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When Tony went outdoors again, it was four o’clock, though he had no means of knowing the time. Once again he noticed that the air was cooler. He made his way down the almost impassable trail to the stockyards, and found another group of men working feverishly with the frightened animals and the clamorous poultry. Then he walked back to the “village green.” So far as he could determine, every effort was being bent toward reorganizing the important affairs of the community. He had at last the leisure in which to consider himself and the world around him.
Perspiration had carried away the dirt on his face and hands, but his clothes were still mucky. The dampness of the air had prevented that mud from drying. His hair was still caked. He walked in the direction of the flying-field, and presently found what he sought—a depression in the ground which had been filled with water to a depth of three or four feet, and in which water the mud had settled. He waded into the pool carefully so as not to disturb the silt on the bottom. The water was warm. He ducked his head below the surface and laved his face with his hands.
When he stepped out, he was relatively clean, though his feet became immediately encased in mud again.
Slowly he walked to the top of the small hill from which he had watched the Bronson Bodies on the evening before. He felt a diminution of the sulphur and other vapors in the air, His throat was raw, but each breath did not sting his lungs as it had during the last hours when they had been lying in the open field. He noticed again a quality of thinness in the air which persisted in spite of the heat and moisture. He wondered if the entire chemistry of the earth’s atmosphere had been changed—if, for example a definite percentage of its normal oxygen had been consumed. That problem, however, was unsolvable, at least for the time.
By straining his eyes into the distance, and aiding their perceptions with imagination, he could deduce the general changes in the local landscape. The hurricane had uprooted, disheveled and destroyed the surrounding portions except where hill-crests protected small patches of standing trees. One-half of the flying-field had been lifted eight or ten feet above the other, so that its surface looked like two books of unequal thickness lying edge to edge. The open space inside the “U” of buildings which Hendron had constructed was littered with rubbish, most of it tree-branches. One dining-hall had collapsed. The men’s dormitory was unsafe until it could be repaired. Everywhere was an even coat of soft brown mud which on the level must have attained a depth of ten inches—and the rain which still fell in occasional interludes continued to bring down detritus from the skies.
What had happened to the rest of the world, to what had been Michigan, to the United States, to the continents and the oceans would have to be determined at some future time.
For the moment, calm had come. The Bronson Bodies not only had passed and withdrawn toward the sun, but they shone no longer in the night sky. If atmospheric conditions permitted, they would be visible dimly by day; but only by day. As a matter of fact, from the camp they were completely invisible; not even the sun could be clearly seen.
But the night came on clear—clear and almost calm. The mists had settled, and the clouds moved away. Dust and gases hung in the air; still the stars showed.
The moon, too, should be shining, Tony thought. Tonight there should be a full moon; but only stars were in the sky. Had he reckoned wrong?
He was standing alone, looking up and checking his mental calculations, when some one stopped beside him.
“What is it, Tony?” Hendron said.
“Where’s the moon to-night?”
“Where—that’s it: where? That’s what we’d like to know—exactly what happened. We had to miss it, you see; probably nowhere in the world were conditions that permitted observation when the collision occurred; and what a thing to see!”
“The collision!” said Tony.
“When Bronson Alpha took out the moon! I thought you knew it was going to happen, Tony. I thought I told you.”
“Bronson Alpha took out the moon!… You told me that
it would take out the world when we meet it next on the other side of the sun; but you didn’t mention the moon!”
“Didn’t I? I meant to. It was minor, of course; but I’d have given much to have been able to see it. Bronson Alpha, if our calculations proved correct, collided with the moon in a glancing blow. That is, it was not a center collision; but it surely broke up the moon into fragments. Most of them may have merged with the far greater body; but others we may see later. There are conditions under which they would form a band of dust and fragments about the earth like the rings about Saturn. In any case, there is no use looking for the moon, Tony. The moon has met its end; it is forever gone. I wish we could have seen it.”
Tony was silent. Strange to stare into a sky into which never again the moon would rise! Strange to think that now that the terrible tides raised by the Bronson Bodies had fallen, there would not be any tide at all. Even the moon tides were gone. The seas, so enormously upsucked and swept back and forth, were left to lap at their shores in this unnatural, moonless calm.
“However,” said Hendron, “when the world encounters Bronson Alpha, we’ll see that, I hope.”
“See it—from the world?” said Tony.
“From space, I hope, if we succeed with our ship—from space on our way to Bronson Beta. What a show that will be, Tony, from space with no clouds to cut if off! And then landing on that other world, whose cities we have seen!”
“Yes,” said Tony.
CHAPTER 15—RECONNAISSANCE
SO through the darkness of that moon-lost night, Tony continued to work. He mustered new gangs for the dreary tasks of salvage, and of rehabilitating and reconstructing the shelters.
He organized, directed, exhorted and cheered men on, wondering at them as they responded and redoubled their efforts. He wondered no less at himself. What use, in the end, was all this labor? A few months, and they would meet the Bronson Bodies again; and this time, Bronson Alpha would not pass the world. As it had extinguished the moon, it would annihilate the earth too! This solid ground!
Tony stamped upon it.
No wonder, really, that these men responded and that he exhorted and urged them on. They, and he, could not realize that the world was doomed, any more than a man could realize that he himself must die. Death is what happens to others! So other worlds may perish; but not ours, on which we stand!
Tony clapped his hands together loudly. “All right, fellows! Come on! Come on!” Clouds gathered again, and rain was pouring down.
When light began again to filter through the darkly streaming heavens, Hendron re-awoke. He found Tony drunk with fatigue, carrying on by sheer effort of will, and refusing to rest.
