When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1) - Page 36
Tony began the rounds again. In the hall of the women’s dormit
ory, Dodson and Smith were hard at work. Their patients sat or lay in bed. There was a smell of anæsthetics and antiseptics in the air. Eve, together with a dozen other women, was acting as nurse. She had changed her clothes, and washed. She smiled at him across the room, and Dodson spoke to him. “Tell Hendron we’re managing things beautifully in here now. I don’t think there’s anybody here that won’t recover.”
“He’s asleep,” Tony replied. “I’ll tell him when he wakes.”
He looked at Eve again before he went out, and saw her eyes flooded with tears. Immediately he realized his thoughtlessness in not telling her at once that her father was safe, but there was no reproof in her starry-eyed glance. She understood that the situation had passed the point at which rational and normal thoughtfulness could be expected.
Tony went next to the machine-shop. A shift of men was at work clearing away the infiltrated dust on the engines and the mud that had poured over the floors. Another group of men lay in deep sleep wherever there was room enough to recline. One of the workers explained: “Nobody around here can work for long without a little sleep, so we’re going in one-hour shifts. Sleep an hour, clean an hour. Is that all right, Mr. Drake?”
“That’s fine,” Tony said.
At the power-house a voice hailed him.
“You’re just in time, Mr. Drake.”
“What for?”
“Come in.” Tony entered the power-house. The man conducted him to a walled panel and pointed to a switch. “Pull her down.”
Tony pulled. At once all over the cantonment obscurity was annihilated by the radiance of countless electric lights. The electrician who had summoned Tony grinned. “We’re using a little emergency engine, and only about a quarter of the lights of the lines are operating. That’s all we’ve had time to put in order. It’s jerry-made, but it’s better than this damn’ gloom.”
Tony’s hand came down firmly on the man’s shoulder. “It’s marvelous. You boys work in shifts now. All of you need sleep.”
The electrician nodded. “We will. Some of the big shots are inside. Shall I tell them to come out to see you?”
An idea suddenly struck Tony. “Look here. Why shouldn’t I go see them if I want to? Why is it you expect them to come out and see me?”
“You’re the boss, aren’t you?”
“What makes you think I’m the boss?”
The man looked at him quizzically. “Why, it said so in the instruction-book we got when we were all sent out here. Everybody got a copy. It said you were second in command in any emergency to Mr. Hendron; and this is an emergency, isn’t it?”
Tony was staggered by this new information. “It said that in a book?”
“Right. In the book of rules that everybody that lives here got the day they came. I had one in my pocket, but I lost pocket, book and all, out there on the landing-field.”
Tony conquered his surprise. It flashed through his mind that Hendron was training him to be in command of those who stayed behind and launched the Space Ship. He was conscious of a naïve pride at this indication of the great scientist’s confidence in him. “I won’t bother the men here,” he said. “Just so long as we get as many lights as possible in operation, as fast as possible.”
He found a group of men standing speculatively in front of the men’s hall. One of the side walls had been shattered, and bricks had cascaded from the front walls to the ground. Tony looked at the building critically, and then said: “I don’t think anybody should occupy it.”
“There are a good many men in there asleep right now. Probably they entered in the dark without noticing the condition of the building.”
Tony addressed the crowd. “If two or three of you care to volunteer to go in with me, we’ll get them all out. The men will sleep for the time being on the floor in the south dining-hall.”
He went into the insecure building, and practically all of the men who had been regarding it from the outside accompanied him. They roused the sleepers.
The floor of the dining-hall was dry: men in dozens, and then in scores, without speech, among themselves, pushed aside the tables and stretched out on the bare boards, falling instantly to sleep.
Next Tony went to the kitchen. Fires were going in two stoves; more coffee was ready, the supply of sandwiches had overtaken the demand, and kettles of soup augmented it. Taylor was still in charge, and he made his report as soon as he saw Tony.
“The big storehouses are half underground, as you probably know, and I don’t think the food in them has been hurt much, although it has been shaken up. I didn’t know anything about the feeding arrangements, but I’ve located a bunch of men who did. There’s apparently a large herd of livestock and a lot of poultry about a quarter of a mile in the woods. I’ve sent men there to take charge. They already reported that the sheep and goats and steers didn’t budge, although their pens and corrals were destroyed. They’re putting up barbed-wire for the time being. Everything got shaken up pretty badly, and the water and mud spoiled whatever it got into, but most of the stuff was in big containers. The main that carried the water from the reservoir is all smashed to hell, and I guess the water in the reservoir isn’t any good anyway. I’m boiling all that I use, but somebody has just got the bright idea of using the fire apparatus and hoses from some of these young lakes.”
“You’ve done damned well, Taylor,” Tony said. “Do you think you can carry on for a few hours more?”
“Sure. I’m good for a week of this.”
Tony watched the innumerable chores which were being done by men under Taylor’s instruction. He noticed for the first time that the work of reclaiming the human habitations was not being done altogether by the young men, the mechanics and the helpers whom Hendron had enlisted. Among Taylor’s group were a dozen middle-aged scientists whose names had been august in the world three months before that day. Unable for the time to carry on their own tasks, they were laboring for the common weal with mops and brooms and pails and shovels.
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