It was Valcine! She was running back toward the globe just as it started to move down the slope. What the devil was she doing? The flaring of the rocket exhaust might quite easily melt the ice columns and bring down tons of ice and rock upon her.
It was too late now to stop. The globe was hurtling for the barrier. I wasn’t even looking at it. I could see Valcine had stopped now and was waving.
Then in a tumult of endless thunders the thing happened. Ice, rocks, mineral ores—the whole lot crumbled in behind the fast moving globe and blotted her out of sight in chaos. At the same moment I was hurled back in my chair as I smashed right through the ice wall and went soaring away against the merciless Jovian pull, battling with the tempest.
Up and up. I hardly realized what I was doing. As I plowed through ammonia fog with laboring heart I pieced together odd bits. I remembered Valcine’s reference to her conscience. I remembered too that she had deliberately walked back into the danger area in the ice-hole—
Air enough for one—and she had wished it to be me!
Dully I stared in front of me. To the end of my days I shall remember a lone figure—an infinitely courageous figure—waving a last goodbye before the obliterating thunder of an avalanche.
WORLD BENEATH ICE
CHAPTER I
The Coming of Disaster
New York felt the initial tremor in the mid evening of January 6, 1990. It passed through the busy metropolis as a slight, creeping shudder: for a fraction of a second everything was a thirty-second of an inch out of true, then immediately righted itself again. Thousands failed to notice it and those who did had not put it down to a temblor but to a physical disorder that had briefly thrown them out of key with their surroundings.
But the instruments at the Institute of Science were coldly impartial in their findings. There had definitely been an earth temblor across the whole American continent at 21 hours 14 minutes Eastern Standard Time—the period being registered from midnight to midnight. The curious thing was that the tremor was not one in the usually understood sense of the word, nor was there any traceable epicenter. Scientists looked at one another in baffled wonder, checked their seismographs again, then waited for reports to come in from their stations in various parts of the world.
An hour later they came through—and as they arrived it became perfectly obvious that not only America but all the world had experienced a temblor at almost the same time. And again there was the absence of a recognizable epicenter, presumably because the occurrence had been simultaneously worldwide.
To the scientists the matter was one of profound interest, but to the world in general it meant nothing. The temblor had caused but little harm anyhow. Hardly a brick had been dislodged. Broken crockery seemed to be the only mishap, and that was relegated to the mysterious regions of domesticity…So the people of the world in general and America in particular went on their way undisturbed.
Then, a week afterwards, the temblor came again! This time it was more violent. Several poorly constructed products of cheap labor in New York fell down entirely. A vast apartment block in the process of construction buckled up in its entirety and killed two hundred workmen outright. In Britain and Europe, too, the effect had been unusually severe.
That started people noticing their newspapers and listening to their radio-television reports. With a typical sensationalism the papers carried a unanimous headline—
THE TEMBLOR STRIKES AGAIN!
Strange how editors and reporters got into the habit of regarding the thing from a human aspect. They plugged it for all it was worth, traced vague histories of past earthquakes with a certain pitiful fervidness. Scientists stood up before telescreens and spoke in deep, learned voices on the hundred and one causes of an earthquake. But it was increasingly plain that all of them were hedging, did not really know what they were grappling with.
And the one man who could have explained the thing from A to Z remained silent, determined to have every fact before he published his opinions to a much bewildered world.
The one man was Dr. Royston Shaw, with enough degrees after his name to fill half a column of type in Who’s Who in Science. Coldly eschewing all the benefits scientific bodies would have thrust upon him, he had retired at 50 to study out certain angles in science that still baffled his relentlessly analytical mind.
With a fortune at his disposal, a quiet home just clear of the busy whirl and din of New York City, a daughter of 25 whose heart was also given over to things scientific, and an understanding wife whose only vice was the rearing of goldfish in numberless bowls, he had little to do but pursue his sole interest in life. And pursue he did, to the virtual exclusion of all else.
Ann Shaw was the first to notice her father’s sudden increase in endeavor at the arrival of the first earth temblor—but she could get little out of him as he sat like a gnome before his desk in the laboratory, gold rimmed glasses perched on his beaky nose, one hand incessantly clawing at the skimpy gray hair falling over his high forehead. With his free hand he made innumerable notes and drawings on a thick pad; then he would vanish into his observatory for hours at a stretch and come back to make more notes, or meditate.
Ann gave it up at last, she knew he would come out with the whole story when he was ready. Besides, there was nothing for her to do while he was in one of these moods; so, being a perfectly normal girl even if she was a brilliant scientist, Ann took herself off to the nearby city to catch up on some much needed shopping.
She was in the heart of the city when the third temblor came. In fact she was stepping out of a dress shop when a growling roar smote on her ears. The next moment her feet were shaken from under her and she went her length in the gutter on top of her parcels. For a few seconds the ground heaved horribly to the accompaniment of distant concussions and splintering glass. Then the world was still again.
Dazed, she started to get to her feet, found a strong hand on her arm assisting her. She glanced up in surprise to find a man of massive proportions in a big fawn overcoat and soft hat regarding her in concern.
“O.K.?” he asked, smiling, picking up her parcels.
“Yes—yes, thanks.” She brushed the dirt from her clothes with an impatient hand. “I—I guess I made an exhibition of myself.”
“So did the others,” he said quietly, and nodded along the sidewalk to the men and women picking themselves up. Police cars were already screaming down the thoroughfare answering emergency calls. The dress shop window was smashed and mixed with costly gowns which had been slashed to ribbons.
Ann rearranged her parcels carefully, taking a sly look at her acquaintance as she did so. He was younger than she had thought—perhaps in the early thirties. Blond too—handsomely blond. Ripples of fair hair showed at the side of his hat. His face was fresh complexioned, very strongly moulded, with a projecting chin, firm lips and straight nose. Even his eyes were arresting—of a bright blue usually associated with young children and china dolls.
Not that he was idle as he helped with the parcels. He had already taken account of Ann’s trim, shapely figure, black hair, and level gray eyes.
“That’s the third quake we’ve had now, isn’t it?” Ann asked rather breathlessly, becoming aware of the mutual scrutiny when the parcels were no longer an excuse.
“Yeah…” He still did not take his blue eyes off her. Then he suddenly grinned with the whitest of teeth. “I’m Radford Blake of the Star,” he volunteered. “Hope you don’t mind?”
“Oh! A reporter?” Ann stiffened visibly.
“Sure—and a good one too. Ask the Star. I rate by-lines in my write ups, and that’s something. Besides—Hey, just a minute!” He streaked after the girl as she suddenly turned away. Catching up with her he clasped her arm. “Am I that bad?” he asked in reproach.
“I just don’t like reporters, that’s all,” she answered sweetly. “Thank you for helping me—and now, goodbye!”
Again she turned away but by the time she had reached the subway entrance s
he was aware of his powerful, grinning face once more. He raised his hat politely and the blond hair came fully into evidence.
“Hello there! Remember me?”
Ann stopped, her face set. “Now listen, Mr. Blake, you’re getting to be a nuisance! I suppose it’s the reporter in you that makes you behave like a bloodhound—but remember that picking a girl up after she’s fallen down doesn’t give you the right to follow her around. Anyway, what do you want?” she demanded.
“Your name, and the date and place of our next meeting.”
“What!” Ann’s gray eyes opened wide.
“Sure!” he smiled. “Oh, be yourself, won’t you? This is 1990 and the age of self-expression. I think you’re all right, and I’d like to know more about you. In return I promise you a full history of my life from the cradle upward.”
“From the amoeba upward would be more apt!” she retorted.
He winced. “O.K.—you win. Well, where do we meet?”
To answer she brought her dainty heel down on his toe with savage vigor; it was the only alternative to a slap in the face she could think of. By the time he had finished hopping around amid the grinning people, the girl had vanished. In fact, she had already boarded the subway train for home and was sitting in a corner seat smiling to herself. It flattered the woman in her to have the blond giant’s name and occupation while withholding her own.
She was still smiling when she returned into the house—then as her mother came fluttering round with allusions to an earth tremor she suddenly forgot all about Radford Blake and recalled her experience in the city. Immediately she headed for the laboratory and found her father pacing slowly up and down in his tattered smock, thrashing back his gray hair impatiently.
“Well, about time!” He wheeled round irritably as she came in. “I was wondering where you’d gotten to, Ann. Your mother tells me you’ve been up town. How much damage was there?”
“Why, not much. It was only a tremor, after all. A few windows broken and one or two people hurt. I was thrown in the gutter. Nothing else so far as I could see at the time.”
Shaw’s brows came down over his cold eyes.
“Ann,” he said slowly, “the next tremor will be the last. And it will bring about the complete end of civilization! It will not be just a shiver, but a gigantic quake which will destroy in a few seconds everything man has built up.”
The girl gave a faint, incredulous smile.
“Don’t believe me, eh?” her father asked, jamming his hands in his smock pockets and staring at her. “I’m surprised at you, Ann, I thought I had developed the scientific streak in you. Leave disbelief for the masses; that’s their job. All that I’m saying is true—unhappily. I’ve come to the end of my researches now, and I realize that at any moment the end may come. These recent tremors link up completely with the sudden distension of Jupiter’s Red Spot.”
Ann slowly sat down, frowning. “But, dad, how do—”
“I’ve been watching the planets for some time now,” he interrupted. “First Uranus revealed an extensive white spot growing gradually larger; then Jupiter’s Red Spot extended some thousands of miles beyond normal bounds—then we got temblors on earth here, each one more severe. Only one thing could cause the strange distensions on Uranus and Jupiter—namely, a tremendous gravitational field tugging from outer space, shifting the gummy half molten plasma of the Red Spot as a—a spoon would drag molasses. Understand?”
“Yes—yes, I think so. Go on.”
“I explored space with my instruments.” Shaw paced up and down now as he talked. “I couldn’t find anything to account for a strong gravity field. Yet I knew it must be present somewhere. In the end I arrived at its position by mathematics.”
He came to a stop, took a deep breath.
“Out in space, Ann, passing rapidly through our solar system, is a tiny piece of a white dwarf star—a black fragment, utterly invisible, detectable only by mathematics. Possibly it is a piece broken off a white dwarf in the far depths of space by some inconceivable disaster, and following a certain orbit it is passing through our part of the universe. I say it is tiny, but the packing of a white dwarf is something like two tons to the cubic inch. It has a density two thousand times greater than platinum. The substance is composed entirely of neutrons. There are no normal atoms at all—”
“In other words, the stuff is neutronium,” Ann said quietly.
“Exactly—neutronium. Now, it is passing through our system. Its great gravity field is not strong enough to drag an entire planet out of its orbit; it cannot defeat the master field of the sun. But it does something else! Even as in the normal way the moon raises tides in the fluid oceans, so this neutronium chunk raises and shifts the plasma of the earth’s surface, as a magnet would drag along steel filings. When it reaches its closest point, which may be any time now, all normal land surface will be shattered. Everything will collapse.”
“But why, dad? Isn’t that a bit sweeping?”
“Believe me, child, I wish I were wrong. But there it is, I’m not. In fact, the major earthquake would have come long ago were it not for the fact that the earth’s surface is somewhat adhesive. Continents cling together by cohesion of molecules until at last the pull of the opposing gravity is too strong to be denied. Then rupture will come all at once. Three times so far the surface of the world has slipped simultaneously. The next time will be the last. As you probably know, the earth’s surface is not solid; that’s the trouble. It floats, as though it were heated tar or treacle.”
“Isn’t that the Wegener Hypothesis?” Ann asked, thinking.
“Yes. Wegener perished long ago in Greenland trying to prove the hypothesis that we now accept as fact—namely, that all continents and islands are really hardened scum or pumice floating on the hot viscid stuff that makes up earth’s interior. And continents not only float, they drift…So when this strong gravitational field approached from outside the surface began to accelerate its rate of drift to the extent of finally ripping in pieces. That has yet to come. I am convinced nothing can stop it.”
Shaw fell silent, pondering, his eyes on the floor. At length Ann looked up sharply.
“I presume nobody else knows about this chunk of neutronium?”
“Don’t see how they can. It’s invisible—and I don’t know many who could compute the mathematics to find it as I have, even if they had the imagination to know what to look for in the first place.”
The girl got to her feet suddenly, took hold of her father’s arm tightly.
“Dad, do you begin to realize what you’ve discovered?” she whispered. “Why—it means world catastrophe! And you just stand there and tell me! Everybody’s got to know about it as quickly as possible. Preparations have got to be made for defense against the disaster. Underground refuges, perhaps.”
“There isn’t time,” Shaw said moodily looking at her.
“There’s got to be time! It’s—unthinkable!” Ann swung round to the telephone and searched through the directory, finally dialled a number. Her father stood watching, meditating.
“Oh, is this the Star?” she asked at length. “Give me Radford Blake—and hurry!”
“Who’s Blake?” Shaw asked suspiciously.
“Reporter I know. He’ll start the ball rolling for the press, anyway; then we’ll contact the radio stations—Oh, hello! Is that Mr. Blake? Remember the girl you picked up from the gutter?” Shaw’s eyes opened a little wider, but he said nothing, stood listening to his daughter’s words.
“…of course not. This is business! Come right away to Dr. Shaw’s home—East Dale, 79th Precinct. It’s desperately important. Eh? No, I am not kidding. Fifteen minutes? O.K.”
“Who exactly is this fellow?” Shaw demanded, as she put back the receiver.
“From now on he’ll be your mouthpiece for the press. I know you don’t like the general run of reporters, but Blake’s different. He’ll get everything fixed as it should be. Wait till you see him…” Ann sighed a little. �
��You know, dad, I still can’t half credit this thing. Are you dead certain that the earth is about to end?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, my dear, I am. I’ve thought of many ways for the world to end, but never this one.”
“This neutronium chunk—What will happen to it finally?”
“I’m not altogether sure, but so far as I can make out it will pass on its way through our solar system into the depths of space.”
Ann shrugged, went slowly to the window. Night had fallen now and she gazed across the intervening fields to the vision of New York with its lighted beacon summits scraping the cloudy sky. New York, the whole continent of America, every continent in the world, at the breaking point—waiting to obey the masterful urge of an invisible unthinkably heavy rock in the depths of space. Fantastic! Incredible! With everything so solid and impregnable. How was it possible for the creations of man to be razed to the dust?
In that almost completely silent fifteen minutes Ann’s mind went swiftly over Man’s career—his laborious rise from slime to supremacy over the whims of Nature. Forever climbing upwards, slipping many a time, but now well on the road to sublime achievement. Only to meet up with this facet of nature that had no controller.
“Dad,” she said slowly, gazing through the window still, “I wonder if this neutronium chunk has ever been near us before?”
“Does it matter?” he asked quietly.
“It might. For instance it might give a clue to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the reason for the Deluge, explain why the Sphinx and Pyramids are in the middle of inaccessible desert. A floating world surface attacked by neutronium drag in the past could explain all the transfers of land to parts unexpected and also might show why past civilizations came to such sudden endings. There might even have really been El Dorado, Inca people, and Heaven knows what.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Shaw admitted, wrinkling his brow—then whatever he intended to say was not realized for at that moment the laboratory door opened to admit Radford Blake, preceded by the man-servant.
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