When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

Reënforcements came from the center of the camp—Jack Taylor and two more of the younger men.

“Hurt, Tony?” Tyalor challenged him.

“No,” replied Tony; and he did not mention his dead; for Taylor, creeping up, had encountered them. “Who’s killed in the buildings?”

“Not Hendron,” said Taylor, “or Eve—though she might have been. She was one of the girls that went out to attend to the wounded. Two of the girls were hit, but not Eve.… Hendron wants to see you, Tony.”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

“Where is he?”

“At the ship. I’ll take over here for you. Good luck!”

Tony stumbled through the dark to the buildings, black except for faint cracks of light at the doors behind which the wounded were collected. He found Hendron inside the Space Ship, and there, since its metal made an armor for it, a light was burning. Hendron sat at a table; it was now his headquarters.

“Who’s hurt?” said Tony.

“Too many.” Hendron dimissed this. “What do they think they are doing?” he challenged Tony abruptly.

“Getting ready to come again,” Tony returned.

“To-night, probably?”

Tony glanced at his wrist-watch; it was eleven o’clock. “Midnight, would be my guess, sir,” he said.

“Will they get in next time?” Hendron demanded.

“They can.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, if they come on more resolutely. They can do more than they have done.”

“Whereas we,” Hendron took up for him, “can scarcely do more.”

“Yes, sir,” said Tony. “We used all the defenses we had; and they could have carried us an hour ago, if they’d come on.”

“Exactly,” nodded Hendron. “And now we are fewer. We will be fewer still, of course, after the next attack; and fewer yet, after they get in.”

“Yes, sir.”

“However,” observed Hendron thoughtfully, “that will be, in one way, an advantage.”

Tony was used, by now, to be astonished by Hendron; yet he said: “I don’t follow you, sir.”

“We will defend the enclosure as long as we can, Tony,” Hendron said. “But when they are in,—if they get in,—no one is to throw himself away fighting them uselessly. They must be delayed as long as they can be; but when they are in, we gather—all of us that are left, Tony—here.”

“Here?”

“Inside this ship. Hadn’t that occurred to you, Tony? Don’t you see? Don’t you see?”

Tony stared at his chief, and straightened, the blood of hope racing again hot within.

“Of course I see!” he almost shouted. “Of course I see!”

“Very well. Then issue cloths—white cloths, Tony; distribute them.”