Morrison Colladay

“ 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. ”

“ The whole central Greenland plateau seemed to be rapidly sinking, and all around the horizon great mountain ranges were lifting themselves toward the sky. We were lying on a rock, two infinitely small insects, watching a new continent being born. ”

“ The catastrophe which destroyed our old world was so overwhelming that it is impossible to grieve over the smaller things that we have lost. We are all working cheerfully to build a better world.
The world we are living in is a very interesting one. Even the most adventurous among us have learned little about it as yet. The entire Pacific region has never been visited since the moon crashed. Jim and I often speculate about the conditions on the other side of the earth. ”

“ I stood there bracing my feet firmly as the trembling of the earth increased and the rumbling became louder. I looked at the sky which had become overcast with fast hurrying clouds. If any sky ever indicated wind, that one did. I made my decision.
"Get the planes to sheltered valleys immediately. We won't be safe on land, but we'll be safer than we would be in the air, with the wind that's coming. Quick! There's no time to waste."
The crowd scattered, some of them joyously and more with sullen resentment expressed in their gloomy faces.
Jim and I hurried over to our place. ”

“ Deprived of his normal senses it does not take man long to revert to savagery. As it happened, after the first feeling of strangeness, going without clothes seemed a perfectly natural and sensible thing to do.
Other inhibitions carried over from the destroyed world were harder to get rid of, as our conscientious lawmakers found out later, when they began to reconstruct a civilization based on reason alone. However, such considerations were far enough from the thoughts of Jim and me as we sat there, looking at the sky where the clouds were beginning to break away. ”

“ However, it disturbed the balance of forces sufficiently to draw the moon from its orbit and start its headlong progress toward us.
I was away in Labrador when all this occurred, and it is due to that fact that I am alive today. The things that happened in the densely inhabited portions of the globe will be recounted by survivors who were eye witnesses. It is sufficient to say that when the news of the impending catastrophe became known a universal apathy seemed to settle over humanity. It was apparently overwhelmed by the hopelessness of any effort to escape. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our country is a great island extending from the region of the former Ural mountains to the former Hudson Bay. It includes northern Russia, Finland, northern Norway and Sweden, Iceland and Greenland and part of Canada. It extends northward to the pole and it is bounded on all sides by the great mountain ranges which rose from the sea.
Our civilization is largely English speaking, and the seat of government is Upernavik in Greenland. Our population is small, considering the geographical extent of the country, and we are encouraging in every way the production of large families. ”

“ Jim was silent for a minute. "You'll have to decide what's best yourself. Whatever it is will be all right with me."
It seemed likely that if any concerted effort to escape had been made by persons who had access to airplanes and dirigibles—and I had no doubt there had been such an effort—they would have laid a course for Greenland. Settlements on the coast of that great island had doubtless been destroyed by the tidal waves, but the interior would have been a refuge for anyone able to reach it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ People who had never before been religious became so in an hour.
First Intimations
It is well that I begin on my personal experiences:
As I said before I was in Labrador when the moon first showed an aberration in its motion. It will be remembered that in April, 1928, three aviators, two Germans and one Irish, started on a flight across the ocean from Ballycombe, Ireland, to New York. They succeeded in crossing the ocean from east to west, a feat which had not been accomplished before, but owing to fog and storms they lost their way, and landed on a little island off the coast of Labrador. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Smithsonian announces that tidal waves following course of moon will within the next twenty-four hours sweep far inland.
Jim was taking down another message. I read it over his shoulder.
BULLETIN: There is possibility that life near the poles may survive. It will probably be possible to use airplanes for the next twenty-four hours; after that, constantly increasing gales reaching hitherto unheard of force, will make travel of any kind impossible. ”

“ No way of telling. People started in everything that could fly and came down all over. Most of them are done for. Those who succeeded in landing in out-of-the-way places are the ones we are trying to rescue now. ”

“ What kind of work?"
"Finding people who escaped the catastrophe and are now starving to death.
"No, not here, of course. We have plenty of supplies and are getting more all the time. This settlement is practically part of Upernavik. The town proper was too near the coast to be quite safe. All of us who could get away from the United States made for this point. The scientists agreed that there would be more chance of escaping here than any place else we could reach." ”

“ There is a dispute among the fliers as to whether it would be better to take to the air in the machines with as many passengers as they can carry, or await developments here with the planes sheltered as much as possible. ”

“ 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. ”