by Philip Wylie
“You see, the sun had not surely ‘captured’ Bronson Beta and Bronson Alpha. They had arrived from some incalculable distance and they have rounded the sun, but, without further interference than the sun’s attraction, they would retreat again and perhaps never reappear; they would not join the family of familiar planets circling the sun.
“But on the course toward the sun, Alpha destroyed the moon, as we know, and this had an effect upon both Alpha and Bronson Beta, controlled by Alpha. And now something even more profound is going to happen. Alpha will have contact with the world. That will destroy the earth and will send Bronson Alpha off in another path—perhaps will will prove to be a very long ellipse, but more probably it will be a hyperbola. No one can quite calculate that; but one almost certain effect of the catastrophe is that it will break Bronson Beta away from the dominating control of Bronson Alpha and leave Beta subject to the sun. That will provide a much more satisfactory orbit for us about our sun.”
“Us?” echoed Tony.
“Us—if we get there,” said Eve; and she bent and kissed the children. “What purpose could there be in all that”—she nodded to the screen when she straightened—“if some of us aren’t to get there? We see God not only sending us that world, Tony,”—she spoke a little impatiently—“but arranging for us an orbit for it about the sun which will let us live.”
“Do you know the Wonder Clock?” Danny, the little boy, looked up and demanded. “Do you know Peterkin and the li’l Gray Hare?”
“Certainly,” said Eve. “Once there was a giant—”
At the end of the hour all the lights in the passenger quarters were turned out, and the Earth was again flashed on the screen. Its diminution in size was already startling; and the remains of Europe, stranded in a new ocean, looked like a child’s model flour-and-water map.
Duquesne lay on his back on deck and stared up at the scenery. He gave an informal lecture as he looked. “As we are flinging ourselves away from the Earth below, we are putting distance between ourselves and a number of prize fools. These fellows are my best friends. You will pick out faintly the map of Europe. Directly south of those shadows which were once the British Isles, you see the configuration of the Alps. In the center of the western range are the fools of whom I spoke. At any moment now, providing we are able to see anything at all, we shall witness their effort at departure. They built a ship not dissimilar to this, but unfortunately relying upon another construction than that valuable little metal discovered by Mr.—whatever his name is. I have told them they shall melt. I hope that we shall be able to see the joke of that fusion.”
Duquesne glanced again at his watch, and looked up at the screen on which, like a stereopticon picture, hung the Earth. Suddenly he sat bolt upright. “Did I not tell you?”
A point of light showed suddenly in the spot he had designated. It was very bright, and as a second passed, it appeared to extend so that it stood away from the Earth like a white-hot needle. Tony and Eve and many others glanced at Duquesne.
But Duquesne was not laughing as he had promised. Instead he sat with his head bent back, his hands doubled into fists which pounded his knees, while in an outpouring of French he cajoled and pleaded frantically with that distant streak of fire.
The seconds passed slowly. Every one under the glass screen realized that here, perhaps, would be companions for them after they had reached Bronson Beta. Since they had just undergone the experience which they knew the Frenchmen were suffering in their catapulted departure from the Alps, they watched gravely and breathlessly. Only the rocket trail of the ship could be seen, as the ship itself was too small and too far away to be visible.
Duquesne was standing. He suddenly seemed conscious of those around him. “They go, they go, they go, they go! Maybe they have solved this problem. Maybe they will be with us.”
Suddenly a groan escaped him. The upshooting light curved, became horizontal and shot parallel with Earth, moving apparently with such speed that it seemed to have traversed a measurable fraction of the Alps while they watched.
Abruptly, then, the trail zigzagged; it curved back toward the Earth, and the French ship commenced to descend, impelled by its own motors. In another second there was a faint glow and then—only a luminous trail, which disappeared rapidly, like the pathway of fire left by a meteor.
Duquesne did not laugh. He wept.
They tried to console him but he shrugged them away angrily. After a long time he began to talk, and they listened with sympathy. “Jean Delavoi was there, handsome Jean. And Captain Vivandi. Marcel Jamar, my own nephew, the greatest biologist of the new generation. And yet I told them, but it was their only hope, so they were stubborn.” He looked at the people in the chamber. “Did you see? It melted. First the right tubes, throwing it on a horizontal course, then all of it. It was quickly over—grâce à Dieu.”
But other flashes rose and traveled on. The English, the Germans, perhaps the Italians had got away.
The implications of these sights transcended talk. Conversation soon ceased. Exhaustion, spiritual and physical, assailed the travelers. Eve’s children fell into a sleep-like stupor. The motion of the ship seemed no more than a slight sway, and those who remained awake found it possible to talk in more ordinary tones.
Gravity diminished steadily, so that gestures were easier to make than they had been on Earth. Time lost all sequence. Twelve hours in the past seemed like an eternity spent in a prison; and only the waning Earth, which was frequently flashed on the screen by men in the control-room, marked progress to the passengers. They were spent by their months of effort and by the emotional strains through which they had passed. Stupefied like the children by the unusualness of this voyage, they were no longer worldly beings, but because all their vision of outer space came vicariously, their sensations were rather of being confined in a small place than of being lost and alone in the unfathomable void.
Their habit of relying upon the attractive force of the Earth resulted in an increasing number of mishaps, some of them amusing and some of them painful. After what seemed like eons of time some one asked Tony for more food. Tony himself could not remember whether he was going to serve the fifth meal or the sixth, but he sprang to his feet with earnest willingness—promptly shot clear to the ceiling, against which he bumped his head. He fell back to the floor with a jar and rose laughing. The ceiling was also padded, so that he had not hurt himself.
The sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper, and when some one on the edge of the crowd asked that his sandwich be tossed, Tony flipped it toward him, only to see it pass high over the man’s head and entirely out of reach, and strike against the opposite wall. The man himself stretched to catch the wrapped sandwich, and sat down again rubbing his arm, saying that he had almost thrown his shoulder out of joint.
People walked in an absurd manner, stepping high into the air as if they were dancers. Gestures were uncontrollable, and it was unsafe to talk excitedly for fear one would hit one’s self in the face.
Before this condition reached its crisis, however, Hendron himself appeared in the passenger-cabin for one of his frequent visits. He arrived, not by way of the staircase, but by way of the cable which was strung tautly inside the spiral, hauling himself up hand over hand with greater ease and rapidity than was ever exhibited by any sailor. He was greeted with pleasure—any slight incident had an exaggerated effect upon the passengers; but his demeanor was serious.
“I want you all to be witnesses of the reason for this journey,” he said soberly.
He switched off the lights. The screen glowed, and on it they saw the Earth. At the hour of their departure the Earth had occupied much more than the area in the screen now reflected overhead, darkened on one side as if it were a moon in its third quarter, or not quite full. At the very edge of the screen was a bright curve which marked the perimeter of Bronson Alpha. Bronson Beta could not be seen.
CHAPTER 26—THE CRASH OF TWO WORLDS
NOW for an hour the passengers w
atched silently as Bronson Alpha swept upon the scene, a gigantic body, weird, luminous and unguessable, many times larger than Earth. It moved toward the Earth with the relentless perceptibility of the hands of a large clock, and those who looked upon its awe-inspiring approach held their breaths.
Once again Hendron spoke. “What will take place now cannot be definitely ascertained. In view of the retardation of Bronson Alpha’s speed caused by its collision with the moon, I have reason to believe that its course will be completely disrupted.”
Inch by inch, as it seemed, the two bodies came closer together. Looking at the screen was like watching the motion picture of a catastrophe and not like seeing it. Tony had to repeat to himself over and over that it was really so, in order to make himself believe it. Down there on the little earth were millions of scattered, demoralized human beings. They were watching this awful phenomenon in the skies. Around them the ground was rocking, the tides were rising, lava was bursting forth, winds were blowing, oceans were boiling, fires were catching, and human courage was facing complete frustration. Above them the sky was filled with this awful onrushing mass.
To those who through the smoke and steam and hurricane could still pierce the void, it would appear as something no longer stellar but as something real, something they could almost reach out and touch. A vast horizon of earth stretched toward them across the skies. They would be able, if their reeling senses still maintained powers of observation, to see the equally tumultuous surface of Bronson Alpha, to describe the geography of its downfalling side. They would perhaps, in the last staggering seconds, feel themselves withdrawn from the feeble gravity of their own Earth, to fall headlong toward Bronson Alpha. And in the magnitude of that inconceivable manifestation, they would at last, numb and senseless, be ground to the utmost atoms of their composition.
Tony shuddered as he watched. A distance, short on the screen—even as solar measurements are contemplated—separated the two planets. In the chamber of the hurtling Space Ship no one moved. Earth and Bronson Alpha were but a few moments apart. It seemed that even at their august distance they could perceive motion on the planet, as if the continents below them were swimming across the seas, as if the seas were hurling themselves upon the land; and presently they saw great cracks, in the abysses of which were fire, spread along the remote dry land. Into the air were lifted mighty whirls of steam. The nebulous atmosphere of Bronson Alpha touched the air of Earth, and then the very Earth bulged. Its shape altered before their eyes. It became plastic. It was drawn out egg-shaped. The cracks girdled the globe. A great section of the Earth itself lifted up and peeled away, leaping toward Bronson Alpha with an inconceivable force.
The two planets struck.
Decillions of tons of mass colliding in cosmic catastrophe.
“It’s not direct,” Duquesne shouted. “Oh, God! Perhaps—”
Every one knew what he was thinking. Perhaps they were not witnessing complete annihilation. Perhaps some miracle would preserve a portion of the world.
They panted and stared.
Steam, fire, smoke. Tongues of flame from the center of the earth. The planets ground together and then moved across each other. It was like watching an eclipse. The magnitude of the disaster was veiled by hot gases and stupendous flames, and was diminished in awfulness by the intervening distances and by the seeming slowness with which it took place.
Bronson Alpha rode between them and the Earth. Then—on its opposite side—fragments of the shattered world reappeared. Distance showed between them—widening, scattering distance. Bronson Alpha moved away on its terrible course, fiery, flaming, spread enormously in ghastly light.
The views on the visagraph changed quickly. The sun showed its furious flames. The telescopic periscopes concentrated on the fragment of the earth.
“They’re calculating,” Hendron said.
During a lull of humble voices Kyto could be heard praying to strange gods in Japanese. Eliot James drummed on the padded floor with monotonous fingertips. Tony clenched Eve’s hand. Time passed—it seemed hours. A man hurried down the spiral staircase.
He went directly to Hendron. “First estimates ready,” he said.
Hendron’s voice was tense: “Tell us.”
“I thought perhaps—”
“Go ahead, Von Beitz. These people aren’t children; besides, they have given up all expectations of the earth.”
“They have seen the first result,” Von Beitz replied. “The earth is shattered. Unquestionably much of its material merged with Bronson Alpha; but most is scattered in fragments of various masses which will assume orbits of their own about the sun.”
“And Bronson Alpha?”
“We have made only a preliminary estimate of its deceleration and its deviation from its original course; but it seems to have been deflected so that it will follow a hyperbola into space.”
“Hyperbola, eh?”
“Probably.”
“That means,” Hendron explained loudly, “we will have seen the last of Bronson Alpha. It will not return to the sun. It will leave our solar system forever. —And Bronson Beta?” Hendron turned to the German.
“As we have hoped, the influence of Bronson Alpha over Bronson Beta is terminated. The collision occurred at a moment which found Bronson Beta at a favorable point in its orbit around Bronson Alpha. Favorable, I mean, for us. Bronson Beta will not follow Alpha into space. Its orbit becomes independent; Bronson Beta, almost surely, will circle the sun.”
Some of the women burst out crying in a hysteria of relief. The world was gone; they had seen it shattered; but another would take its place. For the first time they succeeded in feeling this.
A short time later, a man arose to bring the women water; he remained suspended in the air!
Tony reached up and turned on the lights. The man who floated was sinking slowly toward the floor, his face blank with amazement.
“We have come,” announced Tony loudly, “very close to the point between Bronson Beta and Bronson Alpha where the gravity of one neutralizes the gravity of the other. Bronson Alpha and the fragments of our world, pulling one way, strike an equilibrium here with the pull of Bronson Beta, which we are approaching.”
He saw Eve lifting the children and leaving them suspended in the air. For an instant they enjoyed it; then it frightened them. A strange panic ensued. Tony’s heart raced. It was difficult to breathe. When he swallowed, it choked him; and as he swam through the air with every step, he felt himself growing faint, dizzy and nauseated.
He saw Eve, as if through a mist, make a motion to reach for the children, and rise slowly into the air, where she stretched at full length groping wildly for the children. Tony swam over to her and pushed them into her arms. His brain roared; but he thought: “Is this psychological or physical? Was it a physical result of lack of all weight or was it the oppressiveness of sensation?” He shouted the question to Eve, who did not reply.
The air was becoming filled with people. Almost no one was on the deck. The slightest motion was sufficient to cause one to depart from whatever anchorage one had. Hands and feet were outthrust. On every face was a sick and pallid expression. Tony saw Hendron going hand over hand on the cable through the stair, ascending head foremost, his feet trailing out behind him.
That was all he remembered. He fell into coma.
When his senses returned, he found himself lying on the deck under half a dozen other people, but their weight was not oppressive. The pile above him would have crushed any one on Earth, but here it made no difference. His limbs felt cold and weak; his heart still beat furiously. He struggled to free himself, and succeeded with remarkable ease. A wave of nausea brought him to his knees, and he fainted again, striking the floor lightly and bouncing into the air several times before he came to rest.…
Again consciousness returned.
This time he rolled over carefully and did not attempt to rise. He was lying on something hard and cold. He explored it with his fingers, and realized
dully that it was the glass screen which projected the periscope views. It was the ceiling, then, on which the passengers were lying in a tangled heap, and not the deck. Their positions had been reversed. He thought that he was stone deaf, and then perceived that the noise of the motors had stopped entirely. They were falling toward Bronson Beta, using gravity and their own inertia to sustain that downward flight. He understood why he had seen Hendron pulling himself along the staircase. Hendron had been transferring to the control-room at the opposite end of the ship.
Tony’s eyes moved in a tired and sickly fashion to the tangle of people. He knew that since he was the first to regain consciousness, it was his duty to disentangle them and make them as comfortable as possible. He crawled toward them. Whole people could be moved as if they were toy balloons. With one arm he would grasp a fixed belt on the deck, and with the other he would send a body rolling across the floor to the edge of the room. The passengers were breathing, gasping, hiccoughing; their hearts were pounding; their faces were stark white; but they seemed to be alive. The children were dazed but unhurt. Tony was unable to do more than to give them separate places in which to lie. After that, his own addled and confused body succumbed, and he lay down again, panting. He knew that they would be all right as soon as the gravity from Bronson Beta became stronger. He knew that the voyage was more than half finished; but he was so sick, so weak, that he did not care. He fell into a state between sleep and coma.
Some one woke him. “We’re eating. How about a sandwich?”
He sat up. The gravity was still very slight, but strong enough to restore his sensations to something approaching normal. He started around the circular room which had become so familiar in the past hours. An attempt at a grin overspread his features. He reached inaccurately for the sandwich, and murmured his thanks.
An hour later conditions were improved for moving about the chamber, by the starting of the motors which were to decelerate the ship. The floor was firm again. On the screen now at their feet they could see Bronson Beta. It was white like an immense moon, but veiled in clouds. Here and there bits of its superficial geography were visible. They gathered around the screen, kneeling over it, the lurid light which the planet cast glowing up on their faces. In four hours the deceleration had been greatly increased. In six, Bronson Beta was visibly spreading on the screen. Deceleration held them tightly on the floor, but they would crawl across each other laboriously, and in turn stare at the floating, cloudy sphere upon which they expected to arrive.