As people realized the bitter truth of mankind’s helplessness, the observatories lost their popularity, and the scientists could once more pursue their observations and make their calculations without interruption. At the end of the first wave of panic, there were few of the curious who bothered to visit them.
It was about that time that Professor Lasson saw through his window a sleek convertible drive through the hastily constructed gate in the new fence. The armed guard waved it on.
Lucille Roman lifted her shapely form from the red-leather driver’s seat, and walked purposefully through the open door of Lasson’s observatory.
‘‘You are Professor Lasson.” It was not a question.
His brows raised, the elderly scientist nodded.
“And you are the man responsible for all this.” Again the flat statement.
Lasson smiled. “Not I,” he said.
“But you—”
He interrupted. “You’ll have to go to a higher Authority,” he said. “I merely made the initial discovery.”
“That’s what I meant,” she snapped.
Lasson eyed her. Forty years before he would have been favorably impressed, whatever her mode of speech or idea of politeness. At the present time she seemed a lovely youngster, possessed of a prodigious quantity and remarkable quality of pulchritude.
She was also one of the types of women who had so much in the way of material things, beauty and money, that she had never been forced to learn charm and politeness and courtesy.
He snorted. “That isn’t what you said.”
“You know what I meant.”
“Lady, the last time I read a mind, I was so shocked that I gave it up forever.”
“But I’m Lucille Roman.”
“I’m-”
“Don’t be impertinent. I know you.”
“Impertinent?” he laughed. “My dear Miss Roman, you are the one who snapped at me. I’ve always considered it fitting and proper to introduce oneself before starting a discussion. Now let’s forget that you have more millions of dollars than I would care to think about, and start off on an even basis. What can I do for you?”
“I want to know about this nova.”
“You’ve read the papers?”
“Yes. But can you trust them?”
Lasson nodded. “Since a stellar blowup can be construed in no political light, blamed on no particular race, breed, color, creed, religion or previous condition of servitude—and because most newspapers lack the type of trained personnel to accept an account of this nature—they have no one to rewrite it into either gobbledegook or highly-flavored accusations. Most of the news accounts were as given out.”
“Then we are to have a nova, and there is nothing we can do to stop it?”
“This is correct.”
“When?”
“Were none too certain.”
“Why?” asked the woman. “It seems to me that if you know how far this thing is going, you should be able to tell about when it will get there.”
“That is a sage idea. However we do not know yet just how the instability will progress. One school of thought claims that the instability, once started, will increase according to time. Lineally, that is. The other school claims that the instability will increase as the square of the time, somewhat similar to the fall of an object from a height. It goes faster as time progresses.”
“But which—?”
Lasson held up a hand. “There is still a third school of thought which maintains that Sol is a solid and therefore any instability in the three-dimensional object will progress as the cube of the period of time. This has brought forth three widely divergent ideas as to the time-element.”
“I can see that. But how soon will you know?”
“I imagine that in a few weeks we can have the time-progress curves fairly complete.”
“Then it is just a matter of one idea against the other,” said Lucille thoughtfully. “A few weeks at the least.”
“A few weeks at the least. But remember, there is one other problem.”
“Another problem?”
Lasson nodded. “Another complicated problem. You see, Miss Roman, if you treat Sol as a yardstick, for instance, with the instability creeping up it like liquid climbing a thermometer, you may have an idea of what were up against.
“The instability may crawl up the stick so many inches per day. It may crawl up the stick at the rate of the squared series—one, two, four, eight, sixteen et cetera. Or it may crawl up at the cubed series—one, eight, twenty-seven, sixty-four, et cetera.”
“But the other problem is that we don’t know whether the nova will come when half of Sol is instable, whether it may come at one-quarter or when Sol is three-quarters instable. One factor is multiplied by the other. The trouble is that, when we do get the first factor nailed down, we will still never know until it happens just at what percentum of instability the star becomes a nova. By then it will do little good.”
“I see. Then we may have some time yet?”
Lasson nodded. “Frankly, it might be years.”
Lucille Roman thought for a moment. “I’ve heard it said and I’ve seen proof that time and money can accomplish anything. I can supply money. What can we do?”
Lasson looked at Lucille Roman and shook his head. “Do as I have done. Compose yourself and reconcile yourself to death.”
“But I don’t want to die.”
“That’s tough. Most people don’t.”
“But something can be done!”
“Miss Roman, look at this projection on the solar wall. That is an image of Sol; It is one hundred times the diameter of the earth, one million times the volume of the earth. If the earth were dropped into the sun, I doubt that it would make more than a mild splash or a minor sunspot. Can you move the earth?”
“No, I-”
“Remember, moving the earth would do no good. You must do far more than move earth.”
“But something—”
“How can you get at it? My dear young woman, you would fry in your spacecraft before you get within fifty million miles of it.”
“But given money to discover something—”
“Girl, you can’t buy the galaxy!”
“But I can buy brains—and put them to work!” Professor Lasson turned around. He waved his hand broadly. “Miss Roman,” he said, “this laboratory and all of its fittings cost less then ten million dollars. I believe that this is somewhat less than a quarter the value of your assets.
“If at some time a decade ago a couple of dozen of your friends had handed over a slice of their money for pure research, we might know what could be done—if anything. It might have been still better fifty years ago. Your father, for instance, might have done something about it.”
“What?”
“Heaven alone knows what,” snorted Professor Lasson. “We know so very little!”
“But I’ve expended large sums of money for science.” “Science thanks you,” replied Lasson sardonically. “And has thanked you in your own way. For every dollar you expended in the favor of science you have received a comfortable return, haven’t you?”
“Not always.”
“Look, Miss Roman, I happen to know that every dollar you have spent for your so-called science you spent towards some definite end. Did you, at any time, offer to endow Jeff Benson? He is a worker in pure research and this—”
“Benson?” snapped Lucille angrily. “He is a conniving cheat!”
“He is not! I knew Jeff Benson when you were wheedling your father for hundred-dollar playthings. While you were blowing bubbles with a platinum bubble pipe, Jeff Benson was studying the Newton’s Rings the soap film made.”
“He is in cahoots with Charles Horne.”
“Oh blast you and Charles Horne!”
“Benson is sly and—”
“Sly? Just because he wasn’t particularly interested in your type of cocktail crowd you grant him the faculty of being sly—because you
think that Jeff’s disinterest is slyness.”
“I—”
Lasson shook his head in contempt. “He’s probably wondering why you kicked him. That’s how sly he is. But if you want to aid science at this very late date—now that your precious hide has been threatened by something too big to buy off—I suggest that you go to Jeff Benson and make him an offer to do something.”
“I’d rather not,” she replied scornfully.
“Then don’t bother me,” grunted Professor Lasson. “For if you endowed me the first thing I’d do is to hire Jeff Benson!”
“I’ll die first!”
“Could be,” said Lasson quietly. “As for me, well, I’ve lived a full life and I’ve not missed much. Kismet!”
“You wouldn’t help!” blazed Lucille.
“Nope. There are too many fools like you on earth, anyhow!” snapped Lasson. “Now be good enough to take yourself and your money back where they’re appreciated, and let an old man study his charts in peace.”
Lucille Roman left in a vicious temper, chin up, skirts swishing, heels clicking. Seething, she vowed all sorts of dire retribution, and slammed the door of the fifteen-thousand-dollar car, then dropped her head in her arms on the wheel. Huge dry sobs of anger and frustration wracked her.
It was all because her passion for revenge, which in her own world would have set up a scurrying panic among lesser financial royalty, in the present situation, could be no more effective than the tantrum of a spoiled four-year-old, furious with her dolls.
Just how many other savants Lucille later approached is not a matter of record but their answers must have been substantially the same, for three weeks after her rebuff by Professor Lasson, Lucille Roman quietly rang the doorbell of Jeff Bensons laboratory. She went in, brashly apologetic.
“I fear I treated you badly at my cocktail party,” she told him. “I’ve come to apologize.”
“Anybody can make a mistake,” he told her.
“I’m glad you feel that way. Now maybe we can cooperate.”
“Co-operate?”
“I’ve been trying to get a group of scientists together to see if we can’t do something effective about this. But, they all claim that you can’t stop a nova once it’s started.” “They’re correct.”
“But we have time and money. Research—”
Jeff looked at Lucille oddly. “It’s a little late for that,” he told her.
“I’ll give anything!”
“It couldn’t possibly be enough.”
Her voice softened a bit. “I’ve been told here and there that you know as much about this as anybody.”
“That’s highly flattering but untrue. I am merely a mechanic. I work with my hands. What I know about the nova is no more than any other man.”
“I’m not referring particularly to the nova now,” she said, her voice frightened.
“To what, then?”
“Jeff, can you make precision instruments for the navigation of deep space?”
“Easily.”
“Jeff, we know there are planets around Procyon, don’t we?”
“Morganson made that discovery a couple of years ago. But great heavens, woman, you don’t—”
“Jeff, build them! And we’ll both go—together!” Lucille was radiant. Impulsively she leaned forward and put her hand in his, looking into his face, her eyes alight with a Christmas-morning look. The idea of escape—and with Jeff— had been far back in her mind for some time, and now it had rushed to the surface.
But Jeff did not respond. “What a silly, childish notion!”
Lucille half rose, leaning toward Jeff, both her soft hands on his. When she spoke her voice was husky, trembling. “We’ll go,” she said, “to discover a new earth, and a new star. And together, we’ll—”
Jeff snorted. “Not a chance,” he said flatly. “We’d both die while we were still on the way. Stop dreaming, and think of something practical.”
But the momentum of her enthusiasm was too headlong to be stopped then. Carried away, she talked on, as if she were trying to promote a new and daring industrial combine. But when she looked at Jeff’s immobile, disinterested expression, then she stopped, momentarily deflated.
Lucille, however, had been schooled in a tough world where many of her ideas had met with rugged resistance. So her natural optimism died hard.
“Look, Jeff, this can be done!” she persisted. “I can show you that it’s not only practical, but that it’s the only way to survive. Now, all we have to do is plan it out very carefully, and with your knowledge and ability—”
Jeff shook his head, smiling at her naive blindness and ignorance of certain hard, scientific facts.
“In the first place we would be years, a lifetime, on the way to Procyon—or even Alpha Centauri, for that matter— merely about half the distance. There isn’t enough space in your ship to store food enough for that kind of a trip, and your ship isn’t large enough to support a closed cycle of life.
“Fuel is another thing, though I don’t know where your fuel comes from. I doubt that you have enough for a voyage requiring maybe fifty years, maybe more. Navigate deep space, yes. We could see our objective all the way and we could aim for it easily. But to consider seriously a trip of a lifetime’s duration is simply absurd, just from physical factors alone.”
“But we cannot stay here.”
“If a start were feasible,” said Jeff in a hard voice, “two people would need the patience of Job and the love of Rebekah, to spend their lives penned up together in an aluminum tin can, with no sight of solid ground—prisoners of space.
“With you and me it would add up to murder most foul. Frankly, I’d rather be party to a cosmic catastrophe than take a life sentence with a female who wanted me only because I’m the guy who could keep her flawless hide intact.”
“Why you—” This was a woman scorned reacting.
“Forget it, Lucille. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lucille Roman’s body tensed again. All the attraction and warmth for Jeff that had gripped her before were gone, washed away in chill. Now anger came to add tonus to her muscles and she snapped around and darted toward the door, the clicking tattoo of spike heels against the concrete telling of her rage.
CHAPTER XI
As part of his job as science editor for the Chronicle, Jerry Woods flew in from the Coast late in September to call on Jeff. The sun was blazing, but according to the records, the temperature set no new high. It was simply slightly warmer than average for that season and locality. Yet the psychological effect of the nova on the general public was clearly noticeable. Jerry conformed by appearing at Jeff’s laboratory in a thin short-sleeved sports shirt, his jacket under one arm, even though the thermometer indicated that a light topcoat would be comfortable.
“Still at it, I see.”
Jeff looked up from his bench, grinning. “Why not? You keep on playing until the final whistle blows, don’t you? And —if only for my own satisfaction—I may turn up something interesting before long.”
“What, for the love of Pete?”
“Well . . . There’s this sub-space business. I’m still convinced about that.”
“What’ll we do?”
“If there are two universes side by side we might be able to find a nearby stellar system without an impending nova. On the other hand, maybe we might be able to cross deep space to another star in a short time.
“Just because we cannot exceed the speed of light in this universe does not mean it holds true for all universes. Maybe Space-One matter is not subject to the laws of Space-Two matter. We might be able to go to the other end of the galaxy in nothing flat”
“Any results yet?”
“None. But it’s a job to keep my mind off the catastrophe. I’m positive that this fraction of energy must go somewhere. But where?”
“Your missing energy needs a name, Jeff. Let’s call it the Fatal Fraction.”
“Call it anything. I only
wish it didn’t exist!”
“You and a few billion other people. But look, Jeff, do you know anything about the Roman Jet?”
“Not a thing. Well, not exactly that, but practically nothing. Mostly guesswork.”
“You might lose some of your fine scientific objectivity when you read the Universal news release that I just picked up at the Herald. It’s red-hot stuff about the Jet. About Roman, too.”
“You write it?”
“Lord love us, no! I can’t figure out how Universal ever had the nerve to put it on the wires. It’s nothing but opinion, guesswork, rumor, without a single concrete fact or verifiable statement to latch onto. It’s rot—and harmful rot, at that. It should be killed.”
“Is it that bad?”
Woods leaned back against the only clear portion of the bench, near the phone, his eyes worried. “Bad? My friend, if this yam is bought by the sensational press, like your local Blade, then it’s merely a junior nova. Too many excitable people are taken in by their phonied-up photos, hot scandal, gruesome murders and wild-eyed, pseudo-scientific tripe. And if I mistake not, this is their meat. The dependable papers won’t touch it, of course.”
He glanced down at the mimeographed flimsy. “Get a load of this:
“ ‘That the new Roman Jet may be a major factor in wiping out the entire human race is the opinion of many leading scientists. This startling disclosure was made public today at an interview with a nationally known industrialist and financier, who flatly refused to be further identified.
“ ‘Asserting that he had been selected as spokesman for a group of eminent scientists, whom he also refused to name, he declared that the Roman Jet, by its revolutionary use of solar power could have had a causal relationship to the sun’s instability, and therefore to the oncoming destruction of the human family in the nova’s flaming blasts.
“ ‘The exact manner in which the Jet’s power is drawn from the sun, and precisely how it is used, are closely guarded secrets of Roman Enterprises and of the inventor, Louis Phelps, chief physicist and engineering head of the organization. Up to a late hour today, Dr, Phelps could not be reached for comment, and a representative of Roman flatly refused to see reporters. However, fifteen other well-known scientists, queried today by Universal Press, admitted the possibility of the solar-powered Jet having some effect on the suns menacing behavior. They all denied any knowledge of the above-mentioned scientific group, and also refused to amplify their opinion that the Roman Jet could be measurably responsible for the fiery extinction now rushing toward earth. . .”
Fire in the Heavens (1958) Page 9