"Philip Wylie & Edwin Balmer - After Worlds Collide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wylie Philip)

secret organization known as "The League of the Last Days" and these men
kept the information from the public for some time. Among the first laymen to
know, or guess the truth were Ransdell, the flier, and Anthony Drake, a young
New York man-about-town who was in love with Eve Hendron.
Most of the informed scientists were ready to resign themselves to universal
destruction. Cole Hendron, however, perceived a possibility of escape: if the
planet which was to occupy the earth's position were habitable, and if a vessel
capable of transporting human beings and their possessions through a few
hundred thousand miles of space could be made, a small and select group of
people might "jump" from the doomed earth to the new arrival in the solar
system. This group could then set about reestablishing mankind on a new
earth.
Hendron and his assistants set to work at once. Atomic energy adequate to
drive such a vessel exactly as a rocket is propelled was released in his
laboratories. At first it could not be harnessed, as it fused everything with
which it came in contact. Nevertheless Hendron persisted in his plans for the
space ship. The "Ark" was the name given to the ship eventually built.
For its construction, Hendron established a vast manufacturing city in
Michigan, and to it he took a thousand selected human beingsтАФmen and
women with scientific training, healthy physiques, and great courage.
While Hendron labored frantically, the world found out what was in store for it.
Society disintegrated. The first, and relatively harmless "passage" of the
Bronson bodies would be sufficiently close to cause vast terrestrial disturbances
тАФtides, cyclones, terrific volcanic disturbances, and earthquakes. All the
seacoast cities of the world were evacuated. New York, Boston, Philadelphia
were cleared of their population, which was moved inland at the order of the
President.
One bit of fortune came in the discovery of a new metal in the material forced
from the depths of the earth during the great eruptions. Ransdell found it and


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brought it to camp where Hendron tested it. This metal proved able to
withstand the heat of the atomic blast. The problem of propulsion of the "Ark"
was solved.
In the fantastic days that followed, Hendron and his band manufactured the
Ark, and found time and materials to make a second ship so that the balance of
their heroic group could be transported to Bronson Beta and not sacrificed. The
Michigan cantonment was attacked by bloodthirsty and hungry mobs. The first
passage killed more than half of the people of the earth. Continents split apart.
Seas rose. The internal fires of the earth burst to the surface. The moon was
smashed to atoms.
Months afterward the celestial wanderers rounded the sun and returned.
Hendron's two ships "took off" for Bronson Beta. Other ships, frantically
constructed by other nations, also leaped into space as doom fell upon our
world.
Bronson Alpha annihilated the earth and moved into the void.