When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

It was impossible to make any estimate whatsoever of the number of people who had survived the catastrophe. Doubtless the figure ran into scores of millions; but except in a few fortunate and prearranged places, they were destitute, disorganized and doomed to perish of hunger and exposure.

On the tenth day the sun shone for the first time. It pierced the clouds for a few minutes only, and even at its strongest it was hazy, penetrating the belts of fog with scarcely enough strength to cast shadows.…

At the end of two weeks it would have been difficult to tell that the settlement in Michigan had undergone any great cataclysm, save that the miniature precipice remained on the flying-field, and that great mounds of chocolate-colored earth were piled within view of the inhabitants.

On the evening of the fifteenth day a considerable patch of blue sky appeared at twilight, and for three hours afforded a view of the stars. The astronomers took advantage of that extended opportunity to make observation of the Bronson Bodies, which had become morning stars, showing rims like the planet Venus as they moved between the earth and the sun.

Carefully, meticulously, both by direct observation and by photographic methods, they measured and plotted the course of the two terrible strangers from space; and with infinitesimal differences, the results of all the observers were the same. Bronson Beta—the habitable world—on its return would pass by closer than before; but it would pass.

There would be no escape from Bronson Alpha.

In all the fifteen days the earth had not ceased trembling. Sometimes the shocks were violent enough to jar objects from shelves, but ordinarily they were so light as to be barely detectable.

In all those fifteen days, furthermore, there had been no visitor to the camp from the outside world, and the radio station had contented itself for the most part with the messages it received, for fear that by giving its position and broadcasting its comparative security, it might be overwhelmed by a rush of desperate and starving survivors.

At the end of three weeks one of the airplanes which had escaped the storm was put in condition, and Eliot James and Ransdell made a five-hundred-mile reconnaissance. At Hendron’s request the young author addressed the entire gathering in the dining-hall after his return. He held spellbound the thousand men and women who were thirsty for any syllable of information about the world over the horizon.

“Mr. Ransdell and myself,” James began, “took our ship off the ground this morning at eight o’clock. We flew due north for about seventy-five miles. Then we made a circle of which that distance was the radius, covering the territory that formerly constituted parts of Michigan and Wisconsin.

“I say ‘formerly,’ ladies and gentlemen, because the land which we observed has nothing to do with the United States as it once was, and our flight was like a journey of discovery. You have already been told that the Great Lakes have disappeared. They are, however, not entirely gone, and I should say that about one-third of Lake Superior, possibly now landlocked, remains in its bed.

“The country we covered, as you doubtless know, was formerly heavily wooded and hilly. It contained many lakes, and was a mining center. I will make no attempt to describe the astonishing aspect of the empty lake-bed, the chasms and flat beaches which were revealed when the water uncovered them, or the broad cracks and crevices which stretch across the bed. I am unable to convey to you the utter desolation of the scene. It is easier, somewhat, to give an idea of the land over which we flew. Most of the forests have been burned away. Seams have opened underneath them, which are in reality mighty cañons, abysses in the naked earth. Steam pours from them and hovers in them. All about the landscape are fumaroles, hot springs, geysers and boiling wells.

“In the course of our flight we observed the ruins of a moderate-sized town and of several villages. We also saw the charred re

mains of what we assumed were farms, and possibly lumber- and mining-camps. Not only have great clefts been made, but hills have been created, and in innumerable places the earth shows raw and multicolored—the purplish red of iron veins, the glaring white of quartz, the dark monotony of basalt intermingled in a giant’s conglomerate. I can only suggest the majesty and the unearthliness of the scene by saying it closely resembled my conception of what the lunar landscape must have been.

“We observed a few areas which, like our own, were relatively undisturbed. There were a number of oases in this destruction where forests still stood, apparently sheltered from the hurricanes and in no danger of conflagration. This district, as you know, is sparsely settled. I will complete my wholly inadequate report to you by satisfying what must be your major curiosity: we saw in the course of our flying a number of human beings. Some of them wandered over this nude, tumultuous country alone and obviously without resources for their sustenance. Others were gathered together in small communities in the glades and sheltered places. They had fires going, and they were apparently secure at least for the time being. All of them attempted to attract our attention to themselves, and it is with regret that I must say that not only is their rescue inadvisable from the sheer necessity of our own self-preservation, but that in most cases it would be difficult if not impossible, as we found no place in which we might have landed a plane, if the surface of the water that remains in Lake Superior be excepted, and a few other ponds and lakes. And it would be difficult indeed to go on foot to the succor of those unfortunates.”

After the speech, people crowded around James. Peter Vanderbilt, moving through the crowd, glimpsed Ransdell as he was walking through the front doors of the hall. The New Yorker stepped out on the porch beside the pilot; the sophisticated Manhattan dilettante with his smooth, graying hair, his worldly-wise and -weary eyes, his svelte accent, beside the rugged, tan-faced, blue-eyed, powerful adventurer. One, the product of millions, of Eastern universities and of society at its most sumptuous, the other a man whose entire resources always had been held in his own hands, and who had lived in a world of frontiers.

“I wanted to ask you something,” Vanderbilt said. Ransdell turned, and as usual he did not speak but simply waited.

“Has Hendron commissioned you to do any more flying?”

“No.”

“Do you think it would be possible to hop around the country during the next few months?”

“With a good ship—an amphibian.”

Vanderbilt tapped his cigarette-holder delicately against one of the posts on the porch. “You and I are both supernumeraries around here, in a sense. I was wondering if it might not be a good idea to make an expedition around the country and see for ourselves just what has happened. If this old planet is really going to be smashed,—and from the evidence furnished two weeks ago I’ll believe it,—yet there’s something to see on its surface still. Let’s look at it.”

Ransdell thought inarticulately of Eve. He was drawn to her as never to any girl before; but, he reckoned, she must remain here. Not only that, but under the discipline which was clamped upon the settlement, no rival could claim her while he would be gone. And the adventure that Vanderbilt offered tremendously allured him.

“I’d like to try it,” Ransdell replied simply.

“Then I’ll see Hendron; we must have his consent, of course, to take a ship.”

Ransdell was struck by a thought. “Shall we take James too? He’d join, I think.”

“Excellent,” Vanderbilt accepted. “He could write up the trip. It would be ignominious, if any of us got to Bronson Beta, with no record of the real history of this old earth’s last days.”

Together they broached the subject to Hendron. He considered them for several minutes without replying, and then said: “You realize, of course, that such an expedition will be extremely hazardous? You could carry fuel and provisions for a long flight, but nothing like what you’d need. You’d have to take pot-luck everywhere you went; gasoline would be almost impossible to find—what hasn’t leaked away must have been burned, for the most part; and whenever you set the ship down, you would be a target for any and every person lurking in the vicinity. The conditions prevailing, physically, socially and morally, must be wholly without precedent.”

“That,” replied Vanderbilt calmly, “is precisely why we cannot be men and fear to study them.”

“Exactly,” jerked Hendron; and he gazed at Ransdell.