When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

“Kane?”

“Nope; you’re all wet. Those two noble scientists are second in command. The big ship is going out under the instructions of your good friend David Ransdell.”

“That’s grand,” Tony said; “but will he have sufficient technical knowledge to run the thing?”

“Oh, Jessup and Kane will do that all right. Ransdell’s only going to be a figurehead until they get to Bronson Beta. But isn’t that sweet?”

“That’s swell.”

“I mean for you and Eve. Think of it. Alone together in the reaches of utter space for ninety whole hours, cooped up with only about a hundred other people.”

Tony groaned, kicked the lock on his suitcase shut, and said: “Jack, how’d you like to be lying on this floor unconscious?”

“Sure you could make the grade?”

“What do you think?”

Jack scratched his head in mock calculation.

“Well, remember back in Cornell when you were sounding me out to see if I’d be a likely candidate for this jaunt? Remember your asking me if I hadn’t rowed on a crew, and my telling you that I had, but it wasn’t much of a crew, and we were champions that year because the others were still worse?”

Tony nodded with mock menace. “I remember. What about it?”

“Well, on thinking it over, I’ve decided that that was a pretty good crew, after all. Now on this matter of whether I’m going to be lying on the floor unconscious, or you, I have another item to point out beside my quondam skill at the oars. I was a little bit rattled the day you came into my room, and I forgot to mention that I was also captain of the boxing team.”

Tony stepped back. “Professionalism rearing its ugly head, eh? All right. We’ll find something else to decide our positions. How about baseball-bats?”

“My idea exactly. Celluloid baseball-bats.”

“Fine. I’ll meet you and your seconds out behind the power-house in half an hour. In the meantime I’ve got to get packed up here. You know we’re going places to-morrow.”

Jack sat down on the bed. “That reminds me: I’m going on the second ship too.”

Tony’s face fell. They were serious again.

Jack said: “When you are all set, they want you down at the Ark. Everybody’s going through it, and getting assigned to their quarters.”

Tony walked up a long flight of steps to the airlock. As he went, he cast an upward glance at the elaborate structure of beams which supported the Ark, and which workmen were now removing. The interior of the Ark was brilliantly lighted by electricity. Through its center ran a spiral staircase, and a long taut cable inside the stairs. At eight-foot intervals steel floors cut the cylinder into sections. The two forward sections were crammed with machinery and instruments, and across them ran the great thrust-beams against which the atomic tubes would exert their force. A ring of smaller tubes pointing outward around the upper and lower sections like spokes were provided to give free dimensional control of the ship, and to make the adjustments necessary for grounding. It had been planned to travel head-on for the greater part of the distance. When the reaction forces were started, the whole ship would be upside down for some time, and eventually the landing would be made after turning it end for end; and although the probabilities of depositing the ship precisely upon her stern, and of keeping her in that position, were small, it was felt that after she had landed she might tip over,—a motion that would be broken by the use of the horizontal jets,—or that she might even roll, which could also be stopped by the jets, as had been done on the short and simple hop from the ground on the night of the attack.

Tony walked up the spiral staircase from the stern’s engine-room. Above it were stockrooms with their arrangements for lashing fast the livestock which the Ark carried. Above the stockrooms were storerooms reaching to the center of the ship, and tightly packed. In the center of the ship were the human quarters, their walls carefully padded, and lashings, similar to but more comfortable than those provided for the animals, arranged along the floor.

These accommodations were not alluring. They suggested that the journey would be cramped and unpleasant, but inasmuch as it would take only ninety hours if it was successful, everything had been sacrificed to utility. On the side walls were water-taps, and in steel closets food for a considerably longer time than four days had been stored; but in their journey through space the travelers would enjoy no comfortable beds, eat no hot meals and divert themselves with no entertainments. The exact conditions of flight through space were unknown; and underneath the springs and paddings which lined the passengers’ quarters was apparatus both for refrigeration and for heating. Tony passed through the double layer of passenger quarters, through the layers of storerooms and the engine-room at the front end of the great cylinder, climbing all the way on the spiral stairs. There he found Hendron, who was testing some of the apparatus.

“You sent for me?” Tony asked.

“No. Oh, I see what it was. They were giving out the numbers of your slings down below. I’ve asked every one to get in slings before we start and when we land, as I’m not sure, from the single test, exactly what the general effect will be. I think King was in charge of the list, but if you see him any time within the next few hours, he will tell you your number and position.”

As Tony was about to go, Hendron recalled him. “I never showed you my engines, did I?”

“No,” Tony said.

Hendron waved his arm around the chamber. It looked very much like the interior of a submarine. “This is the forward power-cabin,” he began. “The breeches of the main tubes are concealed behind a wall which is reënforced by the thrust-beams. Those are the ones which are to break the force of our fall; but you can see here the breeches of the smaller surrounding tubes. They are not unlike cannon, and they work on the same principle. Acting at right angles to our line of flight, they can turn the ship and revolve it end for end, in fact, like a thrown fire-cracker, if we should turn on jets on opposite sides and opposite ends. The breech of each

of these little tubes,”—at that point Hendron turned a wheel with a handle on it, and the rear of one of the tubes slowly opened,—“is provided with the tubes which generate the rays that split atoms of beryllium into their protons and nuclei. The forces engendered in the process, which is like a molecular explosion, but vastly greater, together with the disrupted matter, is then discharged through the gun, the barrel of which is lined with Ransdell’s metal. The consumption of fuel, so to speak, both in quantity and rate, is regulated by a mechanism on the breech itself. The rate and volume of the discharge will be, of course, immensely greater for leaving the earth, than it was on the mere hop from the ground on the night of the assault. The ship proved itself then to be a gun, or rather a number of guns, which we will fire steadily on the trip through space. By Newton’s Law, which Einstein has modified only in microscopic effects, for every action there is an equal and positive reaction, so that through space the speed and energy of the discharge from the tubes—which we also call the engines and motors, rather inaccurately—are what will determine the speed and motion of the ship.”

Tony looked at the breech of the tube and nodded.

“Journeying through space we will be a rocket that can be fired from both ends and from all around the sides of both ends?”