Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [127]
They were still clinging to each other, when both caught sight of a small dark object approaching them from beneath. It came, apparently, from a black spot on the chill whiteness of the landscape to the west of their abandoned home, and it was travelling faster than themselves.
They gazed down at it with sudden interest, that, as they gazed, turned into acute apprehension, and then to a numb horror.
“The other Sphere!”
“Amy and her lover!”
While they spoke it grew definitely larger, and they saw that a collision was unavoidable. By what caprice of fate it had so fallen out that the helpless paths of the two Red Spheres should thus come to coincide in point of space and time, they could not imagine. The idea of leaving the earth might, by magnetic sympathy, have occurred to both couples at about the same time, but the rest of the unlucky coincidence was inexplicable. They turned from looking at the second Sphere and sought each other’s eyes and hands, saying much by look and pressure that words could not convey.
“They did not mean to keep the pledge of the Decision,” said Alwyn. “The desire for life must have come to them as it came to me to-day, and Amy must have remembered the Instructions. I can understand them coming up faster than us, because their Sphere was in a sheet-metal shed in the open, and so would start with less opposition and greater initial velocity. But it is strange that their path should be so nearly ours. It can only be a matter of minutes, at the rate they are gaining, before the end comes for all of us. It will be before we get through the atmosphere and gather our full speed. And it will be the end of Humanity’s troubled dream . . . . . And Amy is in that. . . . .”
The thought of possible malice, impulsive or premeditated, on the part of the occupants of the second Red Sphere, never entered into the minds of those of the first.
“The responsibility of action rests upon us,” said Celia. “They evidently cannot see us, against the background of the black sky. They are coming up swiftly, dear.”
“It will have to be that: there is no other way. Better one than both,” said the man.
“Be what, Alwyn?”
“The fulminate of sterarium.”
“It will not injure them?”
“No; not if we fire the fuse within — about — three minutes. It must seem hard to you, Celia, to know that my hand will send you to the Silence so that Amy may have the last desperate chance of life. Somehow, these last few hours, I have felt the ancient emotions surging back.”
The hand that clasped his gave a gentle pressure.
“And I, too, Alwyn; but their reign will be brief. I would rather die with you now than live without you. I am ready. Do not be too late with the fulminate, Alwyn.”
They swayed together; their arms were about each other; their lips met in the last kiss. While their faces were yet very near, Alwyn’s disengaged right hand touched a tiny white button that was embedded in the padding of the interior.
There was an instantaneous flash of light and roar of sound, and the man and woman in the second sphere were startled by the sudden glare and concussion of it, as their metal shell drove upwards through the cloud of elemental dust that was all that remained of the first Red Sphere and its occupants.
The silence and clear darkness that had been round them a moment before, had returned when they recovered their balance; and in that silence and clear darkness, the man and woman who had not been chosen passed out into the abyss of the Beyond, ignorant of the cause and meaning of that strange explosion in the air, and knew that they were alone in Space, bound they knew not whither.
THE PLUNGE
George Allan England
Although the last story saw the end of the world, I chose to finish with this story, partly because it has all the standard