by Earl
CHAPTER VI
End of the Doom
THE prayer of thanks that arose from millions of hearts must have inundated the Elysian shores of heaven above.
But the God of Irony laughed most over this, for he had seen the grimmest Play in all history enacted with a backdrop of Illusion!
He had watched scientists take heat measurements early in the day and find a barely noticeable increase in the average heat. They had tried to spread the word that. Earth could not be nearer the sun, but to no avail.
By a mad coincidence, that fateful day had been one of the hottest of the year. The imagination of man’s mind had swelled the temperature to unreasoning heights! Seeing is believing—never before had that platitude been demonstrated with more irresistible force!
Observatories in Asia, which continent had first seen the phenomenon, had made triangulation calculations that night with the planets and had found nothing changed from normal. But their message, although faster than the super-sun’s course around Earth, had made no impression, for wasn’t it likely that all the planets, as well as Earth, were falling toward the sun?
Numerous other little things—each sufficient in itself to prove the illusion to the reasoning mind—revealed the cosmic hoax: gravity and tide observations, light pressure tests, the paradoxical exactness of sunrise.
But they had gone unheeded, these prophets of the illusion, for in one detail they had all failed in their message to Earth’s unreasoning multitudes. Not one of them had thought to give a reason for the illusion. Terry Blackwell’s explanation owed its sudden universal acceptance to the fact that it accounted for the illusion, as well as named it such.
Terry Blackwell found himself a world figure by midnight. Saved from further terror, relieved of black, heart-chilling despair, the population demanded a hero of worship for the soothing message of peace. He tried to escape it, but at midnight found himself standing before a microphone on a worldwide hookup.
“What shall I say?” gulped Terry nervously.
Professor Hargreave smiled indulgently. “It doesn’t matter much what you say. You could say boop-boop-a-doop and they would take it for pearly wisdom. But you may as well give the world a resume of your whole theory, just about as you gave it up at Yerkes this morning.”
“But the theory is wild guesswork,” pleaded Terry. “It happens to account for the illusion, by luck, perhaps. I’m not a real scientist at all. I—”
“If you’re not a real scientist, I’d like to meet one,” said Hargreave. He signaled to the commentator. The latter, who had been frantically waving for them to approach the microphone, and had been filling the time with the usual play-up, sighed in relief.
“People of Earth!” he concluded, realizing the tremendousness of the occasion in that phrase, “People of Earth—I give you now—Mr. Terry Blackwell, the young man who this day proved the great illusion!”
“LADIES and gentlemen, it was about three months ago,” Terry began, “that I photographed Saturn with my eight-inch refractor telescope. The print showed a small, faint distortion in one corner. The next night I tried again and found an identical fault in the photograph.
“From then on, with more luck than skill, I succeeded in trailing the almost unnoticeable distortion photographically as it moved across the stars. It was quite invisible by visual observation. I followed it with photography for those three months and unmistakably it grew larger and more pronounced!
“One evening it came abreast of Jupiter, magnified it, and threw it out of line, as well as the immediate field of stars. That indicated that this mysterious enigma was close to us, already between Earth and Jupiter.
“Not having the necessary mathematical skill to plot its course, I had no idea it would eventually come between Earth and sun. But it did, and in doing so, caused the enlargement of the sun we have observed.
“About a week ago I started seriously thinking of an explanation for it. What strange thing, at least the size of the sun, transparent but highly refractive, could be drifting through space? Since it was completely uncatalogued in modern science, I had a clear field in which to speculate. As a result, I’ve worked out a theory for it which later scientific research may modify, but it is this:
“Somewhere and sometime in the cosmos, a dense and dark star like the companion of Sirius, collided with another large star and was knocked out of its normal orbit in the universe, or fused with it to become a nova. This dead star must have been incredibly dense, perhaps half composed of neutronium which weighs sixty million tons to the cubic inch. And its gravitational field must have been immeasureably stronger than any we know. So strong, in fact—”
Terry drew a long breath and continued, for he knew that hundreds of astronomers and other scientists would be listening:
“So strong, in fact, that the warp it produced in space became permanent! Thus, when the dead star itself was knocked away, the ether-strain it had made went on in the old orbit! Like the shell of a nut continuing to exist long after the kernel which grew it has been eaten away by worms.
“The collision itself may have happened untold trillions of years ago, and perhaps in some other galaxy. But the ether-strain pursued its lone course, unaffected by the laws that govern the rest of the universe, and came finally to our galaxy and our Solar System.
“By deduction from its low velocity, it must have entered the Solar System, within the orbit of Pluto, about five years ago. But it would have been impossible to detect it then, for even so bright an object as the sun looks merely like a star from Pluto’s distance. And this ether-strain is absolutely invisible.
“It was not detectable till it had approached quite near—within one-half billion miles—and then only as a faint smudge on a sensitive photographic plate. So it may be said that the ether-strain sneaked up on us like an invisible snake. I count it only as great good luck that I happened to catch it on my plate, since it only took up about one millionth of the total sky area!
“After entering the Solar System, and because its velocity relative to the sun was just a little more than Earth’s orbital velocity, it contrived to hang in between Earth and sun for these many hours. Its huge area is very gradually drawing ahead of the Earth and will in a few hours undoubtedly clear away.
“There is only one thing left to mention and explain: the way it magnified the sun’s image. The effect of such a magnification will be understood if it is compared to a telescope lens with a high refractive index, but a very long focus. Like a giant handglass, this sphere of warped space hung between the direct rays of the sun and Earth, and bent the light rays to a focus for Earthly eyes.
“The ether-strain has the ability to bend light, in accordance with Einstein’s laws, but in a greater degree than ever observed before, because its warp of space is greater than we have ever known. Paradoxically, this warp does not have any gravitational influence, as it should have, for Einstein says the force of gravity is simply a curvature of space. This can be explained by assuming that when space has been abnormally warped, its gravitational effects link into a closed circle, no longer able to exert external influence.
“And so,” concluded Terry, “this extremely startling phenomenon in our skies today has been merely an optical illusion!”
Hargreave had a moment before he received a paper from the announcer. He stepped before the microphone, as Terry backed away.
“The Kioto Observatory in Japan,” he read, “reports that the sun that has just risen over their land is once again normal. The phenomenon lasted exactly twenty-eight hours.”
STRANGE VISION
If the range of the eye could be extended—to include higher vibrations—lower vibrations—in point of wave length
I HAD an unhappy childhood. I was normal in my desires, wanting to play and laugh as all children do, but a heavy cloud shadowed my happiness from the first. Up to the age of six it was vague and not particularly bothersome. but from the day I went to school onward, it increased in its depress
iveness till at the age of thirteen I stood alone in despair—and fearful of the future. But adolescence brought me new courage and I went to high school, determined to defy whatever so distorted my life. Two years passed.
I thought of suicide during those two years, for that nameless thing that had fastened itself to me like a leech never gave me peace. It nearly drove me insane—in fact, at times I thought I had always been insane. Intimate friendships were denied me, for casual friends soon came to notice my—queerness!
I said at thirteen I stood alone. At sixteen I stood more alone—a lost soul, an involuntary hermit. My father, poor simple-minded soul, perceived nothing of my plight, and my mother was long dead. Relatives, after all. are just relatives, and seldom friends in the true sense of the word. So I was alone—and despairing.
To a child, and to a boy, influences that he cannot understand—that his mind cannot analyze—will ruin his life.
And yet, when I think of it. how easily all my troubles could have been solved had one—merely one—person taken enough interest in me to delve into my affliction! A series of questions addressed to me and properly interpreted, could have saved me a vast deal of grief and mental suffering. As it was, I myself solved the problem.
MY THIRD YEAR in high school—that blessed day when I saw the truth, during a physics lecture! I was sixteen then, gloomy-tempered and haunted. My mind, for all of its introspective troubles, was eager and a perfect sponge for knowledge. I sat in the classroom, listening absorbedly to a lecture on light. Old “Doc” Vessy will always be a demigod to me, for it was his words that saved my—sanity, when nothing else could have helped.
“Light,” he was saying, “is but a small portion of the total spectrum of ether vibrations, the portion that we perceive with our eyes. But above the vibrations we sense with our optical apparatus, and below them, in point of wave length, are exactly similar vibrations that our eyes cannot record. Now if we could miraculously extend the range of the eye so as to include these higher and lower vibrations, we would see many new colors and combinations of colors——”
In a flash of understanding, I had the secret I so sorely needed. Careful thinking and simple experiments confirmed my belief.
My friend, my eyes are able to see certain of the ether vibrations known as ultra-violet light!
To me there are five primary colors, instead of three, as to you and all others. How to explain it, to find a reason for it, I don’t know. Even a doctor friend of mine and several others have never been able to account for it.
I smile bitterly now when I think of it. One man, a physiologist, trembled with excitement and said, “Man, you have a divine gift!”
I looked him over scornfully and replied, “So far it has proven a hideous curse.”
And that it has, my friend. Whatever the scientists may say, to have a gift like mine—an especial sense—cuts one off from a normal life, tortures one. You have heard it said, “The man of genius is like a star alone in empty space.” What is genius? A gift. What is this ability of mine? Also a gift. You see the analogy?
And why is it a curse? Because the world I see with my eyes is not the world others see. The increased range of perception I have reveals to me things that shake my soul at times. I see things in people’s faces—do not start—that ordinary eyes do not see. I see hidden motives, desires, thoughts. Oh, it is hard to explain. It seems the brightness of my visual sense reveals to me secrets of that sort, something as the electric light reveals more of the intricate pattern of an etching or engraving than candlelight.
As for colors in my world—— That, originally, was the root of the incubus that overhung my childhood and boyhood. Sights normal to other youngsters held strangeness to me, for I saw with other eyes. At times I would gasp aloud or even cry out in perplexity, and my playmates would again have occasion to believe me “queer.”
One incident of those unhappy days is vivid in my memory, painted in colors and emotions I can describe to no one. My father bought me a fairy book that had numerous colored plates depicting the scenes and characters of the stories. One of them, of a spitting, snarling old witch, turned me pale and brought a low moan to my lips, so that my little companions fled from me in terror. I had seen in that picture far more than the artist had ever thought of portraying. To me it had a cosmic horribleness that chilled my child’s heart, as a nightmare chills.
Perhaps I was born with too much imagination—perhaps that will explain why my secret, and all-unknown, supervisual powers so strongly affected me.
But look, my friend, suppose you were a tender heart of ten or so, and the drawing teacher asked you to paint a blue goose. And suppose you, in all childish confidence, smeared what you thought was blue water color in the outline of a goose. And then picture a prim, suspicious old lady teacher putting a dunce cap on your head and shaming you for “playing such a naughty prank.” Because, you see, it wasn’t blue I used. It was green.
Incidents like that multiplied. Each day I saw shades of colors different to me, and yet all called “red” by others. My eyes knew of a score of colors for which the world had no name and which might come under any temporary classification in my mind. And remember, I was but a child. Lord, if only one person had seen——
BUT those things are dim to me now. The most poignant pains are time-softened. But it can yet bring a dull ache to my heart to remember the fog of bewilderment that enveloped my school days—the parade of people all looking at me suspiciously, angrily, pityingly, indifferently—all thinking I was either utterly stupid or maliciously perverse.
Try to realize how much of life is optical, how much depends on your eyes, how much your visual sense is referred to as the medium of contact with the world. You walk down the street; you think; you see. But what is your thinking? It is mainly memory images, things you’ve seen before. You think in the past, sometimes in the future, and you see in the present. But your thinking is really seeing, by memory, so the extent of optical activity covers most, if not all, of a person’s conscious life.
But you wonder that I could not adjust myself to my aberration, as to a lame leg. I will tell you why adjustment was so hard. I can explain without becoming technical.
Red, yellow and blue are the three primary colors. A combination of red and yellow gives orange, of yellow and blue gives green, and of red and blue gives purple. These colors are all found in the sunlight spectrum. Now, to follow the analogy, the ultra-violet part of the spectrum has four new colors for me, two of them “primaries” or “pure.” All well and good; dealing simply with light beams, I can tell you blue from red, and green from violet. But take the everyday world. There are a thousand—a million—different kinds of paints, blends, rouges, chalks, enamels, each of which differs in its treatment of ultraviolet light. As a result, a series of what you would call “greens” might be separate colors to me!
And therein lay my great trouble. I could not trust my eyes. They seemed to diabolically, maddeningly change from day to day. What stammering excuses I used to devise, all unknowing of my strange gift. How often my immature lips trembled when my classmates jibed and taunted me after drawing class was over!
High-school days were worse, if possible. I had by then become secretive and unclannish. It was just the wrong thing, for if I had opened my heart to some one, that person might have vaguely guessed the truth and investigated. But I feared ridicule, feared rebuke. You can never imagine how miserable I was. Nor can you ever imagine how deliriously happy I felt that glorious day when old Doc Vessy unwittingly explained my affliction.
The change was sudden. A mountain fell from my shoulders; miles of dragging chain fell shattered at my feet; a horde of nightmare incubi bowled over dead. Because I knew the truth. Because it was no longer a malignant demon that hounded my destiny, but simply an easily understandable aberration of my eyesight.
FREED from the terrors of the unknown, but too deeply affected by my childhood to change my secretive nature, I plunged into intellectual acti
vity with soul-absorbing earnestness. Yes, I tried the social whirl of young manhood at times, only to perceive that I was shunned, avoided. Why? Look at my eyes, my friend. Can any one feel comfortable in their presence? Don’t they seem to flash with occult fire, with indefinable knowledge? Don’t feel embarrassed. Remember that I can read faces and see the minds they mirror. The very fact that I speak to you, tell you all this—— You see?
From high school I went to college, financed by my indulgent father. I was an only child. He died before I matriculated, and left me a comfortable sum.
College days—what a compound of the sweet and bitter! Mature thought showed me my inevitable limitations as a normal citizen. Pedantic lore quickened my eager mind. I learned to camouflage my hypersight and cover its manifestations in polite evasion. None ever heard from my lips the secret that had cost me so much before I had come to understand it.
When I left college, I cast my eye, figuratively, over the world, wondering to what activity I should bend effort. A strange idea had been lurking in the back of my mind for a long time. I had always suppressed it with a feeling of guilt. But it grew stronger, especially after I had indulged in civilian life for a while and had seen how life stormed around me.
The idea, plain and simple, was to capitalize on my “gift”—to use for personal gain that faculty I had of seeing behind a face. I had a keen mind, and did not hypocritically deny it to myself, and with that acute mentality I had a godlike tool that opened to me hidden things.
So I became—perhaps you suspect—a psychoanalyst! I set up offices, advertised in the usual way, and in six months created quite a stir. In fact, in six months I was literally hounded from the field by my clients who came to me sad-eyed and downcast, and left me wide-eyed and fearful, certain that I was no man but a necromancer—a devil-prompted wizard.
It is saturninely humorous to me now when I think of it. Those blasé dissipates. those hardened men who forgot they had a conscience, those young and tender broken hearts, and those hordes of misunderstood women—all coming to me and wanting to know what was wrong. And when I told them, when I scratched at their innermost inhibitions and thoughts, they Hared, turned pale, flushed, and cursed me. I was glad when my license was revoked through their indignant efforts. I had already sickened at the things I had come in contact with. I was relearning that my “gift” was more like a “curse.”