“Do you suppose,” broke in Theremon, “that they carried the book through the cycles the way we're planning on handing on the secret of gravitation?"
Sheerin shrugged. “Perhaps, but their exact method is unimportant. They do it, somehow. The point I was getting at was that the book can't help but be a mass of distortion, even if it is based on fact. For instance, do you remember the experiment with the holes in the roof that Faro and Yimot tried—the one that didn't work?"
“Yes."
“You know why it didn't w—” He stopped and rose in alarm, for Aton was approaching, his face a twisted mask of consternation. "What's happened?"
* * * *
Aton drew him aside and Sheerin could feel the fingers on his elbow twitching.
“Not so loud!” Aton's voice was low and tortured. “I've just gotten word from the Hideout on the private line."
Sheerin broke in anxiously. “They are in trouble?"
“Not they.” Aton stressed the pronoun significantly. “They sealed themselves off just a while ago, and they're going to stay buried till day after tomorrow. They're safe. But the city, Sheerin—it's a shambles. You have no idea—” He was having difficulty in speaking.
“Well?” snapped Sheerin impatiently. “What of it? It will get worse. What are you shaking about?” Then, suspiciously, “How do you feel?"
Aton's eyes sparked angrily at the insinuation, and then faded to anxiety once more. “You don't understand. The Cultists are active. They're rousing the people to storm the Observatory—promising them immediate entrance into grace, promising them salvation, promising them anything. What are we to do, Sheerin?"
Sheerin's head bent, and he stared in long abstraction at his toes. He tapped his chin with one knuckle, then looked up and said crisply, “Do? What is there to do? Nothing at all! Do the men know of this?"
“No, of course not!"
“Good! Keep it that way. How long till totality?"
“Not quite an hour."
“There's nothing to do but gamble. It will take time to organize any really formidable mob, and it will take more time to get them out here. We're a good five miles from the city—"
He glared out the window, down the slopes to where the farmed patches gave way to clumps of white houses in the suburbs; down to where the metropolis itself was a blur on the horizon—a mist in the waning blaze of Beta.
He repeated without turning, “It will take time. Keep on working and pray that totality comes first."
Beta was cut in half, the line of division pushing a slight concavity into the still-bright portion of the Sun. It was like a gigantic eyelid shutting slantwise over the light of a world.
The faint clatter of the room in which he stood faded into oblivion, and he sensed only the thick silence of the fields outside. The very insects seemed frightened mute. And things were dim.
He jumped at the voice in his ear. Theremon said, “Is something wrong?"
“Eh? Er—no. Get back to the chair. We're in the way.” They slipped back to their corner, but the psychologist did not speak for a time. He lifted a finger and loosened his collar. He twisted his neck back and forth but found no relief. He looked up suddenly.
“Are you having any difficulty in breathing?"
The newspaperman opened his eyes wide and drew two or three long breaths. “No. Why?"
“I looked out the window too long, I suppose. The dimness got me. Difficulty in breathing is one of the first symptoms of a claustrophobic attack."
Theremon drew another long breath. “Well, it hasn't got me yet. Say, here's another of the fellows."
* * * *
Beenay had interposed his bulk between the light and the pair in the corner, and Sheerin squinted up at him anxiously. “Hello, Beenay."
The astronomer shifted his weight to the other foot and smiled feebly. “You won't mind if I sit down awhile and join in on the talk? My cameras are set, and there's nothing to do till totality.” He paused and eyed the Cultist, who fifteen minutes earlier had drawn a small, skin-bound book from his sleeve and had been poring intently over it every since. “That rat hasn't been making trouble, has he?"
Sheerin shook his head. His shoulders were thrown back and he frowned his concentration as he forced himself to breathe regularly. He said, “Have you had any trouble breathing, Beenay?"
Beenay sniffed the air in his turn. “It doesn't seem stuffy to me."
“A touch of claustrophobia,” explained Sheerin apologetically.
“Oh-h-h! It worked itself differently with me. I get the impression that my eyes are going back on me. Things seem to blur and—well, nothing is clear. And it's cold, too."
“Oh, it's cold, all right. That's no illusion.” Theremon grimaced. “My toes feel as if I've been shipping them cross country in a refrigerating car."
“What we need,” put in Sheerin, “is to keep our minds busy with extraneous affairs. I was telling you a while ago, Theremon, why Faro's experiment with the holes in the roof came to nothing."
“You were just beginning,” replied Theremon. He encircled a knee with both arms and nuzzled his chin against it.
“Well, as I started to say, they were misled by taking the ‘Book of Revelations’ literally. There probably wasn't any sense in attaching any physical significance to the Stars. It might be, you know, that in the presence of total Darkness, the mind finds it absolutely necessary to create light. This illusion of light might be all the Stars there really are."
“In other words,” interposed Theremon, “you mean the Stars are the results of the madness and not one of the causes. Then, what good will Beenay's photographs be?"
“To prove that it is an illusion, maybe; or to prove the opposite, for all I know. Then again—"
But Beenay had drawn his chair closer, and there was an expression of sudden enthusiasm on his face. “Say, I'm glad you two got on to this subject.” His eyes narrowed and he lifted one finger. “I've been thinking about these Stars and I've got a really cute notion. Of course, it's strictly ocean foam, and I'm not trying to advance it seriously, but I think it's interesting. Do you want to hear it?"
He seemed half reluctant, but Sheerin leaned back and said, “Go ahead! I'm listening."
“Well, then, supposing there were other suns in the universe.” He broke off a little bashfully. “I mean suns that are so far away that they're too dim to see. It sounds as if I've been reading some of that fantastic fiction, I suppose."
“Not necessarily. Still, isn't that possibility eliminated by the fact that, according to the Law of Gravitation, they would make themselves evident by their attractive forces?"
“Not if they were far enough off,” rejoined Beenay, “really far off—maybe as much as four light years, or even more.We'd never be able to detect perturbations then, because they'd be too small. Say that there were a lot of suns that far off; a dozen or two, maybe."
Theremon whistled melodiously. “What an idea for a good Sunday supplement article. Two dozen suns in a universe eight light years across. Wow! That would shrink our universe into insignificance. The readers would eat it up."
“Only an idea,” said Beenay with a grin, “but you see the point. During eclipse, these dozen suns would become visible, because there'd be no real sunlight to drown them out. Since they're so far off, they'd appear small, like so many little marbles. Of course, the Cultists talk of millions of Stars, but that's probably exaggeration. There just isn't any place in the universe you could put a million suns unless they touch one another."
Sheerin had listened with gradually increasing interest. “You've hit something there, Beenay. And exaggeration is just exactly what would happen. Our minds, as you probably know, can't grasp directly any number higher than five; above that there is only the concept of ‘many.’ A dozen would become a million just like that. A damn good idea!"
* * * *
“And I've got another cute little notion,” Beenay said. “Have you ever thought what a simple problem gravit
ation would be if only you had a sufficiently simple system? Supposing you had a universe in which there was a planet with only one sun. The planet would travel in a perfect ellipse and the exact nature of the gravitational force would be so evident it could be accepted as an axiom. Astronomers on such a world would start off with gravity probably before they even invented the telescope. Naked-eye observation would be enough."
“But would such a system be dynamically stable?” questioned Sheerin doubtfully.
“Sure! They call it the ‘one-and-one’ case. It's been worked out mathematically, but it's the philosophical implications that interest me."
“It's nice to think about,” admitted Sheerin, “as a pretty abstraction—like a perfect gas or absolute zero."
“Of course,” continued Beenay, “there's the catch that life would be impossible on such a planet. It wouldn't get enough heat and light, and if it rotated there would be total Darkness half of each day. You couldn't expect life—which is totally dependent upon light—to develop under these conditions. Besides—"
Sheerin's chair went over backward as he sprang to his feet in a rude interruption. “Aton's brought out the lights."
Beenay said, “Huh,” turned to stare, and then grinned halfway around his head in open relief.
There were half a dozen foot-long, inch-thick rods cradled in Aton's arms. He glared over them at the assembled staff members.
“Get back to work, all of you. Sheerin, come here and help me!"
Sheerin trotted to the older man's side and, one by one, in utter silence, the two adjusted the rods in makeshift metal holders suspended from the walls.
With the air of one carrying through the most sacred item of a religious ritual, Sheerin scraped a large, clumsy match into sputtering life and passed it to Aton, who carried the flame to the upper end of one of the rods.
It hesitated there a while playing futilely about the tip, until a sudden, crackling flare cast Aton's lined face into yellow highlights. He withdrew the match and a spontaneous cheer rattled the window.
The rod was topped by six inches of wavering flame! Methodically, the other rods were lighted, until six independent fires turned the rear of the room yellow.
The light was dim, dimmer even than the tenuous sunlight. The flames reeled crazily, giving birth to drunken, swaying shadows. The torches smoked devilishly and smelled like a bad day in the kitchen. But they emitted yellow light.
There is something to yellow light—after four hours of somber, dimming Beta. Even Latimer had lifted his eyes from his book and stared in wonder.
Sheerin warmed his hands at the nearest, regardless of the soot that gathered upon them in a fine, gray powder, and muttered ecstatically to himself. “Beautiful! Beautiful! I never realized before what a wonderful color yellow is."
But Theremon regarded the torches suspiciously. He wrinkled his nose at the rancid odor, and said, “What are those things?"
“Wood,” said Sheerin shortly.
“Oh, no, they're not. They aren't burning. The top inch is charred and the flames just keep shooting up out of nothing."
“That's the beauty of it. This is a really efficient artificial-light mechanism. We made a few hundred of them, but most went to the Hideout, of course. You see"—he turned and wiped his blackened hands upon his handkerchief—"you take the pithy core of coarse water reeds, dry them thoroughly and soak them in animal grease. Then you set fire to it and the grease burns, little by little. These torches will burn for almost half an hour without stopping. Ingenious, isn't it? It was developed by one of our own young men at Saro University."
* * * *
After the momentary sensation, the dome had quieted. Latimer had carried his chair directly beneath a torch and continued reading, lips moving in the monotonous recital of invocations to the Stars. Beenay had drifted away to his cameras once more, and Theremon seized the opportunity to add to his notes on the article he was going to write for the Saro City Chronicle the next day—a procedure he had been following for the last two hours in a perfectly methodical, perfectly conscientious and, as he was well aware, perfectly meaningless fashion.
But, as the gleam of amusement in Sheerin's eyes indicated, careful note taking occupied his mind with something other than the fact that the sky was gradually turning a horrible deep purple-red, as if it were one gigantic, freshly peeled beet; and so it fulfilled its purpose.
The air grew, somehow, denser. Dusk, like a palpable entity, entered the room, and the dancing circle of yellow light about the torches etched itself into ever-sharper distinction against the gathering grayness beyond. There was the odor of smoke and the presence of little chuckling sounds that the torches made as they burned; the soft pad of one of the men circling the table at which he worked, on hesitant tiptoes; the occasional indrawn breath of someone trying to retain composure in a world that was retreating into the shadow.
It was Theremon who first heard the extraneous noise. It was a vague, unorganized, impression of sound that would have gone unnoticed but for the dead silence that prevailed within the dome.
The newsman sat upright and replaced his notebook. He held his breath and listened; then, with considerable reluctance, threaded his way between the solarscope and one of Beenay's cameras and stood before the window.
The silence ripped to fragments at his startled shout:
"Sheerin!"
Work stopped! The psychologist was at his side in a moment. Aton joined him. Even Yimot 70, high in his little lean-back seat at the eyepiece of the giant solarscope, paused and looked downward.
Outside, Beta was a mere smouldering splinter, taking one last desperate look at Lagash. The eastern horizon, in the direction of the city, was lost in Darkness, and the road from Saro to the Observatory was a dull-red line bordered on both sides by wooden tracts, the trees of which had somehow lost individuality and merged into a continuous shadowy mass.
But it was the highway itself that held attention, for along it there surged another, and infinitely menacing, shadowy mass.
Aton cried in a cracked voice, “The madmen from the city! They've come!"
“How long to totality?” demanded Sheerin.
“Fifteen minutes, but ... but they'll be here in five."
“Never mind, keep the men working. We'll hold them off. This place is built like a fortress. Aton, keep an eye on our young Cultist just for luck. Theremon, come with me."
Sheerin was out the door, and Theremon was at his heels. The stairs stretched below them in tight, circular sweeps about the central shaft, fading into a dank and dreary grayness.
The first momentum of their rush had carried them fifty feet down, so that the dim, flickering yellow from the open door of the dome had disappeared and both up above and down below the same dusky shadow crushed in upon them.
Sheerin paused, and his pudgy hand clutched at his chest. His eyes bulged and his voice was a dry cough. “I can't ... breathe ... go down ... yourself. Close all doors—"
Theremon took a few downward steps, then turned. “Wait! Can you hold out a minute?” He was panting himself. The air passed in and out his lungs like so much molasses, and there was a little germ of screeching panic in his mind at the thought of making his way into the mysterious Darkness below by himself.
Theremon, after all, was afraid of the dark!
“Stay here,” he said. “I'll be back in a second.” He dashed upward two steps at a time, heart pounding—not altogether from the exertion—tumbled into the dome and snatched a torch from its holder. It was foul smelling, and the smoke smarted his eyes almost blind, but he clutched that torch as if he wanted to kiss it for joy, and its flame stremed backward as he hurtled down the stairs again.
Sheerin opened his eyes and moaned as Theremon bent over him. Theremon shook him roughly. “All right, get a hold on yourself. We've got light."
He held the torch at tiptoe height and, propping the tottering psychologist by an elbow, made his way downward in the middle of the protecting c
ircle of illumination.
The offices on the ground floor still possessed what light there was, and Theremon felt the horror about him relax.
“Here,” he said brusquely, and passed the torch to Sheerin. “You can hear them outside."
And they could. Little scraps of hoarse, wordless shouts.
But Sheerin was right; the Observatory was built like a fortress. Erected in the last century, when the neo-Gavottian style of architecture was at its ugly height, it had been designed for stability and durability, rather than for beauty.
The windows were protected by the grillework of inch-thick iron bars sunk deep into the concrete sills. The walls were solid masonry that an earthquake couldn't have touched, and the main door was a huge oaken slab reinforced with iron at strategic points. Theremon shot the bolts and they slid shut with a dull clang.
At the other end of the corridor, Sheerin cursed weakly. He pointed to the lock of the back door which had been nearly jimmied into uselessness.
“That must be how Latimer got in,” he said.
“Well, don't stand there,” cried Theremon impatiently. “Help drag up the furniture—and keep that torch out of my eyes. The smoke's killing me."
He slammed the heavy table up against the door as he spoke, and in two minutes had built a barricade which made up for what it lacked in beauty and symmetry by the sheer inertia of its massiveness.
Somewhere, dimly, far off, they could hear the battering of naked fists upon the door; and the screams and yells from outside had a sort of half reality.
That mob had set off from Saro City with only two things in mind: the attainment of Cultist salvation by the destruction of the Observatory, and a maddening fear that all but paralyzed them. There was no time to think of ground cars, or of weapons, or of leadership, or even of organization. They made for the Observatory on foot and assaulted it with bare hands.
And now that they were there, the last flash of Beta, the last ruby red drop of flame, flickered feebly over a humanity that had left only stark, universal fear!
Theremon groaned, “Let's get back to the dome!"
Asimov's SF, October-November 2007 Page 17