When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

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“But I have come to the conclusion that, by dint of tremendous effort and coöperation, and largely because of the success of the experiments which we have made with Ransdell’s metal, it will be possible within the remaining months of time to construct a second and larger vessel which will be capable of removing the entire residual personnel of this camp.”

Hendron sat down. No cheer was lifted. As if they had seen the Gorgon’s Head, the audience was turned to stone. The sentence imposed by the death-lottery had been lifted. Every man and woman who sat there was free. Every one of them had a chance to live, to fight and to make a new career elsewhere in the starlit firmament.

They sat silently, many with bowed heads, as if they were engaged in prayer. Then sound came: A man’s racking sob, the low hysterical laughter of a woman; after that, like the rising of a great wind, the cheers.

CHAPTER 21—DIARY

IN Eliot James’ diaries the days appeared to be crammed with events. A glance at its pages would have made the observer believe that life was filled with excitement for the dwellers in Hendron’s colony, although to the dwellers themselves, the weeks passed in what seemed like a steady routine, and James had been so busy that he was unable to write voluminously:

“Dec. 4th: To-day what we call the keel of the second Space Ship was laid. The first has been popularly named ‘Noah’s Ark,’ and we have offered a prize of five thousand dollars in absolutely worthless bank-notes for anybody who will contrive a name for the second. It was a spectacular affair—all of us dressed in what we call our best clothes, Hendron making another of his usual speeches, full of stirring words and periodic sentences, and the molten metal pouring into its forms.

“Dec. 7th: To-day was a gala day for Tony Drake. Kyto, the Japanese servant whom he had had for some years in New York, and of whom he was inordinately fond, walked peacefully into camp, after he had been supposedly lost on the trip here from New York. The inscrutable little Jap walked up to Tony, whose back was turned. Kyto’s face was like a smiling Buddha’s; and fully appreciating the drama of the situation, he said in his odd voice: ‘With exceedingly humbleness request possibilities of return to former employment.’ Peter Vanderbilt and I had brought him up to Tony, and when Tony spun around, I thought he was going to faint. Immediately afterward he began thumping Kyto’s back so hard that I personally feared for the Jap’s life. But he seems to be wiry; in fact, he must have the constitution of a steel spring, for he has traveled overland more than eight hundred miles in the past two months, and his story, which I am getting out of him piecemeal, is one of fabulous adventure. Eve seemed almost as much pleased to see Kyto as was Tony himself. She took his hand and held it and cried over him, while he stood there blinking and saying that he was humbly and honorably this and that.

“Dec. 8th: Four deer wandered into the camp to-day, and were corralled for our menagerie after a very exciting chase.

“Dec. 19th: Hendron is a curiously ingenious devil. I discovered only to-day that he has used for insulation, between the double walls of the now completed Ark, two thick layers of asbestos, and between them, books. The books make reasonably good insulating material, and when we arrive at our future home, if we do not arrive with too hard a blow, we will be provided with an enormous and complete library. I even saw a first edition of Shelley which was designated for the lining of the second ship. Amazing fellow, Hendron.

“Dec. 31st: We had our Christmas dinner last Thursday, and except for the absence of turkey, it was complete, even to plum pudding. The weather continues to be warm, and the gardens which we replanted have flourished under this new sub-tropical climate, so that already we are reaping huge harvests which are being stored in the Space Ships.

“Jan. 18th: A flight was made to the ‘mines’ from which Ransdell’s metals have been taken, and in the course of it the plane passed over St. Paul and Minneapolis. Apparently the mobs in those two cities have for the most part either perished or migrated, as there was very little sign of life—smoke columns rising here and there amid the ruins betokening small cooking-fires, and an occasional figure on the streets, nothing more. However, we have not drawn in the outposts stationed around the cantonment after the last attack, and if we should be again attacked in force, we shall be warned in time and shall not temporize but use the final weapon at once. However, no one expects another attack. Even in this dying world, the word of our weapon has spread.

“Jan. 20th: There was dancing in the hall of the women’s dormitory and Ransdell so far overcame his almost animal shyness that he danced twice with Eve. The rivalry between Ransdell and Tony is the most popular subject of discussion among the girls and women. I myself have been much interested in the triangle, and for a while I was disturbed about it, but such a bond has grown between the two men that I know whoever is defeated in the contest, if there is victory or defeat, will take his medicine honorably and generously. I am wondering, however, about that business of victory and defeat. The women here slightly outnumber the men. It will be necessary for them to bear children on the new planet. Variation of our new race will be desirable. To care for the same, fifty girls and twenty-five men are already deeply immersed in the study of obstetrics, nursing, pediatry, child psychology, etc. Perhaps we will resort in the main to polyandry and abolish, because of biological necessity, all marriage. There are a good many very real love-affairs existent already. That is to be expected, when the very flower of young womanhood and the best men of all ages are segregated in the wilderness. I myself doubtless reflect the mental attitude of most of the men here. There are a hundred women, I shall say two hundred, any one of whom I would be proud to have as my wife. But so great have been the trials of our life, so enormous is the need for our concentrated efforts, that little energy or time has been left to them to think about love or marriage.

Jan. 31st: It is too bad that the change in the earth’s orbit and the inclination of its axis did not occur long ago. Generations of people who have been snowbound at this time in Michigan would rub their eyes in wonderment if they could see the trees still in leaf, the flowers still in bloom, the fields still green, sunshine alternating with occasional warm rains, and the thermometer standing between 65 and 85 every day.

“Feb. 17th: In a little more than a month it will be time for our departure. As that solemn hour approaches, all of us tend to think back into our lives, rather than forward toward our new lives. Hendron has not hesitated to make it clear that our relatively short jump through space will be dangerous indeed. The ships may not have been contrived properly to withstand what are at best merely theoretical conditions. The cold of outer space may overwhelm us. The sun may beat through the sides of the ship and consume us. The rays which travel through the empty reaches when we thrust ourselves among them clad in the thin cylinders of our Ark may assert a different potency from that experienced under the layer of Earth’s atmosphere. Either or both of our two projectiles may collide with a wandering asteroid, in which case the consequences will be similar to those anticipated for the collision of Earth with Bronson Alpha. Hendron assures us only that the ships will fly, and that if they reach the atmosphere of Bronson Beta, it will be possible to land them.

“Feb. 22nd: The Bronson Bodies have reappeared in the sky with visible discs. Alpha once more looks like a coin, and Beta not unlike the head of a large pin. Observations through our modest telescope show clearly that Bronson Beta, warmed by the sun, has a surface now completely thawed. Its once solid atmosphere is drifting about it filled with clouds, and through those clouds we are able to glimpse patches of dark and patches of brilliance, which indicate continents and oceans. At the first approach, an excellent spectroscopic analysis was made of the planet’s composition. The analysis denoted its fitness to support human life, but we stand in such awe of it that we say to ourselves only: ‘Perhaps we shall be able to live if we ever disembark there’; but we cannot know. There may be things upon its mysterious surface, elemental conditions undreamed of by man. However, there is some mysterious comfort, a sort of superstitious courage, afforded to many of our numbers by the fact that as our doom approaches, a future home is also waxing brightly in the dark sky. We spend many evenings staring toward the heavens.

“Feb. 28th: Tremendous effort is being expended upon the second Ark. The task of accumulating metal for its construction was tremendous, inasmuch as the vast stores accumulated by Hendron for the building of the first ship in the cantonment itself were insufficient. There was no time to smelt iron from the deposits in this district, and it had to be collected from every possible source. The hangar which had protected the first ship was confiscated. Two steel bridges across what used to be a river near by have furnished us with much of the extra material required, but we are now engaged in smelting every object for which we shall have no future use. Copper is at a premium, and our lighting system is now being conducted over iron wires, to the great detriment of its efficacy. Women are doing tasks that women have never done before, and we are all working on a sixteen-hour-a-day schedule. Hendronville looks like a little Pittsburgh—its furnaces going all night, its roads rutted by heavy trucking, and its foundries shaking with a continual roar of machinery. The construction of the second Ark in such a record time would have been impossible had it not been for the adaptability of Hendron’s solution of atomic disintegration. Power and heat we have in unlimited quantities, but we are making progress, and we shall finish in time.

“March 6th: The day and hour of departure have been announced. In order to intercept the Bronson Body at its most advantageous point, we shall leave the Earth on the 27th of this month at 1:45 A.M. precisely. It is estimated that the journey will require about ni

nety hours, although it could be made much more quickly.

“March 18th: In running over my notes, I find I have not mentioned one source of constant interest and speculation here at the camp. From time to time, when our own receiving apparatus has been functioning, we have overheard radio broadcasts from the world outside. The static is still tremendous, and these broadcasts, whether on spark sets or over regular stations, have been most unsatisfactory. Once in November and again in January we heard the President of the United States. He recited in a very strained and weary voice a few fragmentary details of life in his small kingdom. Not in any hope of aid, but as if he wished to inform any one else who might be listening, what the situation was. He did not address his own constituents, so we may assume they have no receiving sets and are still struggling against appalling handicaps which Ransdell and myself observed. On three or four occasions through the rattle in the earphones we have caught snatches of broadcasts from foreign stations. But, except for a lull immediately after the storms, we have never been able to overhear enough so that we know anything definite about the situation in Europe or elsewhere, except that on the night of, I think, December 8th, we heard a short segment of a Frenchman’s oration which evidently was intended to move his hearers toward peace. We assumed that in spite of the appalling conditions that must prevail abroad as they do here, Europe, still sticking stubbornly to her nationalism, is again engaged in some form of warfare.

“March 20th: A week from to-night we shall leave the Earth. The approach of this zero hour has cast a spell on the colonists. They move as if in a dream. When they talk, they use only trivialities and commonplaces as a medium for their expression. Nervous tension is enormous. I saw two of the girls sitting on the steps of their dormitory discussing dressmaking for half an hour with the utmost seriousness; and yet neither replied to anything the other had said, and neither said anything that might be remotely considered sensible.

“Everything is in readiness; a few perishables will be moved into the ships in the last hours; the stock and poultry have already been domiciled in their quarters, although they have not been lashed fast. I have been given by Hendron, to include with my papers, a complete list of the contents of both ships. In spite of their enormous size,—the second ship looks like three gas-storage tanks piled on top of each other, and also has the same shining exterior as the first,—it is impossible to believe that they could contain all the items in these lists.

“It is the most incredible assortment of the gear that belongs to mankind ever assembled in any one place. What our ships contain might well be samples of our civilization collected wholesale by some curious visitors from another world and taken home in order that their weird fellows might look upon the wisdom, the genius, the entertainment and the interests of men. We are ready.”

CHAPTER 22—AVE ATQUE VALE

“WHEN I think,” Tony said to Eve as they sat side by side on a small hilltop watching the descent of twilight into the busy valley, “of the foresight and ingenuity of your father, I am appalled. He was ahead of most of the people in the world in his idea for leaving the earth, and he was ahead of all of us when he saw the possibility and the practicability of taking everybody who was left after the struggle, to the new planet. It’s odd. I used to imagine scenes that would exist when the Ark was ready to leave, and of the thousand of us here only a hundred would be chosen. It would have been a terrible period for every one. Then I used to think what would have happened if the world knew about the Ark. Hundreds of men like Borgan would have offered their millions in return for a ticket. Husbands would have deserted their wives and their children. People would have fought until they were killed, trying to get aboard. Prospective stowaways would have offered fabulous prices. No wonder he insisted on isolation and secrecy. And now we can all go—”

Eve hugged herself with her arms and looked at him sidewise. “I knew all about Dad’s plans for the departure, and I knew something else. You were not to go, were you?”

“Me? Of course not. What good would I have been?”

Eve smiled. On this evening, an evening so close to the great adventure, she seemed radiant and unusually tender. “You’re modest, Tony. That’s one of your greatest charms. Let me tell you: Once I saw the list Dad had made up. He had given Bronson first place. I came second. Dodson was third. Ransdell was fourth. And you were fifth, Tony. When he could pick almost as he wished from the whole world, he made you fifth. That’s pretty high up.”

“Your father must be sentimental to consider me at all. But I am glad he gave Ransdell that fourth position. I can’t imagine any situation in the world which Dave couldn’t handle.”

Eve ignored the compliment. “Father took the list away from me, and he was very angry that I had seen it. Peter Vanderbilt was on it. There are a good many high-minding and high-binding communists—that is, there used to be a good many—who would be mighty sore to think that into the blood of the future race would go that of the American aristocracy which they so passionately hate. Funny! I got into the habit of thinking, just as Dodson and the other men were thinking, about whom to preserve, and when you consider it, Vanderbilt has as much to offer as almost any one. The delicacy that comes from overbreeding, a wiry nervous constitution, an artist’s temperament, taste, a learned mind, a gorgeous sense of humor and courage. Probably he’s wasteful, spendthrift, decadent and jaded—or at least he used to be; but how greatly his positive virtues outweigh his vices!”