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Eve stopped him.
“Why deny the possibilities?” he objected.
“Why dwell on those particular ones, Tony, when they may be the ones we ourselves will meet? We—or our friends in our other ship.… It’s funny how you men complain about missing the wild animals. Do you know, Tony, that Dave told me that Dr. Bronson thought about the impossibility of taking over lions when he first began planning with Father the idea of the space ships? That night Lord Rhondin and Professor Bronson walked about the room and spoke about how there would be no more lions.”
“Funny to think of meeting Rhondin for the first time on Bronson Beta,” said Tony, “if we and the South African ship get over. Good egg, Lord Rhondin, from all I hear from Dave.”
They were off by themselves now, and Tony drew her nearer to him. She neither encouraged nor resisted him. He tightened his arm about her, and felt her softness and warmth against him. For a moment she remained motionless, neutral; then suddenly her hands were on his arms, clasping him, clinging to him. Her body became tense, thrilling, and as he bent, her lips burned on his.
She drew back a little, and at last he let her. In silence he kissed her again; then her lips, close to his, said: “Farewell to earth, Tony!”
“Yes,” he said, quivering. “Yes; I suppose this is our last sure night.”
“No; we leave to-night, Tony.”
“To-night? I thought it was to-morrow.”
“No; Father feared the last night—if any one knew it in advance. So he said to-morrow; but all his calculations make it to-night.”
“How soon, Eve?”
“In an hour, dear. You’ll hear the bugles. He deceived even you.”
“And Dave?” asked Tony jealously. Dave Ransdell now was his great friend. Dave was to be in command, except as to scientific matters, of the party in the second ship; Tony was himself second only to Hendron on the first ship; and Tony had no jealousy of Dave for that. Moreover, Eve was to travel in the ship with her father and Tony; if he was saved, so would be she! And Dave might, without them, be lost. Tony had told himself that he had conquered his jealousy of Dave; but here it still held him.
“No,” said Eve. “Father told Dave to-morrow, too. But we leave the earth to-night.”
“So to-morrow,” said Tony, “to-morrow we may be ‘ourselves, with yesterday’s seven thousand years.’ I had plans—or dreams at least, Eve—of the last night on earth. It changes them to find it barely an hour.”
“I should not have told you, Tony.”
“Why? Would you have me go ahead with what I dreamed?”
“Why not?” she said. “An hour before the bugles; an hour before we leave the world, to fall back upon it from some frightful height, dear, and be shattered on this globe’s shell; or to gain space and float on endlessly, starving and freezing in our little ship; or to fall on Bronson Beta and die there. Or perhaps, Tony—perhaps, to live!”
“Perhaps,” repeated Tony; but he had not, this time, gone from the world with her in his mind. He held her again and thought of his hour—the last hour of which he could be sure.
“Come away,” he said. “Come farther away from—”
“From what, Tony?”
“From everybody else.” And he drew her on. He led her, indeed, toward the edge of the encampment where the wires that protected it knitted a barrier. And there, holding her, he heard and she heard a child crying.
There were no children in the encampment. There never had been. No one with little children had been chosen. But here was a child.
Eve called to it, and the child ceased crying; so Eve had to call again for a response that would guide her to it in the dark.…
There were two children, together and alone. They were three and four years old, it appeared. They knew their names—Dan and Dorothy. They called for “Papa.” Papa, it appeared, had brought them there in the dark and gone away. Papa had told them to stay there, and somebod
y would come.
Eve had her arms between the wires, and the children clung to her hands while they talked. Now Tony lifted them over the wires; and Eve took them in her arms.
In the awful “moonlight” of Bronson Beta, the children clung to her; and the little girl asked if she was “Mamma.” Mamma, it appeared, had gone away a long time ago.
“Months ago only,” Eve interpreted for Tony, “or they wouldn’t remember her.”
“Yes. Probably in the destruction of the First Passage,” Tony said; and they both understood that the mother must be dead.
