Philip Wylie & Edwin Balmer - When Worlds Collide

by When Worlds Collide(Lit)

  Chapter 8-Marching Orders For The Human Race

  NO record could picture a thousandth part of the changes that came in those two years. No single aspect of human enterprise was left undisturbed.

  It was on the half of the world which we call the Northern Hemisphere that the effect of the approach of the planets proved most disastrous. Of course, it was the north that possessed the continents teeming with people-Asia, Europe, North Africa, North America. The Southern Hemisphere, in comparison, was sparsely settled; and the South, moreover, had the advantage of seeing the strange stars slowly become visible and slowly, thereafter, brighten. The South became accustomed to their shining in the sky.

  But at the end of the first year after the announcement of their approach, they stood for the first time in the northern sky. Partly this was due to their actual approach, which was bringing them not only closer but higher in the heavens; but chiefly it was due to the seasonal shifts of the earth which in spring showed more and more of the southern skies.

  So there they stood, not high above the horizon as seen from New York or Chicago or San Francisco, but quite distinct and strange-two new stars clearly connected, one much brighter than the other. Even in a good field-glass, the brighter showed a round, gleaming disk, and the dimmer one appeared more than a point.

  It was yet more than a year before the first serious physical manifestations were expected; so the statement that Hendron signed merely read:

  "It is still impossible to forecast the entire effect of the approach of the Bronson bodies. Unquestionably they will disturb us greatly. We may anticipate, as a minimum, the following phenomena: tides which will destroy or render uninhabitable all coastal cities and all inland cities within five hundred or more feet of sea-level. We have no terrestrial precedent for such tides. The existing sixty-foot rise and fall in the Bay of Fundy will certainly be trifling in comparison. The tides we anticipate will be perhaps several hundreds of feet high, and will sweep overland with a violence difficult to anticipate.

  "The second manifestation, which will be simultaneous, will consist of volcanic activity and earthquakes of unpredictable extent and violence.

  "The Bronson bodies, if they pass on a parabola, will approach the earth twice. If, however, their course becomes modified into an ellipse, the earth will meet them again in its journey around the sun. Direct collision with one or another of the bodies, or grazing collision due to mutual attraction when in proximity, cannot be regarded as impossible. The succession of tides and earthquakes caused by gravity and resultant stresses may instantly or in time render the surface of this globe wholly uninhabitable; but we cannot say that there is no hope.

  "Certain steps must be taken. All coastal cities in all parts of the world must be evacuated. Populaces must be moved to high, non-volcanic regions. Provision for feeding, clothing and domiciling migrated peoples must be made.

  "There remains considerable doubt concerning the origin and nature of the Bronson bodies. Efforts are being made to determine their composition, but determinations are difficult, as they are non-luminous.

  "The scientists of the world are in agreement that the course outlined above is the only logical one to pursue. Since the first approach of the Bronson bodies may be expected to take place with effect upon the tides and seaboard on and about the end of next summer, general migration should begin at once."

  On the morning succeeding the spread of this statement, Tony stood in the vast, populous waiting-room of the Grand Central Station. Yesterday there had been issued marching orders for fifteen hundred millions of human beings. If they did not now know that it was to be the end of the world, at least they were told that it was the end of the world as it had been.

  He listened to fragments of the conversations in progress in his vicinity:

  "I tell you, Henry, it's silly, that's all. If anybody expects me to give up my apartment and pack up my duds and move off one Hundred and Eighty-first Street just because a few gray-headed school-teachers happen to think there's a comet coming, then they're crazy...."

  "It's the end, that's what it is; and I for one am glad to see it. When the sea starts to rise and the earth starts to split open, I'm going to stand there and laugh. I'm going to say: 'Now what's the good of the Farm Relief? Now who's going to collect my income-tax? Now what does it matter whether we have Prohibition or not? Now who's going to stop your car and bawl you out because you drove on the wrong side of the street? Good-by, world.' That's what I'm going to say. 'Good-by! Good riddance!' I hope it wipes the whole damn' thing as clean as a billiard ball...."

  "Don't hold my hand so tight, Daddy. You hurt me...."

  "It's ridiculous. They've been fighting about their fool figures for generations. They can't even tell whether it's going to rain or not to-morrow. How in the hell can they say this is going to happen? Give a scientist one idea, and a lot of trick figures, and he goes hay-wire, that's all...."

  "So I says to him, the big oaf: `I'm a working-girl, and I'm gonna be a working-girl all my life, and you can tell me it doesn't matter on account of the world's coming to an end, and you can tell me the better I know you the better I'll like you, till you're blue in the face; but I'm gonna get out of this car right here and now, end of the world or no end of the world.'..."

  "Laugh that off. Go ahead. Let me see you laugh that off. You've been laughing everything off ever since we were married. You laugh off the unpaid bills. You laugh off my ratty fur coat. You laugh off not being able to buy an automobile. Now let me see if you can laugh off an earthquake."

  "I drew it all out and bought gold. I got two revolvers. I filled the house with canned goods. I said: 'Here you are, Sarah. You've been telling me all your life how well you can run things. Take the money. Take the house. Take these two guns. I'm leaving. If we've only got a couple of months left, I'm going to see to it that I have a little fun, anyway.' That's what I said to her; and, by God, here I am...."

  Tony shook his head. Every word to which he had listened surfeited him with a sense of the immobility of humanity. Each individual related a cosmic circumstance to his particular case. Each individual planned to act independently not only of the rest of his fellows but of all signs and portents in the sky. Tony's mind conceived a picture of huge cities on the verge of inundation-cities in which thousands and even millions refused to budge and went about the infinitesimal affairs of their little lives selfishly, with nothing but resentment for the facts which wiser men were futilely attempting to impress upon them. He heard his train announced, and walked to the gate.

  He rode through a long dark tunnel and then out to the station at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. His eyes rested uncomfortably on the close-pressed accumulation of ugly houses. It had been taken for granted too long; and upon the spawn who inhabited it, the best thoughts and dreams of the race fell unheeded. They lived and died and did not matter. A pollution ate steadily upward in every body of society from these far-reaching honeycombs of disease, dirt, stupidity, these world-wide remainders from the Middle Ages.

  Tony, who had never been religious in any conventional sense, had begun to share the feeling of Eve about what was going to happen. She had not been religious; but emotionally, at least, she accepted the idea that God Himself had sickened with our selfishness, stupidity and squalor, and in disgust had tossed two pebbles through the sky on their errand which, night by night now, was becoming more apparent.

  The train moved past the final outpost tenements into a verdant landscape with the river on one side-the Hudson, in which tides soon would rise to sweep high and far over the Palisades. Tony glanced back, once, toward the teeming city. The first flood would not top those tallest towers etched there; the pinnacles of man's triumphs would, for a while, rise above the tides; but all the rest? Tony turned away and looked out at the river, trying not to think of it.

  Chapter 9-HOW THE WORLD TOOK IT

  SETTLED in a chair, Tony glanced around the comfortable furnishings of the student's room and
then gazed at the student himself. A lanky youth with red hair, good-humored blue eyes and a sprinkling of freckles that carried into his attained maturity more than a memory of the childhood he had so recently left.

  "Yes," Tony repeated, "I'm from Cole Hendron. The dean told me about your academic work. Professor Gates showed me the thesis on Light which you turned in for your Ph.D. He said it was the finest thing he had had from the Graduate School since he'd held the chair of Physics."

  Dull red came in the young man's face. "Nothing much. I just happened to have an idea. Probably never get another in my life."

  Tony smiled. "I understand you were stroke in the varsity crew two years ago."

  "That's right."

  "That's the year you were rowing everybody out of the water, isn't it?"

  "There weren't any good crews that year. We just happened to have the least bad ones."

  Tony looked at the youth's hands, nervously clenching and unclenching. They were powerful hands, which nevertheless seemed to possess the capacity for minute adjustments. Tony smiled. "No need of being so modest, old fellow. It's just as I said. Cole Hendron in New York is getting together a bunch of people for some work he wants done during the next few months. It's work of a very private nature. I can't tell you what. I can't even assure you that he will accept you, but I'm touring around in the attempt to send him some likely people. You understand that I'm not offering you a job in the sense, that jobs have been offered in the past. I don't know that any salary is attached to it at all. You will be supplied with a place to live, and provided with food, if you accept."

  The tall youth grinned. "I suppose you know that offering a chance to associate with Cole Hendron, to a man like me, is just like offering the job of secretary to St. Peter, to a bishop."

  "M-m-m. By the way, why did you stay here at the university when most of the graduate students have left?"

  "No particular reason. I didn't have anything better to do. The university is on high ground, so it didn't seem sensible to move for that reason, and I thought I might as well go on with my work."

  "I see," Tony replied.

  His companion hesitated to say what was obviously on his mind, but finally broke the short silence. "Look here, Mr.-- Mr.-"

  "Drake. Tony Drake."

  "Mr. Drake. I can't understand why on earth Hendron would want me. If he's planning to take a group of people to some safe spot in order to preserve scientific knowledge during the next year, he can find hundreds of people, thousands of people, that have more knowledge to save, and a better memory to save it in, than I have."

  Tony looked at the good-humored blue eyes and liked the young man. He felt instinctively that here was one person whom Cole Hendron and the committee would surely accept. The name of the man before him, he recalled, was Jack Taylor-his record for a man of twenty-five was startling. He grinned at the youth's speculation. "You're a physicist, Taylor. If you were in Cole Hendron's shoes, and were trying to take a group of people to a place of safety, just where, under the circumstances we anticipate, would you take them?"

  The other man was thoughtful for an instant. "That's just what worried me. I can't think of any place on earth that would offer a refuge essentially satisfactory."

  "Exactly. No place on earth." Tony emphasized the last two words.

  Jack Taylor frowned quickly, and suddenly the freckles on his face stood out because his color had departed.

  "God Almighty! You don't mean to suggest-"

  Tony lifted his hand and dropped it. "I'm offering you a letter than will give you an interview with Cole Hendron. Do you want to go and see him?"

  For a minute Taylor did not answer. Then he said disjointedly: "Marvelous! My God-Hendron's just the man-the only man! To think that anybody would come around to give me a shot at such a thing!" Tears suddenly filled his eyes, and he stood up and walked in two mighty strides to the window.

  Tony slapped his back. "See you in New York. Better get going right away. So long, old man."

  Deeply moved, proud that any race, any civilization should produce human beings of the temper and fineness of young Taylor, Tony walked out onto the university campus and hurried to keep an appointment with an obscure but talented assistant professor of chemistry whose investigations of colloids had placed his name on the long list furnished to Tony by Hendron and his associates.

  Tony, having applied himself for months to acquisition of the primitive proficiencies in growing things and in the manual arts, had found himself appointed by Cole Hendron as his personnel officer. Tony possessed, decidedly, a knack with people; and so Hendron was sending him about to recruit young men for the extraordinary duties of the crew of the Space Ship.

  Her father had asked Eve to suggest, provisionally, the women who must go along; and Tony had met some whom Eve had selected.

  Strange to think of them standing with you-and with a few other men out of all our world's creation-on the soil of an empty planet! What would they be to each other there?

  Stranger still, to gaze at night into the sky, and see a spot of light beside a brighter orb and realize that you might-you might become a visitor to that spot in the sky!

  Tony returned, three weeks later, to New York City, where Hendron now spent most of his time. He had workshops and laboratories started in several places, but the advantage of conveniences in New York was so great that he had decided not to abandon his work there until later.

  Upon his arrival in the city, late on a July afternoon, Tony went at once to see Hendron and Eve. He had business with Hendron-none with Eve; he merely longed to see her and be with her, more than he dared display. Not much change was observable in the city. The station was a sea of people, as it had been on the day of his departure. The streets were more than normally crowded, and his taxicab made slow progress.

  There were three policemen in the front offices of the laboratories, and he was admitted only after a wait. Eve came into the reception-room first, and shook hands with him coolly. That is, outwardly it was coolly; but inwardly, Tony felt sure, she was trembling, even as was he.

  "Oh, Tony," she said, her voice almost giving way, "I'm so glad to have you back! I've read all your reports."

  "I've read all your acknowledgments of them," said Tony hoarsely. It was all that had passed between them. Reports and acknowledgments, in lieu of love-letters!

  "Father will be right out. We've been working steadily ever since you left. You and Dad and I are going to have dinner together to-night."

  "Any one else?" asked Tony jealously.

  "No; who would there be?"

  "Your South African, I thought probably."

  "Not mine, Tony!"

  "Your father's, then. He keeps him in the laboratory-for you."

  Hendron, wearing his laboratory apron, walked briskly into the front office. "Hello, there, Drake! Delighted to see you back. Your candidates have been arriving daily, and we've put them all to work. Dodson and Smith and Greve are enthusiastic about them." He looked at his watch. "Five-fifty. I've got a little work to do here. Then we want you to come up to the house for dinner."

  As Tony unlocked his apartment door, Kyto sprang to his feet.

  "I take your presence," Kyto said, "with extravagant gratitude."

  Tony laughed. "A bath, Kyto, a dinner jacket, something in the way of a highball-I haven't had a drink since I left. Good Lord! It's refreshing to see this digging again. You've missed me, eh?"

  The little Jap ducked his head. "I have indulged my person in continual melancholy, which is now raised in the manner of a siege-gun."

  "Swell," said Tony. "The drink, the bath, the clothes! Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die. There's something in it, Kyto."

  "I have become apprised of the Bronson circumstances in toto, and about your statement am agreement itself."

  Tony's eyebrows raised. "Know all about it, hey?"

  "I have a nice storehouse of information on same."

  "Good. How's my mother?"
r />   "Excellent as to health. Telephoning daily."

  "Maybe you'd better ring her up first. On second thought, that's the thing to do. I telegraphed her occasionally, but heaven only knows when I'll see her. She is a darn' good sport."

  "A person of profound esteemableness."

  Tony looked with surprise at the back of the Jap as he started toward the telephone. The approach of the Bronson bodies had made his servant more loquacious than he had ever before been. Aside from that, no change in Kyto was discernible-nor did Tony anticipate any change. He began to remove his travel-worn clothes, and was in a bathrobe when Kyto succeeded in completing a telephone-connection with his mother's house in Connecticut.