When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

“That’s still true, Tony,” she said, standing before him, and quivering as he did.

He gestured about. “They all know that now.”

“Yes,” she said. “They’ve been told it.”

“But they don’t know it. They can’t know a thing like that just from being told—or even from what they’ve just been through.”

“Neither can we, Tony.”

“No; we think we—you and I, at least—are going to be safe somehow. We are sure, down in our hearts—aren’t we, Eve?—that you and I will pull through. There’ll be some error in the calculations that will save us; or the Space Ship will take us away; or—something.”

She nodded. “There’s no error in the calculations, Tony. Too many good men have made them, independently of each other.”

“Did they all count in the collision with the moon, Eve?”

“All the good ones did, dear. There’s no chance of escape because of the encounter with the moon. It deflected the Bronson Bodies a little, of course; but not enough to save the world. I know that with my head, Tony; but—you’re right—I don’t know it with my heart. I don’t know it with—me.”

Tony seized and held her with a fierceness and with a tenderness in his ferocity, neither of which he had ever known before. He looked down at her in his arms, and it was difficult to believe that any one so exquisite, so splendidly fragile, could have survived the orgy of elemental passion through which they all had passed. Yet that—he knew—was nothing to what would be.

He kissed her, long and deeply; and when he drew his lips away, he continued to stare down at her whispering words which she, with her lips almost at his, yet could not hear.

“What is it, Tony?”

“Only—an incantation, dear.”

“What?” she asked; so he repeated it audibly:

“‘A thousand shall fall beside thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee!’ Remember it, Eve?”

“The psalmist!” whispered Eve.

“He must have seen some one he loved, threatened,” said Tony. “‘For he shall give his angels charge over thee,’” he continued, “‘to keep thee in all thy ways.

“‘They shall bear thee in their hands; that thou hurt not thy foot against a stone.’

“It stayed in my head, hearing it at the church where Mother used to take me. I’d read it in the responses, too. I remember that, I suppose, because it’s beautiful—if no more.”

“If no more,” said Eve; and very gently, she freed herself from him; for, far more faithfully than he, she heeded her father.

He sighed. She looked up at him. “They tell me, Tony, that you kept the whole camp going single-handed,” she returned him to practical affairs.

“I just rallied around and looked at people who were doing something and said: ‘Great! Go ahead.’ That’s all I did.”

She laughed, proud of him. “You put heart in them all again. That’s you, Tony.… Did you know Professor Bronson is here?”

“Yes; I saw him—spoke to him. Funny feeling I had, when I heard his name. Bronson—of the Bronson Bodies. It made him almost to blame for them. How did he happen to come?”

“He’d arrived in the country and was almost here when the storm struck. He’s known about what was to happen, and he’s been figuring it out for a longer time than any one else. He’s had the highest respect for Father. Of course you know it was to Father that he sent his results. They had to get together, Father and he. They agreed it was better to work here than in South Africa; so he did the traveling. He’ll be invaluable—if we do get away.”

“You mean, if we get away from the world.”

“Yes. You see, Father’s chief work has been—and will be—on the Space Ship; how to get away from the world and reach Bronson Beta, when it returns.”

“And before Bronson Alpha smashes us as it did the moon,” said Tony grimly.

Eve nodded. “That’s all Father can possibly arrange—if not more. He can’t take any time to figuring how we’ll live, if we reach that other world. But Professor Bronson has been doing that for months. For more than a year he practically lived—in his mind—on Bronson Beta. So he’s here to make the right preparation for the party that goes on the ship: who they should be, what they should carry, and what they must do to live—if they land there.”

In three days the static in the air vanished to such an extent that messages from various parts of the world became audible. Out of those messages a large map was constructed in the executive offices. It was a speculative map, and its accuracy was by no means guaranteed. It showed islands where Australia had been, two huge islands in the place of South America, and only the central and southern part of Europe and Asia. There was a blank in place of Africa, for no one knew what had happened to the Dark Continent. A few points of land were all that was left of the British Isles, and over the air came the terrible story of the last-minute flight from London across the Channel, in which the populace was overwhelmed on the Great Lowland Plain. Among the minor phenomena reported was the disappearance of the Great Lakes, which had been inclined from west to east and tipped like trays of water into the valley of the St. Lawrence. On the fifth day they learned that an airplane flight had been made over what was the site of New York. The Hudson River Valley was a deep estuary; the sea rolled up to Newburgh; and the entire coast along its new line was scoured with east-to-west-running valleys which were piled high with the wreckage of a mighty civilization. Everywhere were still fœtid plains of cooling lava; and in many areas, apparently, the flow from the earth had been not molten rock but metal, which lay in fantastic and solidified seas already red with rust.