When Worlds Collide

by Philip Wylie

  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.

  Oddly enough, the arrival of Nathaniel Borgan and his effort to purchase passage on the Space Ship with millions in bills as worthies as Civil War shin-plasters, acted as a sort of catalyst on the survivors of the attack. The deep melancholy which had settled upon them, and which in many cases had been so powerful an emotion that all interest in the future was swept away, evaporated as the story of Borgan ran through the colony. To people living in a normal world, the millionaire’s behavior might have seemed shocking. But Hendron’s colonists were beyond the point where they could be shocked. Instead they were reawakened to an intense consciousness of their unique position and their vast responsibilities.

  They sent Borgan away with his pilot and his plane full of money; and the last words of the financier were pronounced in a voice intended to be threatening as he leaned out of the cabin door: I’ll get an injunction against you from the President himself. I’ll have the Supreme Court behind me within twenty-four hours.”

  Somebody laughed, and then somebody else. It was not gay laughter, but Homeric laughter, the sort of laughter that contains too many emotions to be otherwise expressed.

  After the plane disappeared in the sky, people found themselves talking to each other about their lives once more. On the following morning a small quota of bathers appeared and plunged into the pool. Their voices were still restrained; but Hendron, watching from the roof of the laboratory, sighed with infinite relief. He had almost
reached the point when he would have given way to utter despair over the morale of his people. That evening the strains of phonograph music floated over the place that had been a battlefield. They played old favorites for a while; but when some one put on a dance record, there was no objection.

  The energy of interest returned to their work, replacing the energy of dogged and bleak determination.…

  At that time, nearly three weeks after the attack, a census was retaken. There were two hundred and nine uninjured women, one hundred and eighty-two uninjured men. There were about eighty men and women who were expected wholly to recover. There were more than a hundred who would suffer some disability. Four hundred and ninety-three people had been killed or had died after the conflict.

  Work of course was redistributed. More than five months lay ahead of them. The Space Ship could be completed, even with this reduced group, in three weeks. The greatest loss was in the death of men, specialists in various fields of human knowledge. That their branches of learning might not be unrepresented, schools were immediately opened, and more than two hundred men and women began an intensive training in a vast variety of the branches of science.…

  On one of the unseasonably warm afternoons in December Tony received what he considered afterward the greatest compliment ever paid to him in his life. He was making one of his regular tours of the stockyards when Ransdell, walking alone on the road, overtook him. In all their recent encounters, Ransdell had not spoken a hundred words to Tony; but now finding him alone, he stopped him and said almost gruffly: “I’d like to speak to you.”

  Tony turned and smiled with his usual geniality.

  The South African hesitated, and almost blushed. “I’m not talkative,” he said bluntly, “but I’ve been trying to find you alone for weeks.” Again he hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “That fight you put up—” Ransdell took a huge pocket-knife from his flannel shirt and commenced to open and shut its blade nervously. “That was a damn’ fine piece of work, fellow.”

  “What was yours?” Tony replied, heartily. Ransdell held out his hand. They gripped, and in that grip the hands of lesser men would have been broken.

  From that time on, those rivals in love were as blood brothers. They were seen together more often than Ransdell was seen with his two companions of the long flight; they made an odd pair, the tall garrulous good-humored Tony striding here and there on his numerous duties, accompanied by the short, equally broad and herculean British-American.

  Another general meeting was held in the dining-hall. It began a little quietly, for those who gathered there were reminded intensely of the diminution of their numbers by the number of empty seats. Hendron again took charge, and his words from the beginning to end were a complete surprise to the community.

  In his office and at his business a relatively silent man, Hendron none the less enjoyed making speeches. He stood on the platform that night, his hair a little grayer than formerly, the lines around his eyes a little deeper, the square set of his shoulders slightly bowed, and his mouth fixed in a more implacable line than before. The five-hundred-odd people who listened to him appreciated from the first moment that Hendron had something of importance to impart, and something which he knew would please them.

  “I have called you together,” he began, “for two distinct purposes: I shall dispatch the first of these with what I know will be your approval; and the second I am sure will meet with equal approval.

  “I want each one of you to-night to forget for the moment the tragedies that have overtaken us. I want each of you to-night to think of yourself as a member of the human race who, buffeted by fortune, overwhelmed by Nature, threatened by your fellow-men, is nevertheless steadfastly continuing upon the greatest enterprise mankind has ever undertaken.

  “And while you are thinking that, I will draw your attention to the fact that certain of our number have made, at the risk of their own lives and with the exhibition of incredible heroism, contributions to our lives here, the value of which cannot be expressed.

  “I am thinking of Peter Vanderbilt, Eliot James and David Ransdell, who brought to us a record of the fate of our nation, and especially of Ransdell, who not only carried home his companions when he was severely wounded, but who discovered and brought back the substance which will make our escape from here possible.”

  Applause and cheering checked Hendron for a while. Then he continued:

  “I am thinking also of Jack Taylor and Anthony Drake, whose courageous defense is largely responsible for our presence here to-day.” The cheers were redoubled.

  “‘Because we are all human, and because we wish to recognize by some token services so extraordinary and distinguished as these, I have had struck off five gold medals.” Hendron held up his hand to check the tumult. “These medals bear on one side the motto of the United States of America, which I think we might still adopt as our own. Out of the many nationalities represented before, we intend to create a single race. Therefore the medals bear the inscription, ‘E pluribus unum,’ the names of their recipients, and beneath the names the words ‘For valor.’ On the opposite face of these medals is the head of Sven Bronson, who first discovered the Bronson Bodies, who gave warning to the world, and who was one of those who surrendered his life, that the rest of us might not perish.”

  There was now silence in the room. One by one Hendron called the names of the five men to whom he wished to do honor. As each rose and stepped forward, he spoke a few words descriptive of the reasons for awarding the medal, and the occasion which had won the award. Vanderbilt and James were gracefully embarrassed. Jack Taylor was dumb-stricken and crimson. Tony shuffled to and from the platform with a bent head, and Ransdell accepted his medal with a white face and a military precision which showed clearly the emotional price he was paying for every step and gesture he made.

  When the applause had at last died, Hendron began again in a different tone: “The second matter which I have to discuss with you is one which will come, I am sure, as a distinct surprise. It is the result of my earnest thought and of careful calculations. I arrived at it no sooner, because I anticipated neither the temper nor the quality of the people who would be gathered before me at this time, and because I was uncertain of the mechanical facilities that would be available to us. From the standpoint of realism,—and I have learned that all of you are courageous enough to face truths,—I am forced to add that my decision has been made possible by the diminution of our numbers.

  “All of you know that I founded this village of ours for the purpose of transferring to the planet that will take the place of Earth a company of about one hundred people, with the hope that they might perpetuate our doomed race. The number I considered was in a measure arbitrary, but it seemed to me that a ship large enough to accommodate such a number might be fabricated and launched by the one thousand persons who were originally assembled here. It is obvious, of course, that the more intelligent and healthy the units of humanity we are able to transfer to the planet, the better the chance for founding a new race will be.”

  He paused and his eyes roved over the throng. Not a breath was drawn, and not a word was spoken. Many guessed in a blinding flash of ecstasy what Hendron was going to say.

  “My friends, we are five hundred in number. There is not one man or woman left among us who bears such disability as will prevent him from surviving, if any one may, the trip through space; there is not one but who, if we effect our landing upon Bronson Beta and find it habitable, will be fit to propagate there the human race.

  “On the night of the attack, we all of us—and some who since have died—crammed into the Space Ship. We all realize that no such crowding will be possible on the voyage through space; we all realize that much cargo, other than humanity, must be stowed on the ship if there is to be any point and purpose in our safe landing upon another planet. One hundred persons remains my estimate of the probable crew and passenger-list of the ship which saved us all on that night.
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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.