When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

vivors—but the women. None. For the horde would take no prisoners. They were killing the wounded already—their own badly wounded and the camp’s wounded that they had captured.

Eliot James, a bullet through his thigh, but saved by the dark, crawled in with this information. Tony carried him into the ship.

They were all in the ship—all the survivors. The horde did not suspect it. The horde, as it charged in the dark, yelling and firing, closed in on the laboratories, clambered in the windows, smashing, shooting, screaming. Meeting no resistance, they shot and bayoneted the bodies of their own men and of the camp’s which had been left there.

Then they came on toward the ship. They suddenly seemed to realize that the ship was the last refuge. They surrounded it, firing at it. Their bullets glanced from its metal. Somebody who had grenades bombed it.

A frightful flame shattered them. Probably they imagined, at first, that the grenade had exploded some sort of a powder magazine within the huge metal tube, and that it was exploding. Few of those near to the ship, and outside it, lived to see what was happening.

The great metal rocket rose from the earth, the awful blast from its power tubes lifting it. The frightful heat seared and incinerated, killing at its touch. A hundred of the horde were dead before the ship was above the buildings.

Hendron lifted it five hundred feet farther, and the blast spread in a funnel below it. A thousand died in that instant. Hendron ceased to elevate the ship. Indeed, he lowered it a little, and the power of the atomic blast which was keeping two thousand tons of metal and of human flesh suspended over the earth, played upon the ground—and upon the flesh on the ground—as no force ever released by man before.

Tony lay on his face on the floor of the ship, gazing down through the protective quartz-glass at the ground lighted by the garish glare of the awful heat.

In the midst of the blaring, blinding, screaming crisis, a man on horseback appeared. His coming seemed spectral. He rode in full uniform; he had a sword which he brandished to rally his doomed horde. Probably he was drunk; certainly he had no conception of what was occurring; but his courage was splendid. He spurred into the center of the lurid light, into the center of the circle of death and tumult, stiff-legged in stirrups of leather, like one of the horrible horsemen of the Apocalypse.

He was, for a flaming instant, the apotheosis of valor. He was the crazed commander of the horde.

But he was more. He was the futility of all the armies on earth. He was man, the soldier.

Probably he appeared to live after he had died, he and his horse together. For the horse stood there motionless like a statue, and he sat his horse, sword in hand. Then, like all about them, they also crumpled to the ground.

Half an hour later, Hendron brought the ship down.

CHAPTER 20—DAY

A PALE delicate light carried away the depths of night. From the numbness and exhaustion which had seized it, the colony roused itself. It gazed with empty eyes upon that which surrounded it. The last battle of brains against brutality had been fought on the bosom of the earth. And the intelligence of man had conquered his primeval ruthlessness. But at what cost! Around a table in the office of the laboratories a few men and women stared at each other; Hendron pale and shaken, Tony in shoes and trousers, white bandages over his wounds, Eve staring from him to the short broad-shouldered silent form of Ransdell, whose hands, blackened, ugly, hung limply at his sides, whose gorilla-like strength seemed to have deserted him; the German actress, her dress disheveled, her hands covering her eyes; Smith the surgeon, stupefied in the face of this hopeless summons to his calling.

At last Hendron sucked a breath into his lungs. He spoke above the nerve-shattering clamor which penetrated the room continually. “My friends, what must be done is obvious. We must first bury the dead. There are no survivors of the enemy. If others are gathering, I believe we need fear no further attack. Doctor Smith, you will kindly take charge of all hospital and medical arrangements for our people. I will request that those who are able to do so appear immediately on the airplane field, which I believe is—unobstructed. I shall dispatch the majority of them to your assistance, and with those who remain, I shall take such steps as are necessary. Let’s go.”

Only three hundred and eighty persons were counted by Tony as they struggled shuddering to the landing-field. Almost half of them were women, for the women, except in the case of individuals who joined the fighting voluntarily, had been secluded.

As in the the other emergency, Taylor was assigned to the kitchen. He walked to the kitchen with his men. Tony with ten other men, a pitiful number for the appalling task that confronted them, went down to the field and began to gather up in trucks the bodies there. Not far from the cantonment, on what had been a lumber road, an enormous fissure yawned in the earth.…

All that day they tended their own wounded. Many of them perished.

In those nightmare days no one spoke unless it was necessary. Lifelong friendships and strong new friendships had been obliterated. Loves that in two months had flowered into vehement reality were ended. And only the slowest progress was made against the increasing charnel horror surrounding the cantonment. For two weeks abysmal sadness and funereal silence held them. Only the necessary ardors of their toil prevented many of them from going mad. But at the end of two weeks Tony, returning from an errand to the fissure where the last bodies had been entombed by a blast of dynamite, stood on the hill where he had so often regarded the encampment, and saw that once again the grass grew greenly, once again the buildings were clean and trim. The odor of fresh paint was carried to his nostrils, and from far away the droning voices of the cattle in the stockyards reached his ears. He was weary, although for the last few nights he had been allowed adequate sleep, and his heart ached.

While he stood there, his attention was attracted by a strange sound—the sound of an airplane motor; and the plane itself became visible. It was not one of their own planes, and he looked at it with hostile curiosity. It landed presently on their field, and Tony was one of several men who approached it. The cabin door opened, and out stepped a man. There was something familiar about him to Tony, but he could not decide what it was. The man had a high crackling voice. His hair was snow-white. His features were drawn, and his skin was yellow. His pilot remained at the controls of the plane, and the old man hobbled toward Tony, saying as he approached:

“Please take me to Mr. Hendron.”

Tony stepped forward. “I’m Mr. Hendron’s assistant. We don’t allow visitors here. Perhaps you will tell me your errand.”

“I’ll see Hendron,” the other snapped.

Tony realized that the man constituted no menace. “Perhaps,” he said coldly, “if you will tell me your reason for wanting to see Hendron, I can arrange for the interview.”

The old man almost shrieked. “You can arrange an interview; I tell you, young fellow, I said I would see Hendron, and that’s all there is to it.” He came abruptly closer, snatched Tony’s lapel, cocked his head and peered into his face. “You’re Drake, aren’t you, young Tony Drake?”

Suddenly Tony recognized the man. He was staggered. Before him stood Nathaniel Borgan, fourth richest man in America, friend of all tycoons of the land, friend indeed of Hendron himself. Tony had last seen Borgan in Hendron’s house in New York, when Borgan had been immaculate, powerful, self-assured and barely approaching middle age. He now looked senile, degenerate and slovenly.

“Aren’t you Drake?” the crackling voice repeated. Tony nodded mechanically. “Yes,” he said, “come with me.”

Hendron did not recognize Borgan until Tony had pronounced his name. Then upon his face there appeared briefly a look of consternation, and Borgan in his shrill grating voice began to talk excitedly. “Of course I knew what you were doing, Hendron, knew all about it. Meant to offer you financial assistance, but got tangled up taking care of my affairs in the last few weeks. I haven’t been able to come here before, for a variety of reasons. But now I’m here. You’ll take me with you when you go, of course.” He banged his fist on the table in a bizarre burlesque of his former gestures. “You’ll take me, all right, all right, and I’ll tell you why you’ll take me—for my money. When all else fails, I’ll have my money. I ask only that you spare my life, that you’ll take me from this awful place, and in turn go out to my plane, go out to the plane that is waiting there for you. Look inside.” Suddenly his voice sank to a whisper, and his head was shot forward. “It’s full of bills, full of bills, Hendron, hundred-dollar bills, thousand-dollar bills, ten-thousand-dollar bills—stacked with them, bales of them, bundles of them—millions, Hendron, millions! That’s the price I’m offering you for my life.”

Hendron and Tony looked at this man in whose hands the destiny of colossal American industries had once been so firmly held; and they knew that he was mad.