Fire in the Heavens (1958)

by George O. Smith

  Jeff did not heartily dislike the jobs that came his way from time to time. Mostly they were lucrative, for a master craftsman in an art not overpopulated drew high fees. It was also a tedious job, for metal and wire and glass are insensate things that must be honed to a fine degree before they will combine to measure the weight of a fly’s breath or the electric potential of two tiny particles of metal suspended in a gas.

  Jeff would have given it up had he been able to support his investigations independently. Instead, he worked more hours in a day than most people do in two, and enjoyed it all.

  He opened the first page of the first specification for a velocity meter based upon the Doppler effect and converted into electrical terms so that a simple D’Arsonval microammeter could be calibrated into feet per second, and with appropriate shunts to lower the sensitivity of the meter, into miles per second. He got no further along than that first page because he had a second caller.

  Jeff swore again, and went to the door. This time he stepped aside with wonderment. His caller was Charles Horne.

  “Hello,” said Horne, extending a hand. Benson only looked at it.

  “Take it,” offered Horne. “It’s offered in lieu of an olive branch. There isn’t an olive tree within a couple of thousand miles of Chicago, you know.”

  “Just what do you want, Horne?” demanded Benson.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “You’re talking.”

  “Don’t be hasty, Benson. Any man can make a mistake. And any man worthy of the name should be honest enough to apologize. So I was wrong, dead wrong, and I’d like to mend me a fence or two.”

  I see.

  “You can’t possibly see,” said Horne. “Lucille Roman is one of the most graspingly ruthless rulers of an economic empire that has come down the pike in a century, even counting her old man.”

  “So what?”

  “Lucille Roman’s mother died when she was born. She was brought up by her father. Pappy Roman, instead of hiring high-priced governesses and tutors, brought her up to fill his shoes—and she filled them when he died. Now, at twenty-six, Lucille Roman cares for nothing but being successful. She fives only for wealth and power. Her father taught her nothing else and she views every man as a direct challenge, as a personal threat.

  “So, in the course of the last few years, Lucille Roman has come up from behind in deal after deal. She has come out of nowhere, to strike fast and hard, and has come out ahead. She cares nothing for the effects of her assaults upon the victims of her financial raids. Each one is just another scalp for her belt. Then she can go on to another triumph.” “What is all this to me?”

  “I’m just trying to explain why a couple of us lost our heads and tried to get the best of her. Had you been there as one of us you’d feel as we did—that Lucille Roman had tied her last can to us and to blazes with her.”

  “Could be,” admitted Jeff.

  Horne laughed.

  “And what did Lucille Roman repay your efforts to help her with?’”

  “Not much.”

  Horne laughed bitterly. Then he looked at his watch. “Why not join me for a bit of lunch, Benson? We can talk as we eat.”

  Benson shrugged. Horne had something on his mind and would take his own sweet time to get to it. And Benson was not going to get anything of his own done until the deck had been cleared for action. He might as well eat with Horne and get two birds with a single stone. Jeff was the kind who never let anything interfere with his eating, which meant that eating time must be spent away from his work anyway.

  And another thing— Horne was the kind of man who would take a guest to one of the best places when he hoped to interest said guest in a deal. And Jeff was perfectly willing to enjoy—briefly—the kind of life to which he hoped someday to become accustomed.

  “I’ll get my coat,” he said.

  Lucille Roman paused on her way out of the office to speak to Hannegan, who was just entering. “Are we coming on all right?” she asked him.

  Hannegan nodded, pleased with himself.

  “I’ve just about let the contract for the instruments and special measurement devices,” he told her.

  “That’s rather a tough one,” she nodded. “It is all sewed up?”

  “No. But practically. I left some specifications with Jeff Benson—”

  “Benson? Benson is the man who seems to have been instrumental in getting Hotchkiss Lab for me, isn’t he?”

  “Yes”

  Lucille fixed Hannegan with a cold blue eye. “This decision of yours is not based upon any stupid, sentimental feeling of gratitude?”

  Hannegan shook his head. “I got Tompkins of the Bureau of Standards to give me the name of the best instrument man in the country. He gave me Jeff Benson.”

  “What kind of character is Benson?”

  Hannegan laughed. “A real odd-ball. In fact, a bit blind to his own ability. He sets great store by the very neatly-packaged instruments made in job lots by commercial concerns, and then admits that he must rework them before they are accurate enough to suit him.

  “Furthermore, I’ve inquired of the commercial boys and they claim that his stuff is superior but that they couldn’t duplicate it for mass production because of the cost. They have to cut a comer here and a penny there, you know, while a man making a single instrument can build it the way he wants to and can calibrate it and hand tool every part in it to the last lap of perfection.

  “Also Fm told that a certain percentage of efficiency is lost in making any given instrument more adaptable to a multiplicity of duties, while a single instrument, made by a good engineer for a certain single job, does not have that loss.

  “Anyway,” Hannegan concluded, “I have a hunch that more than a few times our Jeff Benson has bought commercial equipment from some company that had previously purchased Benson’s own designs and prototypes and then reduced them to mass production.”

  Lucille Roman nodded dubiously. “You’re certain he is the best man in the field?”

  “Absolutely certain.”

  “Good. It sort of levels off. He did me a turn and now, because of his excellence, I can repay him. Emotion has no place in business and it is stupid to be drawn by gratitude into a contract that is not the best. But I’m still a bit dubious about Benson.”

  “Why?”

  She looked at the ceiling. ‘Tin no mind reader,” she mused. “And I do not believe in altruism. I wonder just what Jeff Benson’s motives were.”

  “What do you mean? I believe that he was at the auction of Hotchkiss Lab for only one thing—to get a contract for making equipment from the new owner.”

  “And,” said Lucille drily, “he used his little drama to impress an attractive woman of his shining perfection of character, so that she would fall into his eager arms? Or was it a well-staged little drama meant to insinuate himself into Roman Enterprises? In any case, Hannegan, I hate wolves, either the gently ingratiating type, or the long-fanged howlers. Benson must be watched carefully. . . “Well, I’m off for lunch.”

  “Call you at the same place if we need you?”

  Lucille nodded. “It’s Horne’s pet hangout, and he hasn’t been there for a while. But he’ll come back. By the way, how do you like the bait?” She turned like a mannequin and smiled provocatively at him over her shoulder.

  Her charmingly accented curves would have brought a shrill whistle from the marble lips of a saint’s statue.

  CHAPTER IV

  In a half-darkened semicircular room on the top of a mountain in California the glorious spectrum of the sun was spread out for ninety feet. Below the splash of color on the wall was a massive tabulation.

  Each dark band and each bright band was labeled, keyed and cross-indexed so that every element to be found in the sun was represented. There were notations here too, showing certain elements that were missing for diverse reasons from the solar spectrum.

  Visitors, impressed by the vast band of color,and noting the tabulations
, left in sheer wonder that mere man could know so much about his surroundings. It was impressive as well as beautiful and not a few millions of dollars had been pried out of philanthropic funds because their directors had seen this spectacle.

  They hoped that their efforts would result in some addition to the tremendous store of human knowledge, realizing that at this late date, it took—among other things—money and brains to add to the wealth of modem scientific lore. In an earlier age, so much remained unknown that almost any mentally alert man might make a discovery. But in the light of today’s knowledge, seeking out some hitherto unknown factor and exploring it was a savant’s job, and one both difficult and costly in time and money.

  While visitors marveled at the magnificence of man’s grasp of the unknown an elderly scientist squinted alternately at a sheet of paper filled with figures and a six-foot strip of color-film mounted before a viewing light on his desk.

  Then he looked up at the younger man standing in the office and shook his head. “You’re wrong, Harry.”

  “Wrong, Doc? But the lines do show that it is diminishing.”

  Professor Lasson smiled. “Harry, there is more than a single reason why any element might begin to display a diminishing quantity in the solar spectrum.”

  The young man blinked. “I don’t see it,” he said. “It strikes me that when the quantity starts diminishing, it is a sign that the quantity is diminishing.”

  Professor Lasson shook his head again. “To digress, Harry—which way do solar prominences go?”

  “Up, naturally.”

  “Have you ever heard of the fall-in theory?”

  “The what?”

  “Harry, the sun is not a solid, you know. It is a ball of incandescent gas. The theory of the fall-in is that the elements in the upper levels of the sun are completely ionized by pressure and temperature to such a degree that the electrons cannot fall into orbits, which would cause the emission of the characteristic spectral lines.

  “Now follow this—suppose that a layer near the sun became cooler by a few thousand degrees. This would permit the gasses to fall toward the sun since a cooling gas contracts and the gravity of the sun could better work on the contracting gas.

  “Then, in the levels above this phenomena, the pressure is also lowered because the lower levels have dropped into the sun. This permits them to cool also, to a degree where de-ionization may take place.

  “Then the level above that cools and drops, re-creating the pressure below but permitting the upper level again to cool and de-ionize. Get it? As the pressure gradient drops de-ionization takes place. Layer after layer the upper gasses drop in space, in pressure and in temperature—and as they fall the de-ionization seems to rise.

  “This is what is meant by the fall-in theory of solar prominences. Actually nothing is hurled out of the sun but the rise of the band of ionization makes it seem as though something were exploding upward.”

  “I see. But what has this to do with—”

  “Suppose that the temperature of the sun were to rise slightly. Wouldn’t the element whose critical ionization level came at that spot be affected? A bit more nuclear energy and the de-ionization would diminish, which in turn would cause a diminishing of the spectral lines of that element.” “Could be, Doc. But can we be certain?”

  Professor Lasson smiled wearily. “No one can be certain,” he said. “Most of our observations are based upon sheer deductive guesswork, I fear.”

  “But it’s darned well-informed guesswork.”

  “About all we can do is watch it, Harry. This is too little evidence to go on, you know. Let’s start a sigma curve and be certain. After all, since the dawn of mankind the sun has been unchanging, constant, perfect. Its performance as an engine can be computed for billions of years before and after the present.

  “Because this is so, anything that would indicate a change in the constancy of the sun must be viewed with suspicion, watched with care to see that we are right before we proceed. Then—if we have located a strange inconstancy—it can be announced with the proper caution so that a panic can be averted/’

  “This could be the beginning of a nova, Doc/’

  The professor looked glum. “Statistically,” he mused, “it is assumed that each and every star has an excellent probability of becoming a nova at least once in its career.

  “In the case of Sol it may have happened before the dawn of history—may even have been the cause of the planets. Or again, it may happen a billion years after mankind has sung its final song and become but a forgotten impalpable dust”

  “But if it is?” the young physicist asked with some concern.

  “If it is, mankind will certainly die with celestial fanfare instead of ignominiously by his own damned foolishness.”

  Harry Welton shrugged and smiled grimly. “Too bad we have to find out what causes novae the hard way, isn’t it?”

  Professor Lasson laughed. “And a lot of good it would do us anyway, Harry. But let’s not have the earth destroyed by celestial pyrotechnics until we have a bit more evidence under our belt. And for heaven’s sake, keep any such talk buttoned behind your front teeth. One wrong word, and the tabloids will start screaming ‘Doomsday’ headlines.”

  “You bet. But what next?”

  “We’ll commence a few observations on our own. We can begin measuring the gravitational refraction of light as it passes the sun and we can watch Mercury for an increase in perturbations. If Sol is to become instable it will get instable all over.”

  Harry left, his head awhirl. And Professor Lasson returned to his page of figures.

  There was so little to go upon, yet what could one do about measuring the constants of a solar furnace that was ninety-three millions of miles distant and operating at temperatures that could not be sustained on earth?

  Only by very clever guesswork!

  Or, better, by comparing notes with a woman who knew not where her font of inexplicable energy was spawned, and with a man who thought he had good reason to suspect an error in a universal law. Separate people who, each for his own reason, would not divulge the secret to one another.

  A tall iced glass of rare Scotch and soda, a very dry Martini, a thick and succulent filet mignon (well hung) and the best in coffee were sitting happily on the digestive system of Jeff Benson. The fifty-cent cigar and a thimbleful of Benedictine and brandy to sip were finishing off a well-balanced meal to the acme of perfection.

  Benson was beginning to understand that Charles Horne was not the ring-tailed devil of finance that he had seemed on their first meeting.

  Just what Horne was after was .still a mystery to Jeff, and he was beginning to thing that Horne really had no hidden purpose in his invitation.

  Unless, of course, Horne’s recent question as to the nature of Jeff’s business might be such.

  It sounder more as if the financier might be needing some instruments in the near future and was willing to throw some business Jeff’s way.

  So Jeff explained, “I have my own private project that takes up all my spare time. The rest of the time I make custom-built gadgets for laboratories and the like. Stuff that isn’t commercially available mostly—and a bit of free-lance instrument designing for a few of the commercial companies that turn out scientific gear.”

  Horne nodded thoughtfully.

  At a recessed table behind them, unseen so far, Lucille Roman was biding her time. A frown furrowed her brow and she wished that she could know what they were discussing. As Jeff sipped the last of his Benedictine and brandy Lucille arose from her sofa and came toward them in a lithe flowing walk. She passed, apparently unaware of them, following the head waiter to a nearby table, and prepared to sit down. Then she permitted Horne to catch her eye.

  He stood up and smiled.

  Lucille left her table and came over to him, her smile fetching.

  “Mister Horne,” she said in greeting. “And Mister Benson?”

  “Hello, Miss Roman,” said Jeff.
/>   “Please join us?” asked Horne.

  “But you’ve finished.”

  “True. But we’ll gladly forget it and eat again if you’ll join us.”

  Lucille laughed.

  “I just want a sandwich and a cocktail,” she told them both.

  “Then do sit down. Even our company is better than eating alone.”

  “Of course,” she said brightly. “All’s fair in war and business.” She cast a sidelong glance at Jeff. “Still looking for a job?” she asked.

  Tm always on the lookout for a job,” he told her with a smile.

  ‘Tm afraid you have Jeff’s meaning wrong, Miss Roman.”

  “Oh? Then you weren’t looking for a job.”

  Jeff smiled. “Not in that sense,” he said. “You see, I’d done some work for the Hotchkiss outfit before it went under and I was hoping I could make a similar connection with the new owner.”

  “Jeff makes technical instruments,” put in Horne.

  Lucille Roman laughed. “I owe you an apology then, Mister Benson. It is always my impression that any man worth his salt is already employed and kept that way. Now I understand that, instead of being out of work, you were hunting a new account to a rather ambitious business.”

  Jeff nodded and smiled.

  The waiter came and Horne ordered for Lucille. She accepted a cigarette from Jeff and a light from Horne. Then she leaned back in her chair and looked at Horne through lowered lashes.

  “That was almost a neat job, Mister Horne.”

  “I trust you’ve forgiven me.”

  “Of course. For one thing, you did not get away with it, thanks to Mister Benson here. For the second I always appreciate a good try. Bucking competition lets me know the obstacles I may be up against in the future, and prepares me to cope with them when the time comes.”

  “Then we can meet one another without unsheathing our swords, Miss Roman. I’m glad of that.”

  Lucille nodded. “There’s the off-chance we may be able to do business together someday. Besides, I never carry my business dislikes to the social level. To prove that we’ll be friends and use first names. So, until we meet across the business-table, it will be Lucille, Jeff and Charles.”