The Expert Dreamers (1962) Anthology

by Frederik Pohl (ed. )

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  Rea rinsed the plate under the faucet, wiped the emulsion with a piece of cotton, and placed the dripping piece of glass on the viewing screen. “Say, you can see a lot more on this one,” he called out excitedly. “Her neck and arms and part of her dress shows up. Looks like the same kind of clothes the women are wearing now.”

  Kirby came over beside him. “By gosh, you’re right,” he said. “The latest thing.”

  “But that makes it worse,” Rea protested. “If she’s at about the same distance as Andromeda, the light must have left her nearly a million years ago. She ought to have on a tiger skin or rhinoceros hide.”

  Kirby emptied the ashes from his pipe into the tin can thoughtfully placed in the darkroom by the janitor. “Well, Dr. Rea, you’re the one who discovered this Katzenjammer effect. So what should we do about it? Send an announcement telegram to Harvard? Summon the press? Proclaim it to the world?”

  “No, not yet anyhow,” said Rea frowning. “Let’s wait. Keep it to ourselves for a while. Of course, if it keeps on getting brighter the news is bound to come out pretty soon. Some amateur or comet hunter is sure to spot it.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then by that time Slater will be here and he’s sure to have some explanation. I think he’s been working on some new theory about the universe. How it got here and where it’s going.”

  Kirby studied the face on the plate with a critical eye. “If we’ve got to have a woman in the sky, why does she have to be fat and middle-aged? Why couldn’t she be a good-looker—like that dame on the calendar there?”

  The thing that always surprised people about Slater the first time they met him was his astonishing youth. It seemed impossible that anyone so young could know so much. After a while you got used to the idea but right at first it kind of threw you. Before long you got in the habit of deferring to him and letting him take the lead and make the decisions. Not that he ever insisted upon his own ideas or belittled the opinions of others. Far from it. But there was

  a certain serene confidence about everything he did that made him a natural leader.

  Now he looked a trifle puzzled at the two men who entered his office with solemn mien.

  “Well, gentlemen, come in, come in. This is a long anticipated pleasure. Ah, I see you brought the plates with you. Good. I am eager for work. Good solid substantial work.” He straddled the back of his chair with his long legs and sat gazing expectantly at his visitors.

  “How’re things back at Princeton?” Rea asked, laying the box of plates on the desk. “I hear you’ve been giving a course on cosmology at the Institute for Advanced Research.”

  Slater laughed. “I’d hardly call it by such a dignified name as a ‘course.’ It’s all so delightfully informal, you know. One day we have the universe all settled. The next day we have to do it over again.” He shrugged indifferently. “Oh, I discussed Jordan’s cosmology a little. Sometimes I think he really has something. Then again I wonder if it’s anything but numerology.”

  He was thoughtful for a moment then became all animation again. “But I’m bursting with curiosity. What luck did you have with that new fine-grain emulsion? Did you try it on the Coma or Virgo cluster? And how about N.G.C. 185? I’m sure you have something wonderful to show me.”

  Kirby selected a plate from the box and laid it on the viewing screen imbedded in the top of the desk. Without the lights on underneath the photograph was simply a dark square upon the white opal glass. “I’ve been working with Rea on your program,” he explained. “We’ve got some interesting results all right only they’re not exactly what we expected.”

  “But that’s fine,” Slater cried. “An unexpected result is a rare treat.”

  “Yeah,” said Kirby, “only this time it was a little more unexpected than usual.”

  “We might as well be honest and tell him it’s plain crazy,” Rea broke in. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s something that shouldn’t be in the sky at all.”

  Slater looked at them bewildered.

  “What Rea is trying to say,” said Kirby slowly, choosing his words with care, “is that he’s found a woman’s face in the sky. Get it—a woman’s face. Right smack in the middle of the Andromeda Nebula.”

  “But surely you’re joking,” Slater exclaimed. He glanced quickly from one to the other as if hoping to catch them in a secret exchange of information.

  “You can see for yourself,” Kirby told him, switching on the illumination. “I’ll swear that’s just the way it showed up in the developer.”

  Slater seized a magnifying glass and bent over the plate. He studied the face staring up at him from the emulsion for several seconds, then straightened up slowly.

  “This is some ghastly joke,” he declared angrily. “Some horrible ghastly joke. Someone with a perverted sense of humor—”

  Rea seized him by the arm. “I told you it was crazy, didn’t I? I told you there wasn’t any sense to it. But all the same there it is!”

  Slater gave Rea a long searching look. Then he bent over the plate and began examining it again, not only the face but the star images for several degrees around it. When he finally laid the glass aside his eyes were fairly glowing. “But this is wonderful—simply wonderful,” he whispered. He wrapped his arms around his shoulders hugging himself with delight. “Now tell me all about it!” he commanded. “Instantly!”

  They gave him a hasty résumé of events up to date. When they had finished he began pacing up and down the narrow confines of his office, his brow furrowed in thought.

  “First, how many people know about this face?” he asked.

  “So far,” said Kirby, “just us girls. But you understand we can’t keep it quiet forever. We can’t put a sign on it telling the world to keep off, you know.”

  “That’s the unfortunate part, I’m afraid. If we could only keep it as our private property; or at least confine it within the realm of scientific thought.” He fell to studying the image on the plate again. “Curious looking female, isn’t she? Face seems vaguely familiar somehow.”

  “Rea thinks she looks like Mrs. Katzenjammer,” said Kirby.

  “No-o-o,” said Slater judiciously, “I should say she more nearly resembles that woman in the Moon Mullins strip. The one who’s always swatting Uncle Willie over the head.”

  “Why does she have to be so commonplace looking?” Rea complained. “A woman’s face among the stars should be lovely, ethereal, something to dream about.”

  Slater clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s life for you, old man. It’s so seldom we ever attain that complete perfection in our environment that corresponds to ideal beauty. There is always the jarring note. The annoying intrusion. We are watching a sunset and an airplane starts spelling the name of somebody’s soup on the sky. In the middle of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony somebody sneezes. It is a world of sweets and sours.”

  He began pacing the room again. “But here we are philosophizing when we should be hard at work. There are things to do. Questions to which we must find the answer while we still may work in peace—before this ghastly celestial apparition bursts upon the world.”

  He swung on Kirby. “I’m curious to know what keeps this woman shining. Why is she visible? What is her source of illumination? Can you give me a spectrum of her?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Kirby replied. “In fact, she ought to be a fairly easy object compared with some I’ve tried for.” “How soon?”

  “Well, let’s see. The two-prism nebular spectrograph is on at the Cassegrain now. If I can focus it this afternoon, I might be able to get a plate tonight.”

  “What region of the spectrum would that cover?” “From H and K to about H Beta. To get the visual I’d have to change spectrographs.”

  “I’m sure that won’t be necessary. The photographic region should be sufficient for our purposes.”

  He turned to Rea. “Do you have some good directs of the face taken several months apar
t? Plates taken at a small zenith distance suitable for precise measurement?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “I want to measure the position of the face relative to the surrounding stars for aberration. While all modem theories agree that the velocity of light is independent of the velocity of the emitting source, it seems like a longshot well worth taking, considering the slight effort involved. How soon can you get me those plates?”

  “They’re downstairs in my office now.”

  “Splendid. I’d also like to do some photometry on the face. See how fast she’s increasing in brightness. Are your plates calibrated by any chance?”

  “We always calibrate them. It’s routine.”

  “Good. Good. Then we can start measuring at once.” Kirby started for the door. “Well, guess I’d better be getting up on the mountain if I’m going to get that spectrograph focused.” He nodded to Slater. “It’s nice to have seen you again. I’ll let you know as soon as I get anything.” “Please do. Naturally I needn’t impress upon you the importance of this discovery. It’s going to revolutionize all our thinking. Crystallize a lot of thought that heretofore has been mere conjecture.”

  Rea waited until Kirby was down the stairs. “Slater, how do you explain an effect of this kind? It’s beginning to get me down.”

  “How do I explain it?” Slater asked. “Oh, I don’t know. There are probably a dozen ways of accounting for it. As a matter of fact, I think it might be made to fit in rather nicely with some of the cosmological theories that are being advanced by members of the Cambridge group. Have you read that recent paper of theirs in the Monthly Notices on ‘The Physics of Creation’?”

  Rea shook his head.

  “Tremendously stimulating paper. All wrong in my opinion but tremendously stimulating just the same.” He laughed gaily. “But now let us get to work. I fear that framing theories is going to be the least of our worries in the future.”

  Kirby came directly to headquarters as soon as he got down off the mountain. He was still wearing his fur cap and heavy boots when he came tramping into Slater’s office.

  “Well, here you are,” the astronomer said, taking an envelope from his pocket and extracting a glass plate from it about the size of a calling card. Across the center a thin black streak could be discerned about an inch long. “I got several others but this is the best of the lot.”

  Slater regarded it with intense interest. “Have you had a chance to measure it vet? What did you find?”

  “Sure, I’ve had a chance to measure it. If there’d been anything, there to measure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take a look and see. Here—use my glass. You’ll need a pretty high power to show it up.”

  Slater held the plate with the lens almost touching the glass. Through the eyepiece he saw a smooth unbroken dark streak with tiny black lines sticking out on either side of it. After a brief inspection he laid the plate down and gazed blankly at Kirby.

  “A continuous spectrum,” he said, unable to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “Not a trace of a line. Not even H and K or the G band.”

  “Just a blank,” Kirby said, lighting his pipe. “As if I’d taken a spectrum of that electric light filament over there. We can’t tell what she’s made out of or whether she’s coming or going.”

  “By the way, where did you set the slit of the spectrograph?”

  “Right on the end of her nose. That looked like the brightest place on her face so that was where I set it.” He chuckled to himself. “Must be the first time an astronomer’s ever got the spectrum of a woman’s nose.”

  Slater opened a thermos bottle and poured himself a cup of coffee. “Our researches at this end have been singularly unfruitful too. Preliminary measures on the aberrational constant give practically identical values for both stars and face.” He indicated a chart upon which he had been working when Kirby came in. “The most interesting result is our photographic photometry on the relative intensity of the features. She’s brightening up at an amazing rate, roughly as the fourth power of the time as nearly as we can tell. Rea’s measuring on a plate now.”

  The telephone rang as he was about to place another point upon the curve. He reached for the instrument with one hand, holding the cup of coffee with the other. “Yes,” he said, “Slater speaking.”

  “Say, I’m calling from the Times” the voice at the other end said. “We’ve got a story here from an amateur astronomer down at Oceanside. He’s got some kind of a telescope he says he made himself. Well, he claims he’s been seeing a face in the sky for the last couple of nights. Found it by accident while he was showing his friends the Andromeda Nebula.” The reporter continued almost apologetically. “There’s been so many crazy reports like this coming in lately we haven’t paid much attention to them but this fellow sounds fairly sensible. As a cosmologist, would you have any comment to make, Dr. Slater?”

  Slater took a sip of the coffee. “What kind of a face was it?”

  “He says it’s a woman’s face.”

  “Well, that’s a relief from the flying saucers, anyhow. They were beginning to get awfully tiresome I thought.”

  “Yeah, the country’s full of nuts. Well, Dr. Slater, I just thought you might have some explanation to offer—” He broke off abruptly. A moment later he was back again, an excited note in his voice. “Say, we just got a flash on the teletype. From an astronomer at the Helwan Observatory in Europe. Ever hear of it?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of it.”

  “Well, they claim they’ve spotted something, too. Only they don’t call it a woman’s face. They just say it’s a ‘remarkable object.’ ”

  “Conservative, eh? Well, that’s very interesting indeed. I’ll try to remember to take a look at Andromeda tonight.”

  “Listen, Dr. Slater, you’re one of the most eminent cosmologists in the country. Are you sure you don’t have some explanation about this thing?”

  “Quite sure!” said Slater emphatically. He hung up.

  Kirby regarded him quizzically. “Newspaper man, huh?”

  Slater nodded. “It was bound to come out eventually. We might as well face it now as later. No pun intended either.”

  He was pouring himself another cup of coffee when Rea came in the door waving a telegram. “Well, the whole thing’s out. A half a dozen reports have come in to Harvard already.”

  He slapped the telegram down on the desk disgustedly. “If it’d been anywhere else but Andromeda, we could have kept it under cover indefinitely. But those amateurs are always testing their telescopes on it. When people get their first look at that face tonight all hell’s going to break loose.”

  “Did you say tonight?” Kirby demanded.

  “I certainly did,” Rea said. He reached across the desk and placed a point on the sheet of graph paper. “There. That’s the result of my last measure. The curve is fairly easy to extrapolate. You can see where she’ll be tonight— almost as bright as the full moon.”

  Kirby groaned. “I’m getting out of town.”

  “Do you know what this means?” Rea said. “It means everybody is going to be after us for an explanation. And it had better be a good one, too.”

  The telephone rang. Nobody moved. It continued to ring, a steady insistent jingle. Slowly Slater leaned across the desk and lifted the instrument.

  “Get any sleep last night?”

  Slater laid aside the newspaper he had been reading when Rea came in. “Not much,” he admitted, smiling wearily. “People kept calling up all evening. When I took the telephone off the hook they started pounding on the door. Sounded as if there was a whole regiment on the front lawn. While my landlady was getting the police I made a quick exit out the back way. Spent the rest of the night in a moving picture theater.” He reached for a cigarette. “An all western program. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “The worst part,” Rea complained, “is that because we’re astronomers people seem to think we’re responsible for wh
at goes on in the sky. You’d think they’d have better sense.” Slater gave him an indulgent smile. “By the way, how did the face look last night? There’s too much light in my neighborhood to see.”

  “You’re lucky,” Rea told him. “People were standing on all the streets as if they were hypnotized. Just standing there by the hour gazing at it. Waiting for it to do something. That’s the worst part about it. The thing wouldn’t be so bad if there was any life in it. If it wouldn’t keep looking out at you with that fatuous placid expression!” He shuddered.

  Slater sighed and returned to the newspaper. “I see they’re predicting the end of the world now. It’s scheduled to hit here Monday at nine in the evening.”

  “Who says so?”

  Slater scanned the type under the big black headlines. “It doesn’t say definitely. Just a rumor, I guess.”

  “You don’t think there could be anything to it then?”

  “I’m reserving opinion until I get a report from Kirby. He was going to try to photograph Andromeda again last night. When I hear from him we may have something definite to go on. What’s that?” he said, glancing toward the door. “Sounds as if we had company coming.”

  Rea poked his head around the side of the door. “We’re in for it now. There’s a whole delegation headed this way.”

  “Relax,” said Slater, lighting a cigarette. “To tell the truth I’m really enjoying all this immensely. If the world’s coming to an end, we might as well get all the fun out of it we can.”

  The little man at the head of the procession reminded you of a badly bedraggled rooster. He had a thin scrawny neck with a prominent Adam’s apple that jerked up and down with a convulsive motion. His watery blue eyes had a bewildered expression above his long walrus mustache. He stood in the doorway regarding the two men uncertainly.

  “Which one of you gentlemen is Dr. Slater, the noted cosmologist?” he demanded.