The Big Eye

by Max Ehrlich

  At Chicago they had been delayed for three hours. Now it was just getting dark as the stratocruiser glided across the Arizona border and began to eat up the last lap to San Diego.

  The radio was on in the lounge cabin, and an announcer was broadcasting from a Chicago origin. Suddenly he was cut off, and an announcer from New York came in, told his listeners that the transmitters were working again from that city. The passengers in the cabin sat up and listened as he gave them the first news fragments from the metropolis:

  ". . . the over-all damage to New York, it can now be re-ported, was surprisingly small. The modern structures in the city stood firm, although a few antiquated wooden buildings collapsed. Casualties, according to early estimates, amounted to some five thousand persons, killed and injured, for the most part, from flying glass.

  "The main damage has been to morale. The vibrations, although doing little damage in a material sense, caused panic among those still left in the city. The Army has declared the city under martial law and has ordered the population evacuated.

  "The rumor spread through the shaken city that the Russians had struck with an atom bomb buried deep underground, that they would strike again. Army authorities deny this, pointing out that an atomic underground explosion would cause far more serious effects. They report, too, that their Radiological Squads have found no sign of deadly radiation. I repeat -- there is no indication of any lethal particles in the air.

  "Seismologists are at a loss to explain the strange vibrations. They point out that New York has always been considered tremor-proof and earthquake-proof, that it stands on solid bedrock, and that it would take a tremendous internal force to cause a fault in the rock.

  "Meanwhile, the entire nation is being swept by the rumor that the Soviet Union has a secret weapon quite different from but more potent than the atom bomb. The rumor states that the Reds have used the weapon before, and used it to create a tremor in New York this morning as one of the final stages in the war of nerves. The Department of Defense has not confirmed or denied this.

  "A sensational story is now going the rounds that America's top-ranking military men, at a special meeting this morning, have confirmed the existence of this secret weapon. This story, entirely without confirmation from any official source, states that the decision has been made to attack the Soviet Union in self-defense, that tremendous pressure is being brought on the President as Commander in Chief to give the signal. The story goes on to say that he is, at the moment, resisting all pressures and awaiting a fuller and more complete seismological report, on the off-chance that the tremor may have been a natural phenomenon.

  "There is even a wilder story, put forth by a former Washington correspondent now at the temporary capital, that the President was about to yield to the advice of his military advisers, when he received a mysterious long-distance phone call from California. According to Frank Landon, the newspaperman responsible, the President was on the phone a half-hour. When he emerged from his office he was deathly pale and changed his point of view abruptly, refusing to order the attack.

  "I repeat, these are only rumors; there is no official confirmation from any responsible quarter."

  The stewardess came in and turned off the radio. "Please go back to your seats and fasten your safety belts," she said. "We'll be coming into San Diego in a few minutes."

  At Lindbergh Field, David immediately went to a phone booth and called Palomar.

  It was Francis who answered. "Dr. Hughes! Where are you, sir?"

  "In San Diego. I've got Miss Kenny with me, Francis."

  "Oh. Dr. Dawson was worried about you, sir. We all were. After hearing what had happened in New York -- well, you understand, Dr. Hughes. Was it very bad?"

  "Bad enough. Tell you more about it later, Francis "

  "They say the Russians -- "

  "Yes, I know," interrupted David impatiently. He wanted to know, he wanted to find out fast. Everything. The phone calls. The urgent order from the Old Man to return. "Francis, what's going on at the observatory?"

  "I don't know. Dr. Hughes." Francis sounded dead tired. "All I know is that I've been on the phone, calling astronomers from all over the world, ever since yesterday evening, asking them to come to Palomar at once."

  David remembered the operator's remote voice the night before, as he had tried to get Francis, calling Rio, Amsterdam. . . .

  "They've been coming in ever since last night and early this morning," continued the steward. "There must be twenty of them in all. Dr. Dawson's been locked in his study with them for hours. They're in there now."

  "Francis, who are they? What are their names?"

  "Well, Dr. Hughes, there's a Professor Ellender of Harvard, Professor Manning of Mount Wilson, Van Vreeden of Leyden, in Holland, Dr. Perez of Rio de Janeiro, Bornson of Stockholm, Professor Varanov of the Pulkovo Observatory in Leningrad, Dr. Graves of Cambridge Observatory in England, Dr. Smythe of the Royal Astronomical Society, and oh -- several others."

  David hung on the phone, spellbound.

  Ellender, Manning, Graves, Van Vreeden, Varanov ...

  These were names, the Greats and the near Greats, the select of the Who's Who of astronomy. Ellender in stellar interiors, Manning in stellar evolution, Van Vreeden in astrophysics, Perez in novae and nebulae, Varanov in comets and meteors, Bornson and Smythe, quantum mechanics.

  These were the giants, almost as big as the Old Man. And now, for some fantastic reason, they had flown to Palomar from all over the world.

  But why? Why?

  The question drummed and throbbed in David's head as Francis continued to talk:

  "It started only about an hour after you left for New York, Dr. Hughes. Dr. Dawson came out of his study and he looked -- well, I've never seen him look that way. He looked pale -- almost wild. For a moment I thought he'd had an attack. He gave me the list of names and told me to switch the astronomers to the private phone in his study after I made the connections. Then he asked for you." The steward's voice shook a little through its weariness. "He was so excited that he'd even forgotten you'd gone to New York. After that I tried to phone you and the wires went dead, and finally this morning we managed to get in touch with you."

  "And you've no idea what the doctor said to these other men, Francis?"

  "No, sir."

  "Francis, listen," said David, watching Carol through the glass door of the phone booth. "If you can get to Dr. Dawson, tell him we're going to have a bite to eat here at the air terminal and then start out for Palomar. I've got my car parked in a garage in Dago. And by the way, have you any room for Miss Kenny?"

  "Yes, sir. It's quite crowded in the colony now, Dr. Hughes, but I think I can arrange it."

  "Thanks, Francis. See you in a couple of hours."

  David hung up and walked out of the booth. Carol saw the stunned expression on his face.

  "David, what is it?"

  He told Carol briefly what was happening at the observatory. But she was unimpressed.

  "With the earth ready to blow up, David, does it really matter what happens up there in the sky?" She smiled at him wanly. "And, darling, can we get something to eat now? I'm famished."

  He relaxed a little over sandwiches and coffee, and they talked of other things, mostly themselves. And Carol asked finally:

  "David, when will we be married?"

  "Tomorrow, if you like. We can come back down to Dago here in the morning and stay at a hotel."

  Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Here comes the bride, darling." She smiled. Then she leaned over the table and kissed him. "And speaking of brides, I'm going to be practically naked. All I've got is the dress I'm wearing, not even a toothbrush. David, I know you're in a hurry, an awful hurry, but when we get your car in San Diego, will you give me a little while, just a few minutes, so that I can buy a few clothes, anything, as long as it fits? Be a darling, say yes."

  He grinned and said yes, and kicked himself mentally for not meaning it.

  He needed th
e time; he begrudged it to her.

  He wanted to get to Palomar -- fast.

  They were well out of San Diego now, speeding through the starlit night along the broad road to Palomar.

  David kept his foot down hard on the accelerator. They turned off Route 101 at Solana Beach, raced past Rancho Sante Fe, Lake Hodges, through Escondido, the southern gateway to Palomar. And then they began the long, tortuous climb up through the San Jacinto range, pointing for the solid hogback of granite that was Palomar itself.

  "So this is what the newspapers call 'The Highway to the Stars,' " said Carol.

  "Yes."

  She sniffed. "It looks like any other road."

  "Naturally. Why shouldn't it?"

  "I don't know," she said. "I expected it to look more -- well, glamorous."

  He smiled. "It will after we get off' the plain here and start to climb."

  The country grew progressively rugged, a vast and silent wilderness of broken hills and canyons, the star-bright sky painting the patches of snow in old silver and playing weird tricks with the shadows deep in the gorges.

  David felt Carol shiver close to him.

  "Cold?" he asked.

  "No." She laughed apologetically. "I guess I'm just a little scared."

  "Why?"

  "Well, in the first place, you're driving awfully fast. And in the second place, it's so wild and lonely up here in the mountains. And the way this road curves around and around the mountain with those deep canyons dropping off on both sides."

  "Don't worry," he reassured her. "I've driven this road so many times, I think I could do it with my eyes shut and one hand tied behind my back."

  They kept climbing for a few minutes before either of them spoke again. Then Carol said thoughtfully:

  "Funny what a difference a little distance makes, David. Back in New York -- and yes, even in San Diego -- there was always that terrible pressure, that awful waiting. But this mountain seems so remote, so far away from everybody and everything. It's another world -- a whole new peaceful world."

  He nodded. He, too, felt the release. What had happened back in New York seemed now an ugly and nightmarish dream. Whatever happened to the cities, he had thought, even if they were blasted clean off the earth, these mountains would still be around.

  But then he remembered the group in the candy store back on Broadway. The talk of neutron radiation, the proprietor, Sam, worrying about his family in the Catskills.

  And he thought, The mountains would still be around, but not for man or any other living thing.

  Carol leaned her head on his shoulder and dozed a little. He drove on, now and then looking up through the Plexiglas roof of his car, up into the cold night sky. The heavens were blazing, as though some mighty hunter had raised his gun in glee and spattered the black backdrop with a million silver buckshot. His practiced, professional eye picked out the buckshot one by one -- cold, dull red Betelgeuse, yellow Capella, familiar Polaris, white-hot and blue-hot Vega and Rigel, and the brightest of them all, Sirius.

  He had seen them often enough, studied them through the months and years, and yet he could never get over the wonder of them. There they were, up there now, swimming around among the deep-sky objects -- the galaxies, open and globular clusters, diffuse and planetary nebulae, and the bright riot of the Milky Way. They had been moving in their courses billions of years ago, and they would go on, thought David. They would go on in their preordained courses, through astronomical and infinite time, long after the earth had ceased to be.

  The Old Man and he had enjoyed many a long talk over early-morning coffee, after the night's work was done and the droning motors closed the dome against the paling sky. On cloudy nights, when the dome stayed up, they played chess in Dr. Dawson's study, and after that, over their brandy, they had often talked all night. And more often than not, the Old Man talked of the sky in non-astronomical terms. David recalled something now that the Old Man had said in one of these sessions.

  "Consider the sky, David," Dr. Dawson had said. "The non-professional, perhaps, has never realized that what he sees overhead on a clear night is the most amazing drama ever offered. The curtain rises for him, on any clear night, to reveal a superb play written by a divine hand, and the layman barely gives it a glance. But to you and me it has always been a wonderful antidote for sanity when we compare it to the agitated and unpredictable little madhouse on which we live and quarrel and come to blows and die. "Yes, David," the Old Man had continued. "You and I are astronomers and, therefore, fortunate. We can always retreat from the turbulence around us to our sanctum sanctorum, the sky. It gives us an exact ruler to measure by, a precise order of ideas. And in the presence of the orderly march of illuminated worlds up there in the void, this cold war, this new threat which currently plagues our fourth-rate planet, seems to be only a local affair of some badly run asylum."

  Carol stirred and lifted her head from his shoulder. "How far is it to Palomar?"

  "Only a little way. We'll be there in a few minutes now."

  Carol pressed her nose against the car window and stared out into the night for a minute. Then she asked: "David, why did they pick this isolated mountain for an observatory, anyway?"

  "For two reason," he answered. "In the first place, the 'seeing' is good."

  "The seeing?"

  He laughed at her blank look. "Astronomical argot. It refers to the degree of unsteadiness of the image in the observing instrument, as it's affected by the atmospheric refraction of light rays. And the atmosphere itself here is clear the year round -- makes for ideal observation. It's comparatively windless. Oh, there are storms during the winter, of course, but they're pretty short -- blow over fast."

  "You said there was another reason why they built it here."

  "Yes. Palomar's almost earthquake-proof."

  "Why?"

  He grinned down at her. "Are you really interested?"

  "Of course I am. If I'm going to marry an astronomer and live up in the observatory colony, I've got to know something about my husband's business! Now then, Doctor, you were saying about earthquakes . . .?"

  "Well, it's a little technical, but you asked for it. You see, darling, a few million years ago the flat top of Palomar was on a level with the plain round it."

  "Well, I must say it's changed since then," she murmured. "It's certainly grown up to be a big boy."

  "And still growing. Geological forces from within have pushed it up until now it's six thousand feet above sea level. This mountain happens to be a solid rock of granite, bounded by two fractures, and it can't be shaken very much by any faulting or quake tremor from within. Any shock spreads through it in a fast-moving wave which has a very small force -- too small to damage seriously the instruments and 'scopes in the dome."

  "Thank you. Doctor," she said gravely.

  He grinned and bowed his head elaborately. And at that moment they plunged out from among the trees and into the open, on the summit of the hill. Carol gave one quick gasp.

  "Palomar," said David.

  The great central dome leaped out of the ground and thrust itself upward with almost breath-taking suddenness. With the great burnished hemisphere reflecting the sky in a silvery sheen, it looked like a half section of some fantastic, inverted dirigible. Behind the central dome, like some infant it had spawned, stood the tiny dome that housed the eighteen-inch Schmidt camera, and distantly, on an outer ridge, glinted the dome of the forty-eight-inch. The powerhouse topped another rise, flanked by a brood of shining water tanks. A cluster of small buildings and houses hugged the slope of the mountain, close to the dome. It was an austere sight, and yet a kind of silvery fantasia, a geometric fairyland.

  "Well, Carol, how do you like it?" There was a note of pride in David's voice.

  She groped for words. "I -- why, it's ahnost fabulous, David -- it takes your breath away! It looks just like one of those pictures you see in nursery books about the Wizard of Oz or Puss in Boots. You know, where the king's castle is ba
lanced on top of a mountain, surrounded by little cottages perched crazily around on the sides, and a winding road going up."

  David grinned. "Come to think of it, it does look like that."

  As he spoke he saw that the dome of the big building was up, and for a moment it didn't register. This was a clear night, the sky nearly perfect. Then suddenly he remembered. The Old Man wasn't running any takes of the sky tonight. He was closeted in his study with the big shots of the world's observatories and discussing . . .

  What?

  With mounting excitement he drove through the gate of the high wire fence and parked the car in the yard. They stepped out into the sharp, sub-zero cold, and once out of the car, the heavens seemed to come down and blaze and crackle about them, so that the stars seemed almost tinselly artificial in their brightness, and Carol almost fancied that she could actually hear them pop around her shoulders.