After Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 2)

Tony stared at the girl. “I wonder—”

She seized his hand. “I’m glad you said that!”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps because I’m half-hysterical with fatigue and anxiety. Perhaps because I want to justify him. But possibly because I believe—”

“In God?”

“In some kind of God.”

“I do also, Eve. Have your father ready in half an hour.”

“It’ll be dangerous to move him.”

“I know—”

Their voices had unconsciously risen—and now from the other room came the voice of Hendron: “‘And ten thousand at thy right hand: but it shall not come nigh thee.’”

They whispered then. “I’ll have him ready,” Eve said.

“Right. I’m going out again.”

“Tony!” It was Hendron again. “I know you are there! Hurry them. For surely the Midianites are preparing against you.”

“Yes, Cole. We’ll go soon.”

In the night and the cold again, Tony looked toward the aurora-veiled stars, as if he expected almost to catch sight of God there. To his ears came the subdued clatter of the preparation for departure.

Vanderbilt called him, called softly. It was perhaps foolish to try to be quiet as well as to work in the dark—but the darkness somehow gave rise to an impulse toward the stealth.

“Tony!”

“Here, Peter!”

The New Yorker approached, a figure dimly walking. “The first truck is ready.”

“Dispatch it.”

“Right. And the second will start in thirty minutes?”

“Exactly.”

“Which will you take?”

“Second.”

“And who commands the first?”

“Ransdell.”

Vanderbilt went away.

Tony watched the first truck with its two trailers—one piled full of goods, the other jammed with people. They were like soldiers going to war, or like refugees being evacuated from an endangered position. They lumbered through the dark and out of sight—silhouettes against the stars.… Motor sounds.… Silence.

When the second convoy was ready, Tony and Williamson carried Hendron aboard on a litter. The old man seemed to be sleeping. Eve walked beside him.

The motor ahead emitted a muffled din. Wheels turned; the three sections bumbled into the blackness toward the Other People’s road. When they had reached it, travel became smooth; a single ray of light, a feeble glow, showed the way to the driver.