World in Eclipse

by William Dexter

The terrible risk of having the flying Disc destroyed in mid-air was present in all our minds, but at last, with a sweep, we saw it land on the ramps.

  Krill Hvensor and two others rushed towards it and within seconds they had Arabin out, fighting madly.

  To quell his struggles, Krill Hvensor cracked him on the back of the head with his clenched fist, knocking poor Arabin flat out.

  We rushed him over to Primswood, where Dr. Axel Bjornstrom was visiting a patient, and Krill Hvensor stayed by him. The two of them, we learned, had a long, painful struggle bringing Arabin, not back to consciousness, but to his own mind.

  For it had happened as the Virians had predicted. The Vulcanid Intelligences had retained control of part of the Disc's ultra-sensitive radio equipment, and had planted their devilish seed once again in Arabin's brain.

  It was two days before Arabin recovered, and during that time Axel had despaired of pulling him round.

  However, he returned to us, a weak man, but himself, three days later.

  We decided to leave the eighth Disc on the grass at Primswood.

  We had, though, seven of the Discs, and Arabin persuaded the Virians to dismantle a couple of them as completely as they could. It was not only a difficult task, it was an eerie one. For there were devices there that defied description. Tools had to be made to dismantle the more regular equipment, but there were instruments that baffled even the Virians.

  The Discs had been built by the Nagani, and much of their internal structure was of a type completely unknown to man, and little more familiar to the Virians.

  The selective attractors, for instance, were instruments built in more than three dimensions. To Terrestrial minds even that bare announcement is incomprehensible without the instrument before one to demonstrate the fact.

  I can best outline the basic principle of the four-dimensional construction by a reference to stroboscopic movement. The instruments appeared to shimmer, and possessed no definable outline. If one touched the nebulous edge with anything, there was a loud detonation and the article touching the edge was shattered. A similar effect is obtained by regulating the speed of — say — an electric fan to the speed of the oscillations of an alternating current lighting the fan, whose blades then seem to stand still.

  In the case of these Nagani instruments, though, no artificial light was needed to procure the effect. The oscillations of the material in space were phased to the oscillations in time. More than that I cannot make plain. Even those facts were conveyed to me by Krill Hvensor, who assured me that he had no means of translating his own physical theories into Terrestrial speech.

  And it must be mentioned that the Virians, while the servants of the Vulcanids, had never been taught even one fraction of the esoteric mechanical and physical principles used by the Nagani in their work.

  They had therefore little that they could teach us of Nagani methods. The Nagani were completely alien beings, with no common ground to share either with Virians or Terrestrial humans.

  It was as if a dog were to try to explain to a spider the theory of rounding up sheep. Both are living organisms, both function highly efficiently in their own spheres, but neither can communicate with the other. The Nagani had been able to communicate fairly freely with the Virians, but had been quite unable, even if willing, to communicate their sciences and arts.

  However, to return to our great work of storing away the world's goods. We found that some of the Disc's equipment was intelligible to us, but we could think of no use to which we might put it. We realised, too, that the Vulcanids could retain control of material objects, to a certain extent, as well as of our mental processes.

  By the end of the year we had sealed four great stores. One held vehicles and spares; another held fabrics and clothing; two more held food; and we continued to work on a further two — one for raw materials and machinery and tools, and another for the continuing supply of foodstuffs that we intended to maintain.

  As this work began to cease — save for the food stores — we opened up another store chamber as an issuing depot. At first there was little work to be done there in the way of issuing; that would come later; but Arabin intended it to be set in motion at the beginning.

  At first, when we began to fill our stores, there were many working on the task who complained loudly and continuously, but when the great sheds began to be filled, they became enthusiastic. They saw that the work they were doing would make life possible for other generations, and began to take a pride in the work. That is speaking generally, of course. There were always some who objected to work of any sort. These, after a few weeks, were given the opportunity of leaving us and setting up their own colony elsewhere, but after talking among themselves, they decided to fall in line — for the present, at least.

  They were wise, for we had with us among the more devoted workers the pick of the brains. We had, too, the only doctor, and the Virians. These latter never seemed to tire. They were pathetically grateful to us, for some reason, and the various peculiarities of their make-up, both physical and mental, added greatly to the intelligence of our group. They were quicker in grasping the elements of a problem, and infinitely quicker in solving it, and we counted ourselves extremely lucky to number them among us.

  Alatto Skirr and Hani Skirr, the two Virian brothers charged with creating hydraulic power for our use, had worked ceaselessly on the problem. They installed themselves in a small waterside workshop that had once belonged to the Thames River Police, in the shadow of Waterloo Bridge. There they worked night and day. Before the month was out they had illuminated their little workshop with electric light, using the almost imperceptible ebb and flow of the tide to drive a dynamo of their own design. Using orthodox Terrestrial methods, they could no doubt have provided a weak current much more quickly, but they insisted on building their own equipment.

  Then came the night when they hailed us down to Waterloo Bridge ceremoniously just after dark. We stood on the Embankment while they went down into their mysterious little shed, and we wondered what triumph they would have to offer us. If they had brought an electric bulb, lighted, on the end of a cable, we would have been dumb with admiration, for we did not then know how far their experiments had taken them.

  But what they did offer us was a staggering gift, enormous in its implications.

  As we stood there on the curve of the Embankment, we were suddenly dazzled by a host of lights that temporarily blinded us.

  Every light on the riverward side of the Embankment, and every light on the Bridge blazed out suddenly — and stayed alight.

  They had succeeded in getting enough power out of their weird dynamo to light several hundred lamps, and had coupled up their plant to the series of lights we now saw.

  When the excitement had died down, several of us were invited to see the apparatus. There inside the shed they had built up a great bank of delicately curved glass tubing. A system of syphons carried a thin thread-like stream of water through the apparatus, at each stage operating a small dynamo. The dynamos increased in size at each step, until the final one measured perhaps eight inches along its armature.

  These, however, were no normal dynamos, obviously. The Virian knowledge of physics and electro-dynamics was, we realised, far ahead of ours. If Terrestrial mechanics had possessed the secret of this stepping-up process, most of the world's commercial problems would have been solved years before Vogel's unhappy experiment with the thorium bomb. There might even have been no need for such a weapon, for it was apparent that with such a source of power the world need never trouble about coal or other fuel for static power.

  The lights themselves offered something of a problem. We were at first disposed to leave them switched on and enjoy the glorious spectacle every night, but we changed our minds. There was the remote possibility that there might be other humans left alive in other parts of the world, and how could we know whether they would some day see our lights? Any aircraft flying within many miles of the Thames could not fail to see the
solitary string of lights ablaze there in the darkness. If we could be sure that there were other men alive, and that they would be friendly, we would have lit every lamp for miles to try to show our whereabouts. But — and it was an incalculably big "but" — we knew nothing of the sort.

  So it was decided that we would make fuller preparations, both for our future and for our defence, before we sought out any others who might remain alive.

  Not that we had the slightest hopes of any having survived the catastrophe. My researches through the files of the world's newspapers in Fleet Street had assured me as much as anything could that when Vogel's bomb exploded, it took with it all humanity on Earth. I was convinced, but for elementary psychological reasons, the others were not. All the time, at the back of each mind except mine, there hovered the dim thought that Vogel could not have wrought destruction everywhere. . But we rarely spoke of it.

  In those early days, besides the great stores on the Downs, we did much work on the river, too. Moored to the piers at Westminster and Blackfriars we had a veritable fleet of easily manageable craft. The larger shipping down river, too, we had searched, and had endeavoured to secure what vessels we could against wreckage. There was not much we could do, but we did manage to ensure that there would be a clear path down the river if ever we required to use it.

  One phase of our hoarding activities I have not mentioned. It was obvious that if we were to continue to use internal combustion as motive power we should need fuel oil. We dare not, however, store more than a small quantity on the Downs for fear of fire. Although the great warehouses had been built to withstand atomic bombardment, we were so desperately fearful of losing what we had accumulated — and so desperately lonely — that we would not risk fire.

  And so we examined the storage tanks of the refineries down the river, and concluded that the spirit contained therein would, with luck, last for several years. And we had the promise of the Virians that before many years were out they would have adapted our vehicles to use other motive power, for which they would be responsible.

  In our homes — at Parkside and the Primswood farm — we had used Calor gas in its improved form for heating and cooking. In the eleven years since I left the world enormous improvements had been made in the direction of household fuelling, and one of my greatest surprises had been to find domestic equipment now powered by portable cylinders of the gas. Here and there we had found a home where the occupants had preferred the old-fashioned electricity supply, or even coal gas, in their kitchen. But for the most part, London seemed to have become devoted to "fluid gas" as it was called.

  We had generous supplies of this available — after all, we had all there was — so why should we have sought any other means of providing ourselves with heat? Lighting was a different matter. Eventually, though, and after much experiment, we installed the new battery type lamps, and found them

  satisfactory. It was in the matter of industrial power that we could find no substitute for mains electricity, but now that Alatto Skirr and Hani Skirr had shown that this was not beyond their scope we had few fears for the future.

  There may be some who read this who have not lived among Virians enough to know why I should refer to each of them by two names every time.

  The rest will know, of course, that no Virian can bear to be deprived of his family name or his calling name. To their race, there is no more profound disgrace than to be called by a single name. The reason goes back many thousands of years to their racial hero, Han Dralmi, who, tradition says, was cut in half by the Beast Men of Varang Varang, and whose mutilated body was distributed between the two

  worlds. Now, to call a Virian by a single name amounts almost to blasphemy, and is taken as a symbolical insult indicative of the wish to slaughter him as Han Dralmi was slaughtered.

  For the same reason, while we lived among them on Vulcan, we became accustomed to calling each other by two names.

  Before I conclude this short description of our attempts at providing for the future, I must make some mention of Thomas Ludlam's farm colony.

  In the time which I have covered in this chapter there was little opportunity to progress greatly at the farm. Nature, even after a great catastrophe, works slowly, and we did not expect to see many visible results from the farm people for some years.

  So, contemporary with our great storing operations, the people of the farm had done little. Little that would be visible for some time, that is. But they had shown that they were prepared to adapt themselves to their new life, and had worked as hard as we had. Much of their work had been to clear choked fields and to prepare for the sowing season, but this had gone forward well.

  They had even managed to reap a crop of wheat, and had set going an old water mill in the effort to grind it. But their attempts as millers had been unfruitful, and all they had gained with their first crop had been the experience to deal more adequately with the next.

  However, they were optimistic and more than willing. They could see their future clearly, which is more than the rest of us could, often. Dwelling out there by themselves, they had little to fear, for example, from fire. If by some diabolical coincidence fire came to them as it nearly came to us, they could always move over to another farm. There would be little to menace them personally, as there would have been in our case, had the great Regent Street fire been nearer to us.

  So they grew into the thought that there they would stay, without any doubt, and perhaps found other farming colonies in the years to come.

  It was a happy and philosophical existence for them, and, as they were mainly highly intelligent people, they appreciated it as such. The time might come for them and their descendants, as it had for rural communities in the days before, when they would become discontented with their lot. But that time was far ahead in the future.

  And so we all made good headway in our new life during those first few months. I have tried to fill in some of the necessary details to show that we were concerned above all with the preservation of our race for the future, but the full account will never be read. There is an exhaustive record of it in the daily logs kept by Parkside and the farm, and that record will go down to posterity as an example of how mankind brought life for the future to a dead world. Still, there was much that was never written, and more than can ever be told.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The day may come when men find London again, as we did, after a great calamity. We found it, though, after but a few months had passed over its deserted stone wilderness. In the future, men may find it after many years have passed over it in that state.

  As well as carrying out our task of securing provisions and valuable goods in store, we contrived to explore the wilderness that had been the world's finest city. In this, David Cohen, whose knowledge of London was as encyclopedic as a taxi driver's always was, became our valued guide.

  There was more to do than tour empty, dust-piled streets. There was more to do than ravage shops and warehouses for what we needed.

  We had to know what had happened to our London — for several of us were Londoners born and bred — and how mankind had accepted his destruction.

  We spent days in our search, and found many strange things.

  Perhaps the most unnerving was the sight that met us in the House of Commons.

  Arabin and David and myself were out on this particular exploration. We had just left the riverside, after Alatto Skirr and Hani Skirr had been installed in their small workshop, and had driven along the Embankment, It was a drizzling wet day, and our open car — an old-fashioned, vintage Jeep of the 1960's — gave us little or no shelter from the steady rain.

  When we came to Westminster Bridge, we turned off into Parliament Square and looked up,

  automatically, at the great clock on the tower of the Houses of Parliament. It was the same sort of unconscious, unnecessary action that made us toot our horn at corners, and sometimes to look both ways before crossing roads. We always laughed nervously when we did this so
rt of thing, and made a joke of it between ourselves.

  David swung the car into the Palace Yard, and to get out of the wet we alighted and hurried under the cover of the stone archway. The big doors were swinging open in the sharp cold breeze that was blowing off the river, and we went inside.

  By the light of our powerful lamps we saw on the floor a policeman's helmet surmounting the usual pile of clothing and dust that told of a life snuffed out. We were accustomed to the sight, but it always chilled us momentarily.

  We made our way through the corridors until we came to the Commons Chamber. It was the size of the place that told us what it was, and we entered hesitantly.

  Now I have always had — as most journalists had in my day — something of contempt for professional politicians. But the sight that met us in that place made me forget all the little-minded, opportunist politicians I had known in the days gone by.

  There, in the beam of our lamps, was a session of Parliament. There, on the benches, were the Members — some of them even yet bearing human form, though we knew they would crumble to dust when we touched them. There, by the despatch box, was the Prime Minister himself.