The Big Eye

by Max Ehrlich

  "Two years and one month," murmured David. "It isn't very long."

  "No. It's precious little time, David, for man to put his house in order after cluttering it with the refuse and the mistakes and the prejudices of centuries. But I suspect that Planet Y will turn out to be a large and efficient broom."

  They sat there silently for a minute, each lost in his own thoughts, listening to the methodical ticking of the clock. Finally David roused himself and asked:

  "When will you break the news, sir?"

  "Tomorrow morning. Better phone the news syndicates and the radio-television people immediately, David. Oh -- and have Hart-schorn make slides of those photoplates so that they can be used in the auditorimn projector. I'll want you to run the slides ofE for the press while I lecture."

  "Yes, sir," said David mechanically. "I'll call them for tomorrow at ten."

  The Old Man nodded. "I'll inform the staff of what's happened at a preliminary meeting and then meet with the other astronomers before we go in."

  David hesitated. "You're sure you want to break this -- this whole thing, Dr. Dawson?"

  "Yes. We decided at the meeting that there was no point in withholding the news. In the first place, we wanted the world to know before it had a chance to blow itself up. In the second place, people would know sooner or later anyway, if they survived themselves. The planet's traveling at tremendous speed, David. And of course it will become visible long before the end comes."

  The Old Man rose, put his hand on David's shoulder. His voice was marvelously gentle.

  "David, I'm an old man. This coming catastrophe may rob me of some of the years of my life -- but not many. It's people like you -- you and Miss Kenny -- who'll be cheated. I -- I don't know what to say to you now. I don't know what any father would say to his son at a time like this." The Old Man hesitated a moment. "I can only say this, try to console you with this -- there's still faith. You must have faith."

  "Faith?" echoed David. He thought of Carol and the future they had looked forward to. His calm suddenly disappeared, and a wave of bitterness took its place, and he began to tremble a little. Faith. The word stuck in his throat. He looked at the Old Man.

  "Faith? Now? Faith in what, sir?"

  "In a miracle," said the Old Man quietly. "Another miracle. A miracle of redemption, David."

  Not much chance of that, David told himself cynically. That planet was on its way, on its regular course up there around the sun, and the earth would be drawn into it, and slam against it on schedule, sometime on Christmas Day, 1962. That was the scientific fact, that was what the Old Man's calculations and charts had said, and they were never wrong, they were as final as doom.

  But now the Old Man seemed helpless, seemed to be groping for another sign in the sky. Now he had no calculations, no charts, no telescope photos, no slide rules to conjure up any future miracle. He was without benefit of these comforting things now; he could only fall back on an intangible they called faith and pass it on to him, David Hughes.

  And another miracle in another two years was a little too much to hope for.

  At the door to the study the Old Man suddenly took David's shoulders and turned him around so that their eyes met.

  "Don't let it get you down, my boy. Face it. Try to live normally. Get married. Have a child."

  Funny, thought David as the door closed; he had been shaken for a moment, but now he felt better. The Old Man's eyes had been compassionate, they had been serene with a strength of their own, and somehow they had poured that strength into David.

  Try to live normally. Get married. Have a child.

  That was what Dr. Dawson had said. But the Old Man was tired, he wasn't thinking.

  If Carol had a child, if she became pregnant almost immediately, it would live hardly more than a year.

  5.

  It was well past midnight when David made the last phone call from his office.

  "Corey talking." The tired voice over the receiver belonged to the managing editor of the World Press in Los Angeles.

  "Mr. Corey, this is David Hughes, Dr. Dawson's assistant here at Palomar Observatory."

  "Yes?"

  "Dr. Dawson has an important announcement to make. Will you have a representative here at ten o'clock tomorrow morning?"

  There was a moment of hesitation at the other end. Then: "What's it all about, Mr. Hughes?"

  "I'm sorry. I can't tell you over the phone."

  Corey's voice became a little querulous. "You don't seem to realize, Mr. Hughes, that L.A. right now is a ghost town and I've only got a skeleton staff on hand. Under ordinary circumstances anything that Dr. Dawson had to say would be big news, and naturally we'd be more than glad to cover it. But with all hell due to break loose at any moment, you understand I couldn't let a man go all the way up to Palomar unless it was a really big story."

  It was all David could do to stop himself from yelling what he knew into the phone. That fool down there in L.A. prattling about how big a story he wanted, thinking in terms of columns and half columns and paragraphs!

  Instead David said quietly, "It's a bigger story than you think, Mr. Corey. So big that some of the world's greatest astronomers have flown in to Palomar here to consult with Dr. Dawson. They'll be at the press conference tomorrow."

  Corey seemed to be somewhat impressed at this. Then he said:

  "Look, Mr. Hughes, if you could just give me an idea of what it's all about over the phone, I could have a rewrite man take it down and give you my solemn promise that we wouldn't break it until you gave us a release with the others."

  "No," said David. "I'm sorry. Your man will have to be here. Dr. Dawson will make his announcement personally."

  "I see." Corey seemed a little bored now, weary. "And who'd you say would be there besides Dr. Dawson?"

  "Well, to name a few, Ellender of Harvard, Bornson of Sweden, Smythe of the Royal Astronomical Society, Van Vreeden of Holland, Varanov of the Pulkovo Observatory in Leningrad "

  "Varanov? The Russian?" Corey's voice leaped suddenly like an electric spark. "He's at Palomar?"

  "Yes."

  David could almost hear Corey's mind clicking over, savoring the news value of this. "How'd he get out of the U.S.S.R. at a time like this? They won't let a sparrow across the Soviet border now."

  "We located him in Mexico City."

  "I see." Corey was eager now. "Do you think he'll talk?"

  "Talk?"

  "Yes. About the threat of war, I mean. About the Soviet point of view. As a Russian scientist, he "

  "I can't say," interrupted David sharply. "But he'll be here at ten o'clock in the morning."

  "All right," said Corey crisply. "We'll have a man up there then. Thank you very much, Mr. Hughes."

  David hung up. He felt a little ill. Corey had been no different from the others. They had all been a little diflScult, the press and radio people alike. Not so long ago, as Corey had implied, the mere announcement that the Old Man would have something to say was enough to send a horde of reporters scurrying up to Palomar.

  Now, what happened in the heavens was small potatoes, compared to what might happen on earth.

  It was almost amusing, thought David, in a macabre sort of way. He had actually been forced to "sell" the greatest story of all time.

  He felt tired, very tired now. He snapped out his hooded desk light and shuflfled out into the darkness of the observatory. It was quiet in the great circular hall, a kind of brooding and unearthly quiet, almost sinister in its overtones. He started for the light switch and then changed his mind. Somehow he didn't feel like facing the glare of lights now.

  He walked noiselessly along the corridor, his feet making no sound on the rubber-inlaid floor. He passed the cafeteria, the library, the auditorium and lecture hall. Then he paused for a moment as he saw a crack of light coming from under a door.

  The Old Man was still up.

  David hesitated, debated whether to knock on the Old Man's door and tell him the press m
eeting was all set for the next morning. Then he decided against it and went through the door and down the stairs to the ground floor. The night light was on in the reception room, dull blue under its shade, but Francis was gone.

  David took his hat and coat from the foyer closet and stepped out into the night.

  The cold wind hit him broadside, making him gasp. He turned up his coat collar and walked out of the yard and onto the road, heading for his room at the Monastery a short distance down the road. It was a moonless night, but the heavens, nevertheless, suffused the entire area with light. He had never seen the constellations blaze so brightly. They tipped the domes of the observatories with silver and similarly etched the various buildings of the mountain colony -- the water-supply works, the electric plant, the cottages down the road.

  David's eye swept the heavens as he walked, glancing momentarily at each illuminated island universe -- and then moving on. Yes, they were really putting on a show tonight -- Hercules, the Kneeler; Pegasus, the Winged Horse; Sagittarius, the Archer; Cassiopeia, the Lady in the Chair; Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs.

  And finally his roving eye caught and held the patch of sky where, plummeting onward, cold and lifeless and remorseless.

  Planet Y was moving on its inexorable and fatal arc, bent on cosmic destruction.

  Two years and one month . . .

  How long was that? Figure it out. Two times fifty-two. One hundred and four weeks. Plus four, more or less.

  One hundred and eight weeks -- seven hundred and fifty-six days.

  You could go on like that. You could break it down into hours, minutes, and even seconds. But it all added up to the same thing.

  Two years and one month. And then -- Merry Christmas.

  How much life could you pack into two years and one month, even by living desperately, with the ticking of the clock loud in your ears? In two years and one month, he, David Hughes, would be thirty-two. A man in his prime. Young enough to enjoy life vigorously, old enough to know how precious it could be.

  And even now, as he walked along Observatory Road, he was walking on borrowed time. It was beginning to slip away from him already. These minutes and seconds here on top of Palomar Mountain were now part of a precious stack of chips.

  And they were beginning to slip away, he was already beginning to lose. And there was no way of winning them back.

  He looked up again, fascinated, at the constellation in which the Old Man had first sighted the killer planet. One night in the not-too-distant future that empty patch would be punctured by a tiny silver pin point. The pin point would get bigger until it became a disk, and then a bigger disk, and then bigger and bigger as it came nearer and nearer, night after night.

  And it would have your name on it, and the precise time and date.

  And that was the agonizing thing about it -- to know exactly when you were going to die. Like the convict in the death house awaiting execution, you would live with your eyes on the clock, cherishing every miserly minute.

  But unlike the condemned man who awaited the chair or the hangman's noose, you could not hope. You could not hope for a pardon, or clemency, or a stay of execution, or even an escape.

  For you there was no hope, no clemency, no escape.

  David Hughes was suddenly afraid -- afraid to be out there in the open, in the sharp night, alone. He had been all right back in the Old Man's office, but now -- now it was beginning to get him. He began to hurry, to walk faster and faster, like a boy hurrying past a graveyard, his feet crunching on the graveled road.

  A kind of panic swept through him as he hurried along, his head up, staring at the sky. Somewhere back in the recesses of his memory he recalled a Mother Goose story, something he had learned as a child in first or second grade:

  One day Henny-Penny was walking in the woods. An acorn fell from a tree and hit her on the head. "My, my," said Henny-Penny, "the sky is falling, and the world is coming to an end. I must go and tell the King."

  Then Henny-Penny met Ducky-Lucky. "Where are you going in such a hurry?" said Ducky-Lucky. "The sky is falling," said Henny-Penny, "I must go and tell the King." "Wait for me" said Ducky-Lucky. "I will go with you and tell the King."

  Then Henny-Penny and Ducky-Lucky met Turkey-Lurkey. "Where are you going in such a hurry?" asked Turkey-Lurkey. "The sky is falling and the world is coming to an end," said Henny-Penny and Ducky-Lucky. "We are going to tell the King. . . ."

  The panic possessed him. It shook him, drove him on, so that now he was half walking, half running past the rows of darkened cottages on each side of the road. He envied the people who slept in them, the telescope mechanics, the steward and the cook, the janitors, the chaufEeur, the handy men, the power-plant and Diesel personnel, the others on the Old Man's stajBE. They and their families slept peacefully now, with nothing on their minds, not even tomorrow.

  But tomorrow would be another day. Then they would know what he knew now. And after that they would never again sleep soundly. . . .

  He came to the small guest cottage where Carol was staying, and abruptly he stopped.

  The cottage was dark, like all the others. Carol was in there, and by now she would be asleep.

  Carol . . .

  He remembered that night back in her apartment, back in New York. He had been afraid then, although it was nothing like the awful Fear that clutched him now. He had held Carol in his arms, close, very close, and the Fear had gone away, it had ceased to possess him. He had lived for the moment then, and the hell with tomorrow.

  He needed Carol again, now. He needed her more than he had then. He needed her more than anything on God's earth. His need of her was like a crying hunger.

  He turned and went up the walk and onto the porch. He knocked on the door, softly at first, and then louder and louder, in an almost frantic tattoo.

  The lights went on inside the cottage. A curtain parted in a window. Then there was a sound of a key turning, and the door opened.

  "David!"

  She was standing there in the doorway, shivering in a thin robe, staring at him.

  He shut the door behind him and without a word swept her into his arms.

  It was two minutes before ten o'clock in the morning.

  The reporters, the radio and television men had already been shown into the small auditorium by Francis, and the buzz of their conversation filled the room. But the Old Man and the other astronomers hadn't come in yet. They were holding a last-minute meeting in the study.

  David stood in the glass-walled projection room of the auditorium, fumbling with his slides, nervously tinkering with the projector. Throwing sky images up there on the screen above the platform was nothing new to him. He had gone through the routine a hundred times, not only for Dr. Dawson and his colleagues, but for the tourists who visited Palomar.

  But now he was jittery, and his hands were all thumbs. He wondered how the Old Man would break the news to this press and radio crowd.

  He wondered how they would take Planet Y.

  How big did printers' type come, how black and bold? How loud could headlines scream? And would there be any of those silly melodramatic affairs you saw in the movies, those rapid-fire conversations between the city editor and the foreman of the pressroom?

  "Stop the presses, Joe. We'll need a first-page replate!"

  "Make it the next edition, Mac. We're already rolling."

  "I said stop the presses!"

  "Okay. Okay. I suppose you got something big, Brisbane!" "Big? Listen, Joe, this is terrific -- the greatest story of all time. The world is coming to an end!"

  At a time like this, thought David, you could think of the damnedest things. You felt a little lightheaded; your mind played tricks on you, with fanciful images. . . .

  He looked at the clock. Five minutes after ten. He wished the Old Man would come in and get it over with. He was getting more of the jitters all the time. And he had a busy day ahead.

  Late in the afternoon Carol and he were driving down to Dago to
get married.

  It was wonderful the way she had taken it, the way she had taken the news early that morning. He had made love to her first, savagely, as though it were his last chance on earth, and she had responded wordlessly, without questions, without asking an explanation.

  She had sensed how much he had needed her, and that was enough.

  Later, when he was spent and the Fear had gone and he was calm again, he had told her. He had given her the whole story, simple and straight, and he had expected hysterics afterward. But there were no hysterics. She was funny, he told himself, she hadn't even cried. She was funny, and wonderful. She had rested there in his arms, saying nothing for a long time. And then finally: