After Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 2)

“But, Father—” Eve whispered.

The old man leaned forward again. “Go, Tony! I throw the torch to you. Your place is the place I occupied. Lead my people. Fight! Live! Become glorious!”

“You’d better leave,” Eve said. “I’ll watch here.”

Tony went out into the darkness. He whispered to a few people whom he encountered.

Presently he stood inside the circular room that was all that remained of the Ark. No vent or porthole allowed light to filter into the cold and black night. With him were Ransdell and Vanderbilt and Jack Taylor, Dodson and Williamson, Shirley Cotton and Von Beitz, and many others.

Tony stood in front of them: “We’re going to embark for one of the Other People’s cities—at once. The night is long, fortunately—”

Williamson, who had once openly suggested that Tony should not become their leader, and who had welcomed the reappearance of Ransdell, now spoke dubiously.

“I’m not in favor of that policy. We have the blast tubes—”

“I cannot question it,” Tony answered. “Hendron decided.”

“Then why isn’t he here?”

There was silence in the room. Tony looked from face to face. His own countenance was stone-like. His eyes stopped on the eyes of Ransdell. His voice was low.

“Hendron turned over the command to me.”

“Great!” Ransdell was the first to grasp Tony’s hand. “I’m in no shape for the responsibility like that I had for a while.”

Tony looked at him with gratitude burning in his eyes.

“Orders, then?” Ransdell asked, grinning.

That was better for Tony; action was his forte in life. He pulled a map from his pocket.

“Copy of the globe James and I found in the Other People’s city,” he said.

They crowded around it: a rough projection of imaginary parallels and meridians marked two circles.

“Here,” said Tony, pointing with a pencil, “is where we are. To the south, Ransdell’s camp. West, the city we explored. The Midianites—” He smiled. “That’s Hendron’s term for the Asiatics and Japs and Germans; it comes from the Bible—the Midianites are camped somewhere to the northwest. You note a city at this point. They doubtless occupy that city. Now—”

His pencil moved south and west of the position where they were camped. “You see that there’s another city here. It’s west of a line between here and Ransdell’s camp, and about equidistant from both. I suggest we go to that city—to-night, by the Other People’s road—and occupy it. The distance can’t be too great. We’ll use the tractors.”

He then addressed those who could not see the map: “Imagine that we are camped in New York, Ransdell in Washington, the Midianites in Utica—then this other city is about fifty miles west of where Philadelphia would be, while the city James and I explored is say a hundred miles north of Pittsburgh. That’s about correct.”

“

We’ll move?” Vanderbilt asked. “Everything?”

“No. People—necessities. Come back for the rest.”

Williamson stepped forward. “Congratulate you, Tony. Glad.”

Others congratulated Tony. Then he began to issue orders.

The exiles from earth prepared to march at last from the wilderness. They prepared hastily and in the dark. Around them in the impenetrable night were the alarms of danger. They hurried, packing their private goods, loading them onto the lumber-trucks, and gathering together food-supplies and those items of equipment and apparatus most valuable to the hearts of the scientific men who composed the personnel.

An hour after issuing his orders, Tony stepped into Hendron’s house. Eve was there.

“How is he?”

She shook her head. “Delirious.”