by Jerry
Many ideas were advanced and rejected. For the most part they were as foolish as the theories of those who set out in space-ships for Mars, not realizing that, with the break-up of the sun, Mars would be as badly off as earth. A number thought of establishing some sort of a counter-current, but it was pointed out that it was not known whether or not the “destroying flame,” as the religious fanatics had named it, was electrical or not, and that, if it were such, there was not enough electrical power on earth to successfully neutralize it. Another group tried to make out that the dangers were overestimated but without successfully convincing even themselves. The greater part of the group, however, could think of nothing and so they remained deadlocked for two months.
It was the sixteenth of Sol (thirteen-month years had been adopted centuries back) that Dr. Hubbard Granstedt proposed his plan, and the entire convention stood amazed at the bearded old patriarch’s suggestion. For two precious weeks it was fought for and against, but the doctor had his facts and figures so clearly disposed that it was finally adopted. Then all the body went into action, and by that statement it is meant that twenty billion tireless robots started to labor, day and night, to complete the terrific task.
Everything was in readiness by September eleventh and the world was waiting, waiting breathlessly for the result of the test of the forlorn hope of humanity. From points all over the globe huge structures, like the long range guns of a bygone day, were pointed skyward, and a network of some sort of pipes completely checkered the globe.
An anxious world was waiting its time.
THE eighteenth of September was the fatal date. At three-thirty in the afternoon the blue flash streaked across the solar heavens, heedlessly annihilating Venus and Halley’s Comet in its course and struck the sun. There was a huge flash, the like of which had never been seen before, and the sun crashed into hundreds of flaming pieces which flared up in the solar heavens each a little star in itself. Throughout the entire universe there was a jar as the stars readjusted themselves to the loss of their brother and things started to quiet down.
It was the instant the flame had struck, that Dr. Granstedt had thrown the switch which was to save or ruin the world. From the vast network of pipes that lay over the world had arisen huge clouds of gasses that dimmed the explosion of Sol to all human eyes. Slowly, in great billowing clouds, they went upwards, until they seemed to merge into one vast mass that completely surrounded the atmosphere. Then the change took place. The clouds seemed to lose all cloudlike aspect and to take on the appearance of a solid ceiling; there was a singing sound as of metal understrain and then all was quiet. An experimental rocket was projected; up, up it went until it reached the ceiling; then it seemed to strike something solid and in another instant it was falling back to earth, its steel head buckled by the impact of a collision. Dr. Granstedt smiled for the first time in many months; it was as he had hoped and planned; the gases, no longer warmed by the heat of the sun, had solidified and formed a solid casing around our earth and her atmosphere. Terra had retreated within her shell.
To an observer from the outside Terra now had a strange appearance, it was no longer truly round for at intervals huge, spike-like tubes protruded from its coverings, tubes which, an instant later, began to shoot forth streams of fiery gasses into the void. There was a horrid lurch, and the planet started to move!—. Terra was seeking a new master; the world was in search of another sun!—.
It was a long journey through space; the world had become a new and gigantic space-ship, propelled by huge atomic rockets, and carrying its natural atmosphere and heat hermetically sealed within its transparent man-made shell. It was not so hard to reach its new sun, as if in preparation for the catastrophe from time immemorial the Sun had been rushing toward Vega at an inconceivable speed and now the earth under its own power completing the last lap of the trip for it was toward Vega the independent planet was trading.
It took nearly a year to complete the journey but then, as if prearranged, the earth fell into an orbit about the star and took for itself a place where the heat from the second sun would be adapted for human life. Dr. Granstedt had calculated the flight to perfection. It was six of the new length years (1,362 days) before the semi-transparent outer shell was melted off into gaseousness by Vega and when it happened, a strange sight was revealed. There lay the world, still surrounded by its atmosphere and still temperate in climate, but there was some difference. Where were all the mountain peaks that had once risen into the atmosphere, where were the long low plains? Everywhere things seemed different. Where was the land?
All over the surface of the planet was a vast shallow sea, with here and there a tiny island dotting its surface; all the main land was submerged!! Dr. Granstedt’s travel idea had been perfect but he had forgotten one little thing; he had left the moon behind!!!!
IT was a horrible death that the human race had suffered, the uncontrollable water had swept the land clean of life, the very surface of the earth, without the moon’s continual pull had buckled and twisted, throwing masses of lava into the steaming sea. The earth had become a chaos in which no life could have hoped to exist, however hardy it might be. But that is all over now and scientists on one of Vega’s inner planets are still trying to figure out in their reptile heads, for intelligence is not a strictly human feature, what brought the watery planet to join the huge star’s coterie.
* * *
Atwar pushed back his motor chair. “I knew I could do it,” he said or rather his eyes passed on the message, for his race carries on all conversation in that way, not having been equipped with vocal cords, “I always have said that the atom could be exploded and now I’ve proven it. It was all as I expected it to be, except that I can’t understand what made the third electron jump to another atom, but of course that is a minor detail. But come, we must announce our findings and the committee meets in five minutes.”
Whirling his motor chair he glided from the room.
THE END
THE PROPHETIC VOICE
Laurence Manning
After an absence of quite a few months, your favorite author, Laurence Manning, is back with us again with an unusual little short story.
Perhaps the novel feature in this tale is that it leaves an uncertainty in your, mind. It is left for you to decide whether “The Prophetic Voice” was something to be taken seriously or only a hoax.
We have had all kinds of dooms descend upon the Earth—conquerors from the void, floods, earthquakes, subarctic cold, death rays, etc., but here we find something so out of the ordinary that you will recall nothing like it in all of the stories you have read in the past.
We cannot praise too highly any story with Laurence Manning in the “by”-line.
It was about one hundred and fifty years ago that the world, newly thrilled by communications from the future, began to expand its mental horizons. We humans took deeper breaths and eyed the stars speculatively and, to tell the truth, none too reverently. We should soon, perhaps, have conquered the art of space travel and commence the exploration of the universe itself—why not? If time could be conquered, why not all other dimensions? Rocket ships had already explored Mars and Venus—a few had even returned safely. The United States of the World included in one harmonious nation all the races of the world, except for the Hottentots, Esquimeaux, and such other lesser breeds which were kept on reservations as wards of the nation. One language, one government, one scheme of education—all these unities had had their effect. Wealth to some extent was common property and such primitive things as poverty, famine, and want had been banished. Remember that this enviable position had been recently reached—the old ills not yet entirely forgotten. Is it any wonder that a man’s head seemed to tower among the stars? Into the midst of this hopeful research the message from Mount Everest’s Mentelepathic Laboratory came like a thunderbolt and left numb horror in its wake.
It was authentic enough, too. Dr. Baisdik himself signed it and there can be no doubt whatever that it
was actually received by him and his associates. His unknown communicant had first definitely established the correct year by means of star references and historical datings. Then he had grown excited and poured out to all his warning in five vivid minutes. The exact words have been preserved.
“Obviously there must be some way of escape—here I am in existence, descended from you. It is all over and therefore some of you must have escaped. But at the same time there can be no doubt whatsoever that a disaster of some sort will overtake your world within twelve months.
“Somehow the knowledge that you will escape—my ancestors at least—keeps me from feeling too much worried. Yet it is absurd not to take precautions—I must warn you. It must be important. Perhaps this warning I am giving you is the very means by which you are to escape . . . [it was at this point that the message grew more rapid in its telling] . . . Why that’s it, of course! Do you hear me? Do you understand? What I am saying is ordained to save the world!
“The form of the danger? No, I do not know that. Yet my information is horrible enough. Sometime between one and two years in the future (from your present date) there will remain not one human being alive on the planet! That much I know for certain—as to the rest I can only guess. But you are not so far in the past but what deductions may be drawn. There has been no collision between the earth and a comet, for instance, for the geologic 21 scars would remain for us to see today. Moreover, trees and plants grow on the earth even as they do with you—so heat cannot have been the agent which is to wipe out human life. What then? Loss of atmosphere? Hardly likely, for it is present in my age and cannot have been built up quickly. No, there are only two possibilities: First, that some poisonous gas has spread through the atmosphere—or some deadly radiation—sufficient to kill humans but not plants; second—and for this I have strange grounds for suspicion—there may be soon to visit the earth a race from some far distant world—powerful, skilled in sciences, which you cannot resist and which will hunt you through the forests and over the oceans until not one single man or woman remains. This last is what I really suspect!
“You must find some means to escape—one exists very certainly, for how else have the people around me come into being unless they are descended from you? As I see it, you can escape by hiding—a great cave deep underground with the entire peoples of the world gathered into it. You must stay there for years—until all danger is past. I would think perhaps even fifty years is not too long—perhaps a hundred!
“How can you live underground without food? All that is required is bare existence, so that when danger no longer threatens you can ascend to the surface once more and live in sunlight. Suspend your metabolism, of course! . . . How? Surely you know—but perhaps not. It is simple . . .”
And the message ends with the formula of drug and condition necessary—a matter of no immediate interest here. Read over the communication once again and see if you, in the light of our present philosophy of life, would have been stampeded into immediate action. I think not. Most of our race today would be rather inclined to take up posts of observation the better to view this mysterious disaster so glibly promised. But times have changed and in those days it was still considered a crime to commit “what was called “suicide.” It would have been considered “suicide” for them to risk one’s life in such needless curiosity.
For they believed every word of it. There was a major panic, from all accounts, and the racial annals are actually blank for weeks at a time while the clerks in the Division of History were out-of-doors, perhaps eyeing the sky fearfully for signs of danger. Eyewitness accounts are available almost by the million, of course, and no doubt none of my readers but has skimmed through one. The great Blaisdik himself will do for authority as well as another.
“When I landed in Europe,” he writes, “it was to find a world altogether disorganized. Leadership was lacking in the true sense, although of course a dozen wild schemes were mouthed on every street corner by a dozen self-appointed saviors of the race. Research was actually stopped in the laboratories and even some of the automatic factories were left unattended so that supplies ran short occasionally. I remember that it was impossible to obtain sandals or red wine for almost a week, for instance. And transportation facilities were completely topsy-turvy. The finding of the great caverns in the Pyrenees a decade before had always impressed me as a wonderful thing. Nothing could have been more natural, therefore, than for the idea to occur to me that these caverns—two miles below the mountain-tops—might be used to preserve my fellow beings from destruction. I claim no credit for so obvious an idea. To my surprise, the solution I proposed had the effect of instantly stilling the confusion. Instead there was action and an embarrassment of willing hands at my command, so that I was pushed along by popular opinion, rather than a leader showing the way to escape.”
Dr. Blaisdik’s proposal was that the new caves in the Pyrenees be expanded artificially into one great chamber a mile across and a mile in height to an enormous vaulted roof strengthened with re-enforced concrete and supported by massive steel pillars. This roof in turn would be a mile below the rocky surface of the mountains above and protected by this vast thickness of earth, with the entrances well concealed and fortified so that the entire population of the earth could be gathered together, each in a separate cubicle seven feet long and three feet in diameter. Here, having taken the proper dose of the drug necessary, they would lie insensible for fifty or a hundred years as might be decided upon. When they awoke, the danger would have passed and life could again be resumed.
“I shall never forget,” he writes, “the appearance of the caves as the excavating neared completion. I entered by a great tunnel down which twenty people could walk abreast and at its end looked out upon a subterranean world filled with dusty air and lit in fifty thousand directions by miner’s lamps. The lights were constantly shifting and turning, giving the effect of much confused labor, which was heightened by the constant roar of related sounds—hammering, automatic drills, the fall of stone, and the mutter of distant voices blended into one vague murmur. Across the levelled floor rattled trucks and while most of them were removing loose stone from the cave, some were already bringing in the steel girders for the great columns already under construction. A great pile of sheet metal was being accumulated noisily for the human cubicles which would fill the entire cave.”
What had happened cannot be explained psychologically except by reference to mob minds. To convince one man that because of some undefined peril he must burrow under the ground and remain in a state of suspended animation for many years—would be difficult! He would perhaps refuse. He would demand proofs and even then might decline to bother himself. Not so do a million men react. Some nameless spirit takes hold over them and in an instant they are converted—moreover they will instantly insist that another million men agree with them!
Solemnly, in city after city, continent after continent, men and women voted upon the problem and time after time the majority voted to make exodus to the Pyrenees. Whereupon each particular community voted it “suicide” to abstain from accompanying the majority to safety. Committees of public safety were set up to see to it that each resident—man, woman, and child—should accompany the movement of the rest of the populations of earth. Spain became filled with people months before the caves were ready. Steel mills in Newfoundland were shut down and the fires drawn for the last time before all the steel required for the construction had been fabricated! The chemical companies did their part well, and three large vessels berthed in old Cadiz with the entire medical requirements of the earth’s population on board—only to have the crews desert before unloading could be completed! But the time came, and surprisingly soon, when all details had been attended and the call went forth for the great gathering.
Those nearest to hand were, of course, disposed of first. A thousand doctors stood along the wall of the entrance tunnel and gave the first injections as the people passed—old men leaning upon sticks, young
children eyeing the throng with wonder in their eyes (and sometimes fear), babies in their mothers’ arms—along they came at a steady pace and into the cave. Here they were guided in a dozen separate streams which followed up inclined wooden ramps to elevators and were whisked aloft to the topmost tier a mile above the floor. As the upper tier of cubicles was filled, the next one was opened. Fifty thousand physicians and medical assistants stood at the cubicles giving each person the final injection and telling them to crawl into the narrow box which was to be their temporary tomb for so many years to come. It was of course impossible to sit up—one must needs lie down. The feet were inserted first and the head came at the open end. Here (in case of premature awakening) was fixed a vial of stimulant and a light switch. But these arrangements had been studied for months by all as they appeared in the television broadcasts and, moreover, each newcomer had had two injections. He scarcely had time to lay his bead down when unconsciousness fell upon him and the tramp of a thousand feet a few inches from his face faded into a dull, rumbling nothingness.
Twenty such entrance tunnels fed the gathering populace into the caves. Twenty abreast they marched down each—thirty-five thousand an hour twenty times repeated. Each day almost seventeen million were cared for and stored away against the great awakening, for the work was carried on twenty-four hours a day. Yet even at this speed the whole of southwestern Europe was dangerously crowded and a food shortage threatened ruin for a time. Three months elapsed before the last of the gathering had vanished underground and still day by day people came in thousands—rounded up by air patrols or factory units from distant places who had stayed to the last to maintain supplies for others. It was another month before the last patrols were in and the staff of medicos had been reduced to the last few of the directing staff. The great doors, planted with fast growing creepers set in pockets of earth, were shut and even the cracks of sill and jam filled with earth and planted with shrubs and plants which would conceal the last traces.