Beta, using gravity and their own inertia to sustain that downward flight. He understood why he had seen Hendron pulling himself along the staircase. Hendron had been transferring to the control-room at the opposite end of the ship.

Tony’s eyes moved in a tired and sickly fashion to the tangle of people. He knew that since he was the first to regain consciousness, it was his duty to disentangle them and make them as comfortable as possible. He crawled toward them. Whole people could be moved as if they were toy balloons. With one arm he would grasp a fixed belt on the deck, and with the other he would send a body rolling across the floor to the edge of the room. The passengers were breathing, gasping, hiccoughing; their hearts were pounding; their faces were stark white; but they seemed to be alive. The children were dazed but unhurt. Tony was unable to do more than to give them separate places in which to lie. After that, his own addled and confused body succumbed, and he lay down again, panting. He knew that they would be all right as soon as the gravity from Bronson Beta became stronger. He knew that the voyage was more than half finished; but he was so sick, so weak, that he did not care. He fell into a state between sleep and coma.

Some one woke him. “We’re eating. How about a sandwich?”

He sat up. The gravity was still very slight, but strong enough to restore his sensations to something approaching normal. He started around the circular room which had become so familiar in the past hours. An attempt at a grin overspread his features. He reached inaccurately for the sandwich, and murmured his thanks.

An hour later conditions were improved for moving about the chamber, by the starting of the motors which were to decelerate the ship. The floor was firm again. On the screen now at their feet they could see Bronson Beta. It was white like an immense moon, but veiled in clouds. Here and there bits of its superficial geography were visible. They gathered around the screen, kneeling over it, the lurid light which the planet cast glowing up on their faces. In four hours the deceleration had been greatly increased. In six, Bronson Beta was visibly spreading on the screen. Deceleration held them tightly on the floor, but they would crawl across each other laboriously, and in turn stare at the floating, cloudy sphere upon which they expected to arrive.

The screen changed views now. It halted to catch the flight of Bronson Alpha from the sun, but most of the time those who operated it were now busy searching for the other American ship, of which they had seen no trace.

The hours dragged more, even, than they had on the outward journey. The surface of the planet ahead of them was disappointingly shrouded, as inspected for the last time. A word of warning went through the ship. The passengers took another drink of water, ate another mouthful of food, and once again strapped themselves to the floor. Hendron tripped the handle of a companion to the rheostat-like instrument in the far end of the ship. He fixed a separate telescope so that he could see into it. He looked critically at his gauges. He turned on more power.

A half-hour passed, and he did not budge. His face was taut. The dangers of space had been met. Now came the last great test. At his side again was Duquesne. Above him, in layers, were the terrified animals and the half-insensible passengers. So great was the pressure of retardation that it was almost impossible for him to move, and yet it was necessary to do so with great delicacy. A fractional miscalculation would mean that all his work had gone for nothing.