The Collected Stories

by Earl

  Carmichael, with a hasty glance at Tanya, snapped off the radio to cut off the vigorous language that followed. But Tanya was smiling.

  RAYS OF BLINDNESS

  Only One Man’s Skill Could Save Humanity from Loss of Vision—But That Man Was Sightless!

  LONG, slender fingers—musician’s fingers that gave proof of the sensitive, scholarly mind controlling them—caressed the sleek, smooth outline of an upright cathode tube. Somehow, there was an infinite sadness in the gesture. The train of associations engendered by the exploring fingers gave their owner a clear mental picture of the tube’s intricate insides—its sturdy grid of tantalum, target plate of tungsten, and platinum filaments.

  A mental picture, nothing more. For the man whose sensitive touch went so sadly over the tube was blind!

  Every morning for ten years Thaddeus Harper had come into his laboratory and caressed its apparatuses with that melancholy, aching feeling that seemed to tear his soul out by the roots. Every morning his stroking fingers started memory patterns and he would picture himself moving and working among the instruments, tuning, adjusting, experimenting.

  A certain apparatus always engaged, most of Harper’s attention, in this dream laboratory. It was large, complicated, a maze of coils, tubes and spinning parts. The fiery heart of it always glowed mysteriously, as if it held a great secret. Then, suddenly, there would be a shower of sparkles. A searing, blinding beam would spring forth from the machine, an awful radiation of unleashed fury. Always, in this dream, it had stabbed straight toward him, toward his eyes.

  Thaddeus Harper shuddered and a low wail escaped from his tight lips. Ten years ago it had happened, yet the horror was fresh in his mind. His eyes had been burned out, forever. His career as a scientist was ended. His great researches in the atomic field had been blasted by that eye-searing explosion. For what good was a blind scientist?

  Thaddeus Harper started as he heard the door latch click. His sensitive ears recognized the entering footfalls as those of his young son-in-law, Burt Chandler. Then he heard his cheery greeting.

  “Good morning, Skipper! Always beat me here, don’t you? And you always look fresh as a daisy!”

  But young Burt Chandler’s face did not echo his hearty greeting. It always depressed him to see this old, stoop-shouldered white-haired man fumbling sadly with his helpless hands. Chandler loved him for his kindly soul, and as the father of his wife, but pitied him more.

  Thaddeus Harper turned his wrinkled, prematurely aged face in the direction from where Chandler’s voice had come. His sightless watery eyes seemed to strain to picture the face he had never seen.

  “Burt,” he pleaded in his quavering old voice, “let me help you today. I won’t be in your way.”

  Chandler’s shoulders jerked from the pathos of it, yet it could not be. Old Harper would be in the way. He meant well, but his fumbling fingers would offer no real help. And his mind, though perhaps as keen as ever, had a habit of wandering off at all odd times, in day-dreams that made his efforts futile.

  Trying to frame his lips in gentle remonstrance, Chandler paused and turned to the door. Alicia, his wife—Harper’s daughter—had entered. They exchanged sympathetic glances.

  “No, father,” said the girl softly. “Burt is working on a very delicate experiment. That new book has arrived anyway, Father—Atoms and Subatoms. Shall we go in the garden? I can read it to you.”

  They treated him as if were a child—cajoling, chiding, bribing. One part of Harper’s mind realized that and resented it. But the other part, that which had been strangely affected by the accident of ten years before, yielded to these simple methods of governing.

  Harper, murmuring unintelligibly to himself, made his way toward the door, using the light stick in his hand to warn him of walls and bench corners.

  Alicia’s face reflected the ache in her heart for the weary, stooped figure shuffling toward the door. Then she turned to her husband. Her eyes were moist. Strangely, so were Chandler’s. But both knew it wasn’t what it seemed. They had steeled themselves, in sheer necessity, to keep their pity for the old scientist locked deep.

  “I see it has affected you too!” claimed Alicia, looking into her husband’s eyes. “Burt, what can it be? Is it really a terrible epidemic? Your eyelids are tinged with red, the whites of your eyes are bloodshot, and the pupils contracted. Those are the same symptoms dad had before his eyesight—”

  “Nonsense, dear!” scoffed Chandler. “In my case, it’s overwork—common eyestrain, from working too late at night. I’ve been putting all I’ve got into this research and, by glory”—his voice became enthused—“I’m getting results! My atomic vortex—”

  His tone had become preoccupied and his tall, athletic body moved gracefully toward the tube beside which the old scientist had stood. Atomic energy was his goal, in common with the newest army of young scientists all over the world. He wished to rouse the Titan who lurked in the locked citadel of the atom, and make it do the world’s bidding.

  “But, Burt,” remonstrated Alicia, “the epidemic is spreading. It’s showing in the baby’s eyes too.”

  “Eh?” Chandler turned his head momentarily. “Then you’d better call the doctor.” He bent over the tube, eyes intent.

  OLD Thaddeus Harper, comfortably seated in a lawn chair in the garden of their home, felt contented in the warm, pleasant sunshine that laved his skin. Alicia’s soft, well modulated voice read to him from Atoms and Subatoms, the latest work in atomic physics.

  “Alicia!” exclaimed the old scientist suddenly interrupting her in the middle of a sentence. “What were you talking to Burt about just before we left the laboratory? Some epidemic affecting the—eyes?”

  The girl started. Her father had put a peculiar emphasis on the last word. Naturally, he would. She leaned over and patted his hand soothingly.

  “It’s nothing, dear. Nothing for you to worry about.” She leaned back and resumed her reading.

  Sometime later a deep voice was heard from the garden gate, calling a general greeting. Harper recognized it immediately as the voice of their family physician, big, bluff Dr. Howard. He heard the heavy footsteps crunch in the gravel path up to them. He sensed the doctor’s eyes on him.

  “It’s the baby,” said Alicia, maternal concern in her voice. “It’s eyes are red and inflamed. Dr. Howard, I’m alarmed. This epidemic—”

  A vague, uneasiness stirred in Harper. He listened intently as the physician spoke.

  “Alicia,” he said in fatherly tones, “all medical science is stumped. I’ve had a hundred calls for the same thing this morning. I can’t possibly answer them all. And there really isn’t a thing I can do for your baby. No medicine or treatment seems to have any effect. About all you can do is put the baby in a dark room and wash its eyes out with boric acid solution every hour. In fact, you should do the same for yourself—”

  “Dr. Howard!” Alicia’s voice was sharp. “Your own eyes are red, inflamed!”

  The physician gave a short, harsh laugh, as though he had been unmasked in some negligence. If Harper could have seen, he would have noticed a haggard hopelessness in the man’s face.

  “That gives you some idea of the extent of the disease, and its virulence,” said Dr. Howard. “Even we doctors can’t do a thing for ourselves! Haven’t you read the morning’s paper? Or heard the news on the radio? The epidemic, if such it really is, has spread—”

  His voice broke off abruptly, and old Harper knew, with the wiseness of the blind, that Alicia had stopped him. The girl took her warning finger from her lips.

  “I’ll do as you say, Doctor. But come and see the baby—”

  The old scientist, left alone, struggled up from his chair. His brain felt stirred as it had not been for ten long years. They were trying to keep something from him, something vital and important! It was as though he were a child whose sensitive mind must not be shocked. Harper did not often concern himself with the events of the times; he lived mostly in a dark world o
f past images. Ordinarily he would have dozed off in the sun, dreamy and stoically content with his lot. But now—today.—

  Knowing the way so well that he had little use for his stick he made his way down the garden path of the large back plot, and entered the house by the rear door. He made his way to the living room door and stood rigid listening intently. Alicia was still outside, talking to the doctor. The maid was upstairs, cleaning. Harper went up to the radio, groped for its dials. It occurred to him now that Alicia had contrived to keep all news reports off the radio in the past few days.

  He tuned the dials swiftly. Snatches of music and simpering announcements succeeded finally by the earnest voice of a news commentator. Harper stiffened at what he listened:

  “Latest news flash! The mysterious eye-disease has reached the proportions of a universal epidemic! Since its reports in isolated cases two weeks ago among aged people and very young babies, it has spread with the rapidity of a Middle Age plague. Today, it seems that almost no one has been left untouched. Reports from India, Australia, Africa, Europe, South America—all the world!—indicate that the plague has struck everywhere at once.

  “And most incredible of all, every animal has it too. Dogs, cats, cows, horses—all of them. What incredible, awful scourge is this that has gripped the Earth?

  “The scientific world is aghast. Biologists and medical men of every degree admit their inability to diagnose the malady. It is completely and utterly unknown to science. But they are working indefatigably to solve the riddle. One thing they have found is that the irritation is less at night. Darkness seems to bring temporary relief—”

  The speaker went on after a brief pause, with an ominous timber in his voice.

  “Heretofore, the epidemic has been nothing more than an annoyance, symptomized by a redness and soreness of the eye and eyeball which is not worse than the common disease “red-eye”. But scattered reports have come in last night and this morning that the earliest cases of the new disease have resulted in total blindness!

  “Whether this blindness will be temporary or not is not known, but already the weakened eyes of hundreds of aged people and little babies have become dark and unseeing!””

  Harper snapped off the radio. His ever active mind became furiously active, told him what the announcer had not dared say—the possibility that the strange disease would continue its cycle and strike all the world with blindness! Would there come a cheerless day when all humanity would be blind?

  Thaddeus Harper’s brain reeled. God forbid! He knew the helplessness, the crushing despair of blindness. Those weary, futile years of lightless, lifeless darkness. Man needed his eyes more than of any other of his senses; was only half a man without his eyesight. Thaddeus Harper knew that too well.

  The threat of universal blindness lay over the world! And this was the stupendous thing they had tried to keep from him!

  Something clicked in Thaddeus Harper’s mind. Some inexplicable sequence of thoughts came to a startling conclusion. Like an amnesia victim awakened through a chance phrase or picture, he became suddenly aware under the driving impetus of this amazing, shocking thought. The Thaddeus Harper who left the radio was not the same old, broken scientist who had come to it. His physical blindness remained, but the blindness of the mind had vanished.

  He stumbled in his eagerness to reach the door. Out in the garden, he stepped out under the sun and spread his arms to each side of him. They were bare to the elbow and the hot rays of the sun burned on his skin. He turned his face to the sunlight. Though no slightest ray of light pierced the midnight gloom of his sightless eyes, he could feel the powerful rays beating on them. He stood this way for a minute.

  Then, he turned and made his way to the laboratory, which was housed in a separate brick building to the back, next to the garage. He opened the laboratory door without knocking and stepped in. He breathed deeply of the old familiar smells. It was like a heady wine, making him dizzy.

  Alicia was with her young scientist husband and Harper, hearing her stifled sob, realized that she had been talking to him about the epidemic and the danger to their child.

  Harper made his way between the familiar benches to where they stood. He could feel the heat of the cathode tube with which Chandler had been working.

  “Why, father, what are you doing here?” cried Alicia.

  “I just heard the radio—the news,” he said in a new assured voice so different from his former aimless mutterings. His shoulders were straighten His chin was up and his face alive.

  “You mustn’t agitate yourself, dear. Come—” began Alicia.

  “Listen to me, both of you!” Harper’s voice rang through the laboratory in the tones he had had years before. “You must do one thing immediately—get goggles with lead-glass lenses and wear them constantly in the daytime. You must do this right away, for the sake of your eyesight!”

  “Father, you’re not serious!” Alicia said.

  “Just a minute,” cut in Chandler, as he stared into the old scientist’s face, his eyes suddenly thoughtful. “What do you mean, sir? Why should lead-glass goggles—”

  “The sun! That’s the answer!” shouted Harper. “It’s not a disease that is sweeping the world and bringing blindness. It is the sun! Did you hear them on the radio—relief at night? That was the first clue. Animals have it, that was the second. Third, it struck all over Earth at once.

  “Then, I stood out in the sunlight, felt it beat on my skin. A blind man’s skin, a sense of feeling—my eyes. I could feel the new rays in the sunshine. The new and more powerful sunlight that is impregnated with a certain deadly radiation inimical to the delicate retina of the eye. It is sunlight, I tell you, not disease!”

  The old scientist stopped, gasping for breath.

  “By heaven, I think you’re right!” exploded Chandler. “Oh, what a fool I’ve been not to see it myself. What fools all scientists have been—”

  He turned to Alicia. “Hop in the car and go to the optician’s. Buy a dozen lead-glass spectacles—the goggle kind with large, curving lenses. Hurry!”

  When she had left, the young scientist said, “Sir, let’s get to work. I didn’t realize myself how serious the situation is till Alicia came in and told me what Dr. Howard had said, and showed me the morning’s paper reporting thousands of cases of blindness. We must determine the exact type of harmful radiation, then inform the authorities so they can take steps to save the world’s eyesight. I think a spectroscopic survey of sunlight—”

  “We won’t have to search for the harmful radiation,” interposed Harper quietly. “I know what it is! It is the seventh octave of the electromagnetic scale above visible light. About the point where ultra-violet merges into the X-rays. The sun has suddenly begun to produce large amounts of this radiation, and it is beating against the human eye, the eyes of all living creatures, and they have no protection.”

  “The seventh octave! But how did you know?”

  Harper reached up a hand and touched his useless eyes. “By these,” he said sadly. “It is the same radiation that blinded me! I’ve never spoken to you about it, Burt, but I was working on atomic structure. I struck some vital clues. Perhaps I went further in my work than any present-day scientist;

  “I worked with high temperatures and pressures, comparable to those of the sun. In fact, I had an almost microscopic bit of pseudo-sunlight in my apparatus. It gave off powerful energy—energy of the atom. I began to map out the complete evolution of atomic energy from matter, in successive waves. Eventually, my calculations were able to predict the final stages.

  “I should have been warned,” he sighed. “My figures showed the great burst of energy coming. Perhaps my apparatus was defective. I thought it would hold. There was an explosion and the radiation of the seventh octave produced sprang over to me, into my eyes—”

  Harper made a gesture of resignation that made a lump come up in the younger man’s throat. Then he went on:

  “The shock of the accident did some
thing to my mind, besides ruining my eyes. It put me in a mental fog. I destroyed all my notes, in a sort of insane determination that no one else should suffer the same fate, by the same experiment. There must be other, safer ways to release atomic energy, I told myself, other than by duplicating the fiery furnace of the Sun.

  “The mental fog has lasted for ten years. But today it is lifted. Today I realized that the Sun had done exactly what my laboratory bit of Sun had done—passed through the next phase of its evolution, releasing a burst of new energy.

  “There is an evolution of Suns, just as there is an evolution of life. A star is born from nebular condensation. The tremendous pressures light the atomic spark. A terrific conflagration starts which lasts for billions of years, till the star burns itself out. But in that time it passes through stages of increasing energy to a peak, and then decreasing stages to the final entropy of heat-death.

  “Our Sun is in the increasing stages. It has had several jumps in its energy output. More than a million years ago it had the last one. Today—now—it has had its next, producing this radiation of the seventh octave, which is inundating Earth and burning out eyes never meant to withstand it—as my eyes were burned out.”

  “The seventh octave rays must have some of the penetrative power of X-rays, going through solid material,” mused Chandler. “That accounts for the universal effect on the eyes. It gets to people whether inside buildings or out in the Sun.”

  Harper nodded. “But at the same time it is more in the order of a powerful ultra-violet radiation. Glass, especially lead-glass, in the usual thicknesses, will stop most of it.”

  “Sir, do you realize what it means?” exclaimed Chandler suddenly. “It means the human race will have to wear protective glasses for the future ages, from birth to death! Perhaps in time—hundreds of thousands of years from now—evolution will produce human offspring with eyes adjusted to the new radiation. But for the present, it means glasses for all humanity!”