Philip Wylie & Edwin Balmer - When Worlds Collide

by When Worlds Collide(Lit)

  "Earth tide?"

  "Earthquakes from the pull on the crust of the earth. Some of the men writing to Father think that the earth will be torn to pieces just by the first passing of Branson Alpha; but some of them think it will survive that strain."

  "What does your father think?"

  "He thinks the earth will survive the first stress-and that it is possible that a fifth of the population may live through it, too. Of course that's only a guess."

  "A fifth," repeated Tony. "A fifth of all on the earth."

  He gazed at her, sober, painless, without a sense of time.

  Here he was in a penthouse drawing-room on the top of a New York apartment, with a lovely girl whose father believed, and had told her, that four-fifths of all beings alive on the earth would be slain by the passing of the planets seen in the sky. A few months more, and all the rest-unless they could escape from the earth and live-would be obliterated.

  Such words could stir no adequate feeling; they were beyond ordinary meanings, like statements of distance expressed in light years. They were beyond conscious conception; yet what they told could occur. His mind warned him of this. What was coming was a cosmic process, common enough, undoubtedly, if one considered the billions of stars with their worlds scattered through all space, and if one counted in eternities of endless time. Common enough, this encounter which was coming.

  What egotism, what stupid vanity, to suppose that a thing could not happen because you could not conceive it!

  Eve was watching him. Through the years of their friendship and fondness, she had seen Tony as a normal man, to whom everything that happened was happy, felicitous and unbizarre. The only crises in which she observed him were emergencies on the football-field, and alarms in the stock-market, which in the first case represented mere sport, and in the second, money which he did not properly understand, because all his life he had possessed money enough, and more.

  Now, as she watched him, she thought that she would meet with him-and she exulted that it would be with him- the most terrific reality that man had ever faced. So far as he had yet been called upon, he had met it without attempting to evade it; his effort had been solely for more complete understanding.

  A contrast to some of those men-among them men who were called the greatest in the nation-whose voices rose loud again behind the closed doors.

  Some one-she could not identify him from his voice, which ranted in a strange, shrill rage-evidently was battling her father, shouting him down, denying what had been laid before them all. Eve did not hear her father's reply. Probably he made none; he had no knack for argument or dialectics.

  But the ranting and shouting offended her; she knew how helpless her father was before it. She wanted to go to him; not being able to, she went to Tony.

  "Somebody," said Tony, "seems not to like what he has to hear."

  "Who is he, Tony?"

  "Somebody who isn't very used to hearing what he doesn't like.... Oh, Eve, Eve! My dear, my dear! For the first time in my life, I'd like to be a poet; I wish for words to say what I feel. I can't make a poem, but at least I can change one:

  "Yesterday this day's madness did prepare;

  To-morrow's silence, triumph, or despair;

  Love! For you know not whence you came, nor why;

  Love! For you know not why you go, nor where."

  The sudden unmuffling of the voices warned them that a door from the study had opened. Instantly the voices were dulled again; but they turned, aware that some one had come out.

  It was her father.

  For a few moments he stood regarding them, debating what he should say. Beyond the closed door behind him, the men whom he had left increased their quarrel among themselves. He succeeded in clearing his mind of it.

  "Father," Eve said, "Tony and I-Tony and I-"

  Her father nodded. "I saw you for a few seconds before you realized I was here, Eve-and Tony."

  Tony flushed. "We mean what you saw, sir," he said. "We more than mean it. We're going to be married as soon as we can-aren't we, Eve?"

  "Can we, Father?"

  Cole Hendron shook his head. "There can't be marrying or love for either of you. No time to tell you why now; only- there can't."

  "Why can't there be, sir?"

  "There's going to be altogether too much else. In a few months, you'll know. Meanwhile, don't spoil my plans for you by eloping or marrying in the Church Around the Corner. And don't go on doing-what I just saw. It'll only make it harder for both of you-as you'll see when you figure out what's before you. Tony, there's nothing personal in that. I like you, and you know it. If the world were going to remain, I'd not say a word; but the world cannot possibly remain. We can talk of this later."

  The study door again opened; some one called him, and he returned to the argument in the next room.

  "Now," demanded Tony of Eve, "what in the world, which cannot possibly remain, does he mean by that? That we shouldn't love and marry because we're going to die? All the more reason for it - and quicker, too,"

  "Neither of us can possibly guess what he means, Tony; we'd be months behind him in thinking; for he's done nothing else, really, for half a year but plan what we - what all the human race - will have to do. He means, I think, that he's put us in some scheme of things that won't let us marry."

  The argument in the room broke up and the arguers emerged. In a few minutes they all were gone; and Tony sought Cole Hendron in his big study, where the plates which had come from South Africa were spread upon the table.

  There were squares of stars, usually the same square of stars repeated over and over again. There seemed to be a score of exposures of the identical plate of close-clustered stars.

  "You were downtown to-day, Tony?"

  "To-day they took it, didn't they? They took it and closed the Exchange, I hear; and half the businesses in town had a holiday. For they've known for quite some time that something has been hanging over them, hanging over the market. This morning we half told them what it is; and they thought they believed it. Just now I told six men the other half - or most of it - and - and you heard them, Tony; didn't you?"

  "Yes; I heard them."

  "They won't have it. The world won't come to an end; it can't possibly collide with another world, because - well, for one thing, it never has done such a thing before, and for another, they won't have it. Not when you dwell upon the details. They won't have it. To-morrow there'll be a great swing-back in feeling, Tony. The Exchange will open again; business is going on. That's a good thing; I'm glad of it. But there are certain drawbacks.

  "The trouble is, men aren't really educated up to the telescope yet, as they are to the microscope. Every one of those men who were just here would believe what the microscope tells them, whether or not they could see it or understand it for themselves. I mean, if a doctor took a bit of cell-tissue from any one of them, and put it under the microscope, and said, 'Sorry, but that means you will die,' there isn't a man of them who wouldn't promptly put his affairs in shape.

  "None of them would ask to look through the microscope himself; he'd know it would mean nothing to him.

  "But they asked for Bronson's plates. I showed them; here they are, Tony. Look here. See this field of stars. All those fixed points, those round specks, every single one of them are stars. But see here; there is a slight - a very slight - streak, but still a streak. There, right beside it, is another one. Something has moved, Tony! Two points of light have moved in a star-field where nothing ought to move! A mistake, perhaps? A flaw in the coating of the plate? Bronson considered this, and other possibilities. He photographed the star-field again and again, night after night; and each time, you see, Tony, the same two points of light make a bit of streak. No chance of mistake; down there, where nothing ought to be moving, two objects have moved. But all we have to show for it are two tiny streaks on a photographic plate.

  "What do they mean? 'Gentlemen, the time has come to put your affairs in order!' The affairs of all
the world, the affairs of every one living in the world- Naturally, they can't really believe it.

  "Bronson himself, though he watched those planets himself night after night for months, couldn't really believe it; nor could the other men who watched, in other observatories south of the equator.

  "But they searched back over old plates of the same patch of sky; and they found, in that same star-field, what they had missed before-those same two specks always making tiny streaks. Two objects that weren't stars where only stars ought to be; two strange objects that always were moving, where nothing 'ought' to move.

  "We need only three good observations of an object to plot the course of a moving body; and already Bronson succeeded in obtaining a score of observations of these. He worked out the result, and it was so sensational, that from the very first, he swore to secrecy every one who worked with him and with whom he corresponded. They obtained, altogether, hundreds of observations; and the result always worked out the same. They all checked....

  "Eve says she has told you what that result is to be."

  "Yes," said Tony, "she told me."

  "And I told these men who demanded-ordered me-to explain to them everything we had. I told them that those specks were moving so that they would enter our solar system, and one of them would then come into collision with our world. They said, all right.

  "You see, it really meant nothing to them originally; it stirred only a sort of excitement to close the Exchange and give everybody a hilarious holiday.

  "Then I told them that, before the encounter, both of these moving bodies-Bronson Alpha and Bronson Beta-would first pass us close by and cause tides that would rise six hundred feet over us, from New York to San Francisco-and, of course, London and Paris and all sea-coasts everywhere.

  "They began to oppose that, because they could understand it. I told them that the passing of the Bronson bodies would cause earthquakes on a scale unimaginable; half the inland cities would be shaken down, and the effect below the crust would set volcanoes into activity everywhere, and as never since the world began. I said, perhaps a fifth of the people would survive the first passing of the Bronson bodies. I tried to point out some of the areas on the surface of the earth which would be completely safe.

  "I could not designate New York or Philadelphia or Boston.... They told me that to-morrow I must make a more reassuring statement."

  Cole Hendron gazed down again at his plates.

  "I suppose, after all, it doesn't make much difference whether or not we succeed in moving a few million more people into the safer areas. They will be safe for only eight months more, in any case. For eight months later, we meet Bronson Alpha on the other side of the sun. And no one on earth will escape.

  "But there is a chance that a few individuals may leave the earth and live. I am not a religious man, as you know, Tony; but as Eve said to you, it seems that it cannot be mere chance that there comes to us, out of space, not merely the sphere that will destroy us, but that ahead of it there spins a world like our own which some of us-some of us-may reach and be safe."

  Chapter 6-First Effects

  TONY took Dave Ransdell home with him. The South African wanted to "see" New York.

  They awoke late; or at least Tony did, and for a few moments lay contentedly lazy, without recollection of the amazing developments of the day that was past.

  Only a vague uneasiness warned him that, when he finally roused, it would be to some sort of trouble. Tony, being a healthy and highly vigorous young man, had drowsed through such semirecollections before.... He had fought with and "put out" another policeman, perhaps? Tony became able to recollect "showing" some one the city; but who?

  Now Tony could visualize him-a tanned, quiet-humored, solid chap who could look out for himself anywhere. And girls liked him; but he was wary, even if he hadn't been to New York before. Even if he did come from South Africa!

  There, Tony had it! Dave Ransdell, the Pretoria flyer, who had brought the plates of the sky from Capetown to New York. Why? Because there were two little specks on those plates of the southern skies, which meant that two strange planetary bodies were approaching the earth-to wipe it out!

  That was the trouble Tony had to remember when he fully awoke. It wasn't that he'd knocked another policeman for a goal. It was that-that this room, and the bed, and the chair, everything outside, everywhere and every one, including you yourself, were simply going to cease to exist after a while. After a very definite and limited time, indeed, though the exact period he did not know.

  Eve had refused to tell him; and so had Dr. Hendron. No; the exact amount of time left for every one on the world, the members of the League of the Last Days would not yet impart.

  Tony stirred; and Kyto, hearing him, came in and began to draw his bath.

  "All right, Kyto; never mind," Tony greeted him. "I'll take a shower this morning. Is Mr. Ransdell up?"

  "Oh, entirely!"

  "Has he had breakfast yet, Kyto?"

  "Only one."

  "You mean?"

  "He said he would have a little now-that was an hour ago-and finish breakfast with you."

  "Oh. All right. I'll hurry." And Tony did so, but forgetting Ransdell, mostly, for his thinking of Eve.

  To have held her close to him, to have caught her against him while she clung to him, her lips on his-and then to be forbidden her! To be finally and completely forbidden to love her!

  Tony arose defiantly. Last night he had been rebellious; this morning he was only more so. Never had he known or dreamed of such dear delight as when he had claimed her lithe body with his arms, and she had clung to him; the two of them together against all the world-even against the end of all the world, against the utter annihilation!

  It was, he realized now, the terror of the approaching destruction which had thrown her so unquestioningly info his arms. Who could stand alone and look at doom? All nature, every instinct and impulse, opposed loneliness in danger. The first law of living things is self-perpetuation. Save yourself; and when you cannot, preserve your kind! Mate and beget- or give birth-before you die!

  Nothing less elemental, less overwhelming, than this threw Eve Hendron and Tony Drake together; and no joy compared with the result. What had he heard said, that he understood now: "There is no happiness like that snatched under the shadow of the sword!"

  But her father forbade that joy. He not only forbade it, but denied its further possibility for them. And her father controlled her, not merely as her father, but as a leader of this strange society, the uncanny power of which Tony Drake was just beginning to feel: The League of the Last Days!

  A pledged and sworn circle of men, first in science all over the world, who devoted themselves to their purposes with a sternness and a discipline that recalled the steadfastness of the early Christians, who submitted to any martyrdom to found the Church. They demanded and commanded a complete allegiance. To this tyrannical society Eve was sworn; and when Cole Hendron had spoken to her, he commanded her and forbade not only as her father but as her captain in the League of the Last Days....

  Tony found Ransdell at a window of the living-room. The morning paper was spread over a table.

  "Hello," said Tony. "Hear you've been up awhile. You've altogether too many good habits."

  The South African smiled pleasantly. "I'll need more than I have for a starter, if I'm joining the League of the Last Days," he observed.

  "Then you've decided to?" asked Tony. It was one of the topics they'd discussed last night.

  "Yes. The New York chapter, for choice."

  "You're not going back to Capetown?"

  "No. Headquarters will be here-or wherever Dr. Hendron is."

  "That's good," said Tony, and glanced toward the paper, but did not pick it up. "Any special developments anywhere?"

  "Apparently a rather unanimous opinion that yesterday's announcement may be wrong."

  "Hendron said there'd be general reaction. When you think of yesterday, you'd see there'd have
to be."

  And Tony took the paper to the breakfast-table, where Ransdell joined him for another cup of coffee.

  The two young men, of widely differing natures and background and training, sipped their coffee and glanced at each other across the table.

  "Well," questioned Tony at last, "want to tell me how you really feel?"

  "Funny," confessed the South African. "I bring up the final proof that the world's going to end; and on the trip find the dear old footstool a pleasanter place for me than I ever figured before it might be....

  "To mention the minor matters first," Ransdell continued in his engagingly frank and outright way, "I've never lived like this even for a day. I've never been valeted before."

  Tony smiled. "That reminds me; wonder if they'll let Kyto into the League?"