CHAPTER II

A Start for Safety

Everyone knows now how that group of scientists scattered over the world, knowing there was no escape for them, calmly continued their observations and calculations and announced them over the radio. They were undoubtedly the real heroes of the catastrophe. Our new world honors their memory as scientists were never honored in those days.

Jim watched me as I read the last bulletin. When I had finished he asked, "Well, what do we do? Stay here and take what's coming, or make a try for the north?"

I thought for a few minutes. "In the first place, I don't believe it is worth while alarming the natives," I said. "They can't do anything for themselves, and we can't do anything for them. As for us, I think we'd better load as much gasoline and food in the plane as she can carry, and make for the interior."

"Not go farther north? We might be safer on the ice than on land."

"How long do you suppose the ice will last? Even if we survive the collision, the heat generated will melt all ice, even up here."

Jim looked at me a little helplessly. "Don't forget that Labrador has water on three sides. If we go into the interior, I don't believe we'll escape the tidal waves they're predicting."

"Probably not," I rejoined cheerfully, "but the chances are a thousand to one we'll be snuffed out one way or another before the collision occurs, so what difference does it make?"

There was another message coming in and Jim turned to take it.

"Don't waste time doing that," I said. "Hear that wind rising now? Let's load up and start."

Doing that was quite simple. The hangar contained all the fuel we could carry. When we rolled the machine out I looked over the little village, rather conscience-stricken for a moment at leaving them in ignorance of what was coming. They couldn't reach the interior in time, I reflected, even if we did tell them, and they might as well remain happy as long as they could.

"Where are we headed for?" asked Jim.

I pointed to the Laurentian Mountains which extend along the Labrador coast. "Anywhere the other side of those."

Jim whirled the propeller and kicked the blocks from in front of the wheels. Then he climbed on board. We should have had skids on the undercarriage instead of wheels, to land on the snow, but we would have to do the best we could with what we had. The roar of the motor brought some of the inhabitants out-of-doors, and they watched us, wonderingly, as we took off into the night with that sinister orange moon gazing down at us.

The mountains are not high and we crossed them without difficulty. Presently the sky became gray in the east, and the moon, still in the sky, looked menacing. By the time the sun rose over the horizon we were almost cheerful.

I had been looking for a place to land, and decided to take a chance on the broad plateau at the top of the northern end of the mountain chain. Here the rocks were not old Laurentian but sandstone. The place we came down on was as flat as a table top and had been blown clear of snow by the wind, which had become high enough to make landing difficult. There was no shelter on the plateau, and we had to hang on to the wings of the plane to steady it.

Finally we reached a little rocky valley. It was really only a depression in the surface of the mountain, but it was deep enough to shelter the plane and us from the increasing fury of the wind. We anchored the plane as well as we could, and then made a breakfast on canned beans.

"What next?" asked Jim when we had finished. "Maybe you'd better try to get some sleep while I watch."

I shook my head. "We'll both try to sleep now. There's nothing to watch for, and tonight we'll probably both want to be awake."

We crawled into our sleeping bags and the last thing I remember was the thought that the increasingly shrill screeching of the wind was an improvement on the noise made by the sirens of the New York Fire Department.

I do not know what wakened me. I instinctively looked at my watch and saw it was three o'clock. At first I was not sure whether I was awake or whether I was in the middle of one of the half-waking nightmares we sometimes have. Lying in the depression in the mountain, I could see neither horizon but only the sky overhead. I rubbed my eyes and looked again.

* * * * *

Nearer and Nearer

Instead of the usual blue, the sky was a burnished copper. The wind was blowing a hurricane with a steady intensity from east to west. All aviators are able to judge wind velocities pretty accurately, but this was something entirely beyond my experience. I had felt a hundred-and-fifty mile an hour gale during the Miami hurricane, but this was vastly greater.

I could see flickering shadows overhead and it took me some time to realize that they were solid objects carried by the wind. In addition to the shrieking wind like an enormous siren, there was now a steady roar like thunder in the mountains. I crawled out of my sleeping bag and shivered to the intense cold. When we went to sleep the thermometer I judge was about twenty above. Now I knew it must be away below zero.

Jim was still sleeping when I bent over and shook his shoulder. He slowly opened his eyes. I put my mouth close to his ear to make him hear in the uproar of the wind.

"Better get up," I said. "Something's happening."

He glanced at the copper sky and scrambled out of his sleeping bag. "Brrrr, it's cold!" he said, shivering. "What does it all mean?"

"I imagine it means the moon is rising over the horizon and is pretty close to us."

"How are we going to keep from freezing?"

"Get into the cabin, I guess. If the wind doesn't reach the plane we'll be just as safe as we are here, and if it does it will tear us to pieces wherever we are."

We had worked the plane into the deepest part of the depression between the sandstone ridges and it looked safe enough, unless the mountain itself should be demolished. We gathered up our sleeping bags and scrambled through the little door.

It was soon after we got inside that the moon appeared overhead. Jim and I have never been able to agree as to how big it actually looked that second night. I suppose we thought it was bigger than it really was, because it had increased so much in size since the previous night. It came over the sandstone ridge, a great scarlet globe mottled with black.

"Gad, it's right on top of us!" exclaimed Jim.

"No it isn't," I replied, "but it probably will be tomorrow."

"Do you suppose we'll be alive then?" asked Jim, gazing in awe at the great sphere, with its mountains and valleys, now floating almost above our heads.

"It doesn't look like it now," I replied, "but still you never can tell."

It was that night that the headlong plunge toward the earth was arrested, and the next day saw the scarlet sphere no larger when it appeared. We immediately became hopeful that we might escape. We had grown used to the sound of the wind and we had slept under the plane. We had the cabin so full of gasoline cans and food that there was no room for us to stretch out.

The sky had retained its burnished copper hue, but after the moon had passed over the western ridge, the wind and changed sky were the only things to remind us of what was happening. Then, as I said, when we found the next morning that the moon was no larger, we were distinctly encouraged.

It took only fifteen hours to encircle the earth, that time.

"I believe I can calculate how near us it is," I said.

I figured for a few minutes on a scrap of paper and decided that the moon and the earth were at that moment ninety thousand miles apart. It seems that I was ten thousand miles out of the way, but as my result was based on a purely mathematical calculation, without any help from observation other than the moon's time of revolution around the earth, my error was excusable.

* * * * *

Waiting for the End

There was no slackening of the wind after the moon had disappeared beneath the western cliff which was our horizon. It was then eleven o'clock in the morning. The sky kept its burnished copper tint and the sun was not visible. In fact, we did not see the sun during this entire period. Day was a little brighter than night, but there was nothing that corresponded to ordinary daylight.

"Now if the moon doesn't come up for fifteen hours," I said to Jim, "we'll know that the worst is not going to happen."

"Why?"

"It will mean that the force that flung it in the direction of the earth has been neutralized in some way, and that it will continue to revolve around the earth about 90,000 miles away instead of 240,000."

Jim looked cheerful for the first time in two days.

"We'll know by two o'clock tomorrow morning, then?"

"If the news is bad, we'll know it before that."

There was no possibility of our venturing out of the depression between the two sandstone cliffs where we were sheltered from the wind. There was nothing to do except wait. As the half light, that we called day, faded, Jim and I began to watch the eastern cliff. Six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock passed.

Jim turned to me with a half grin. "Seems funny to be watching for the moon and frightened to death for fear we'll see it."

"Well, I guess we're safe if we don't see it for the next six hours."

I climbed into the cabin of the plane and began going over the engine. Suddenly I heard a shout from Jim. I jumped out of the door to the ground and saw him pointing to the eastern cliff.

There was a line of molten gold above it, too dazzling to look at.

It was at that moment that we had our first earthquake. There had been many earlier ones in other parts of the world. I was thrown violently to the ground and the sideways motion was so strong that I tried to find something on the bare rocky surface to hang on to. By the time I was able to raise myself to a sitting posture, a great blinding segment of a sphere had appeared in the sky.

[Illustration: A great blinding segment of a sphere appeared in the sky. I realized that it was the moon travelling toward the earth at a terrific velocity.]

Of course I realized immediately that it was the moon, which must now be approaching the earth at a terrific velocity. Why the reflected light from it was so dazzling I have never been able to determine. As far as I know, in other parts of the world persons advantageously placed were able to observe it without difficulty, almost to the moment of impact. The only possible explanation seems to be that there was a vast amount of light reflected from the snow-covered surface of the ground, and even that explanation is not quite satisfactory. The fact remains that neither Jim nor I was able to observe the surface of the moon as it passed above us. It would have been as easy to look at the sun.

From the moment of this first earthquake, time in the ordinary sense of the word had no meaning for us. We stayed as close to each other and the plane as we could. There was now no distinction between night and day. The sky was a burnished copper color, when it was not being traversed by the brilliantly blazing moon, and, each time the moon appeared over our rocky horizon, it nearly filled the heavens.

I think we ate from time to time. I know we became extraordinarily thirsty and were continually drinking. I assume that the wind exhausted all the moisture in the air around us, and the air exhausted it from our bodies. I do not even know whether that is a possible explanation, but I give it for what it is worth. I am not quite sure what we would have done for water if there had not been an abundance of snow in our rocky valley. We knew enough not to try to eat it, but we melted it over our little primus stove.

We could tell when the moon was going to appear by the increasing intensity of the earthquakes. They became nearly continuous, and we adjusted ourselves to them as people do to the motion of a ship. We would not have been able to accept them so philosophically if we had not been on top of a mountain where there was nothing to fall on us.

The intervals between the moon's appearances became shorter and shorter.