* * * *
On the broad top of the mountain the Observatory domes and towers loomed above the encircling brush and trees like giant silver Martian shapes immobilized by plague. Although it was midday, the sky was of such a deep blue it seemed a pewter or graphite-like black in colour lying against the aluminium domes. The Observatory site appeared to be deserted, but every observing slit was open and every instrument pointed to the Sun, and this unprecedented concentration of forces (most of which had not been designed for Solar observation) revealed the station to be fully manned to record some rare phenomenon.
In the concrete chamber beneath the largest Sun tower, a hand groped for the telephone in the dark. “D’s gone,” reported the spectroheliograph operator.
“Get a record of everything,” was the reply. “Let us know how it goes.”
The Director in his office put down the phone and told the three men with him, “The D lines are gone now.”
The four men were Launcelot Weiner, Director of the Observatory, Leonard Smith, Head of Solar Research, Bernard Tom Willoughby, Senior Solar Physicist, and Thomas Gran from University of California. Weiner was the youngest of the four, an almost offensively boyish forty-five for such a position. He was small, plump-cheeked, slick-haired and immaculate. Behind his simple face was a fine theoretical brain and clever administrator. For the past two months he had been involved with Professor Gran in an almost non-stop mathematical exploration of some minute alterations found in the Sun’s spectrum, and as the importance of their answers broke on him there came additional work setting up new research programmes for the Observatory, and ensuring that his staff scented nothing of the true nature of the awful thing they were measuring. He had not slept at all over the last three days and nights. His poor, baby face was blotched with yellow, his eyes dark circled and the skin wrinkled at the corners by his continual frown; his prim set mouth had lost its old control. However, he was still in control of the room, and while the others stood, or paced or leaned, he sat at his desk with the telephone to hand and spoke with as quiet and steady voice as he could produce.
“If the D lines are gone, I’d put the end no more than forty-eight hours away; I’m afraid we’ll never have time to find out why this is happening to us.”
Smith, the Head of Solar Research at the Observatory, looked out of the window across miles of rolling mountain-tops and endeavoured to concentrate his thoughts on the hour of mathematics he had just listened to. He had the sort of mind which prefers pictures to figures.
“It’s as though damper-rods were being pushed into the Sun’s furnace, one moment you’ve got a chain reaction— the next it’s gone!”
“It’s not quite like that, Leonard,” said Willoughby with his usual asperity. “You wouldn’t get this vanishing of the elements one by one. It’s more as if the elements had been completely consumed.” He turned his intent blue eyes on the others. “I think ...”
“As I said, Bernard,” interrupted Weiner, “we haven’t got time to find out what is going on. Our measurements show the cut in short-wave radiation from the Sun, and all that is certain at the present rate of loss in power is that the Sun will go out in a couple of days. What we have to decide now is what to do about it: do we break it to the world, or do we stay quiet?”
Professor Gran pulled his bent length from the only armchair in the room and took up a position by the table. He was a laughable sight in belted Norfolk tweeds and knickerbockers, a latter-day Bernard Shaw, with a small bald head and pince-nez spectacles; his caricature of learning included a bent-knee shuffle and a gaze usually directed at his feet.
“The thing’s been too obvious to be missed for two weeks now,” he said. “With the sodium lines gone any schoolboy will be able to deduce the extinction of the Sun.”
The telephone rang and he waited patiently while the Director listened and said, “Thank you.”
“K,” Weiner told them, and looked at Gran.
“We’ve got to tell what we know,” went on Professor Gran making a flopping gesture with his left arm. “If we don’t give the information, some ill-informed lunatic will. Of course, every Observatory in the world worth the name knows what’s going on and like us they’ve been checking and rechecking before saying a word—you don’t go telling a thing like this without being sure. Now we are sure. It’s our duty to inform the President without delay.” He gave one of his famous snorts, “Though what good it will do him, I don’t know. I advise you, Weiner, to lift up that phone now and arrange an interview. If you hurry, you can be in Washington by tomorrow morning.”
Willoughby, who had been prowling up and down the room behind the group near the desk, now exclaimed contemptuously, “Great God! Protocol at a time like this! The President first, then the Vice-President, then the Senate, I suppose, then by various stages to the people. This is the last chance Science will ever have to act without some damn Government Department clamping down and you want to dump it right in their laps. The people will never know what’s hit them. Be damned to the President. Give it to the newspapers straight away, I say.” Something amused his inflamed imagination and he laughed loudly and quoted, “Sun goes out Sunday night.”
“Nothing will be gained by panicking the public,” said Weiner. He opened a bottle of tablets and swallowed a couple. “You mustn’t entertain the thought, Willoughby, it’s going to be terrible enough without riots and pillage— which is what would undoubtedly break out if you spread doom over all the papers.” He picked up the telephone.
Willoughby sat down heavily in the armchair recently occupied by Professor Gran, he spoke with an hysterical note in his voice. “I don’t think any of you realize what is going to happen. We’re dead men. Two or three weeks and we’re dead, every last one of the human race, nothing in die Universe can save us.”
Weiner spoke softly to the operator and put the phone down again.
“We’ve all of us been doomed from the moment we entered the world and no power in the Universe has ever been able to save a single one of the human race from dying. What’s so dramatic about dying a few years sooner than the normal span?” remarked Smith.
“Platitudes!” snarled Willoughby.
“We mustn’t squabble, gentlemen,” said Professor Gran. “It’s up to us to think. We have been given the privilege of knowing the destiny of the human race before most of our fellow beings and we must take every advantage of that privilege.”
“Oh, Poppycock!” shouted Willoughby. “It’s no privilege so far as I’m concerned—it’s bloody anguish. Do you realize it’s my daughter’s twenty-first on Monday!” He rose from the chair. “By God, I’m going to live these last couple of days. You carry on if you want—I’m off!” He reached the door. “And if you won’t, I will tell the Press.”
Smith started forward to stop Willoughby, but Weiner said sharply, “All right, Smith, let him go.”
The telephone rang. Weiner lit a cigarette, then picked up the instrument. His name and position soon got him connected to the President’s Secretary.
“I want to arrange a private interview with the President tomorrow morning,” he said. “No, I’m very sorry, I can’t tell you what the subject would be. Yes, I realize that, and believe me, as an administrator, I have every understanding of how valuable the President’s time is...Yes, Yes.” Weiner listened and drummed his fingers on the desk. “Look, this subject is so much dynamite I can’t risk telling you over this line. You must believe me that I wouldn’t think of requesting an interview and at such short notice if this was not a matter of paramount interest to our country. If this interview is not granted tomorrow, news of what we have found may leak into the Press before the President has had time to consider his action. If it does leak before he’s been able to organize, then he won’t be able to control the panic. No! No! I told you I can’t reveal what it is. Yes, I’ll wait.” Weiner did not look at the others as he stubbed down his cigarette and waited. “Hallo, yes. Good. Thank you. I’ll be there at eight-th
irty tomorrow.” He hung up.
“I’d better get going,” he said in a worn-out voice. He looked at Smith. “Tell my wife I will be back tomorrow if I can make it. Don’t upset her if you can help it.” He looked at Professor Gran. “Can I run you down to the airport?”
Gran jerked his shoulders back in surprise. “Good Lord, Weiner, one of the most sensational events in the history of Astronomy and you expect me to leave this place. No! Give me charge of one of your instruments and I’ll see it out to the last second up here, where the air is clearest.”
“You have it,” said Weiner with a faint smile.
“What shall I tell the others?” asked Smith.
“Tell them the lines will come back in a couple of days—you dream it up.” He gathered up the papers from his desk and stuffed’ them in a brief-case. He opened the desk drawer and put a few things into his pockets. “Well,” he said, “I hope I shall be seeing you again before ...” He did not complete the sentence. They shook hands silently, then left the room.
Smith stopped on the brick terrace outside the administration building and wondered what he should do first. As Head of Solar Research at the Observatory he realized he should be hastening back to the instruments that continued to record the death of the Sun, but now that it was a settled matter he felt very little curiosity about the details of the turns and twists of the death throes. It was a shade too early to be ringing up Weiner’s wife. He wandered to the stone balustrade at one end of the terrace and stared out over the steep drop between the mountains filled with clear, dry air. He flicked his eyes momentarily at the Sun, it appeared no different. Ah well, he supposed he must go to the heliograph dome where he had his office. He turned from the beautiful view and made his way along the concrete paths between the domes, until he came to his own headquarters.
Swanson, his deputy, came in the other door leading to the dome, almost as soon as Smith closed the outer door.
“Thank the Lord you’re back!” he said. “Leonard, you’ve got to put your foot on Mugeridge: he’s forecasting the end of the world and the Lord knows what else! He’s been ...”
“Just a minute, Will,” interrupted Smith. “Shut the door and sit down.” He took up a comfortable pose in the swivel chair behind his desk. “The world’s not going to end just yet. You know Weiner and Gran have been working on the theory of the disappearing lines. I’ve just come from Weiner’s office—it’s too mathematical for me, but the long and short of it is that these line disappearances are a false effect, a sort of obscuring owing to a peculiar state of the reversal layer, and they will be reappearing in about two days. Weiner’s gone off for a couple of days to confer with Palomar, but he’ll do the explaining when he returns. In the meantime, we go on collecting data. You can tell Mugeridge that much and no more!”
Swanson, stared at Smith almost too amazed to speak. Smith gazed calmly back, desperately hoping that the bigger the lie the more likely it is to be believed.
“Is that all he told you?” asked Swanson, “Just that mumbo jumbo!”
Smith forced himself to become angry. He banged his pipe down on the desk. “Look here, Will, I’m giving you as much as I understood from a half-hour’s solid nuclear mathematics. You know it’s not my field at all. You’ll have to wait until Weiner comes back if you want it in figures— in the meantime get hold of Mugeridge and send him in here if you can’t handle him yourself.”
“I’m sorry, Leonard,” apologized Swanson. He gave Smith a momentary sideways look containing too much thoughtfulness for comfort, then turned to the door. “I’ll tell Mugeridge,” he said, and went out.
“Hell!” swore Smith. He sat for some moments savagely thumbing one corner of his moustache. He picked up the telephone and began to dial Weiner’s chalet, then changed his mind and dropped the instrument back into the cradle. After some more thought, he dialled his own residence and spoke to his wife.
“Mildred, Weiner’s had to fly off to Palomar for a couple of days; didn’t even have time to phone Helen. He’s asked me to let her know. I was thinking it might be a good idea to invite her to dinner tonight, because you know, I’m not so sure I shall be able to get home until late and you could keep each other company. What do you think?”
Mildred was puzzled by all the activity in the Observatory that sent astronomers off without a word to their wives and kept Sun observers at work during the night, but, yes, he could ask Helen to come to dinner.
Smith then spent an awkward five minutes breaking the news of Lancelot’s departure to Helen Weiner.
“Well, I don’t know what came over him,” she said, “that he just couldn’t lift the phone and say ‘goodbye, be back tomorrow’.”
Smith explained that in a garbled way which left Helen cold.
“I don’t care if it was the biggest discovery since telescopes began ...” She checked her temper and gave a slight laugh. “Anyway, Leonard, it’s nice of you and Mildred to invite me over and I’ll certainly be glad to come. I must confess I don’t like lonely nights on the mountain.”
“What a way to spend your last few days alive!” raged Smith as he put the telephone down. “Fixing up the boss’s wife: keeping the staff quiet; lying to your friends.” He took out his tobacco pouch. It was empty.
* * * *
Willoughby drove fast down the concrete road leading to the foothills where the half-dozen family houses were spread out. The road had been constructed fifteen years before when the Observatory was built, and some of its steeper sections were cracked and crumbly. Willoughby, with his mind filled with the awfulness of events and raging at the cold inhuman inevitableness of the end of light within two days, hit a patch, skidded, jammed on the car brakes, hit the edge, bounced and went off the road into a gnarled cactus. The cactus thorns burst one of his front tyres and a rock did something noisy to the differential. Willoughby recovered his breath and climbed swearing from the silent car. His left knee was badly jolted where he had stamped stiff-legged on the brake and had then taken the weight of his sudden halt.
“Yow!” he gasped at the pain. He limped round the car and saw that there was no hope of moving it. The houses were at least two miles away in a direct line, but the road made several loops down the spurs of the mountain, and the total distance would be about five miles. High up the mountain he heard Weiner’s car emerge from one of the innumerable cuttings and then damp out to inaudibility again. Although he wished he could tell Weiner to go to hell, he knew he was in no position to do so. It was unlikely, in view of the intensive watch on the Sun, that anybody else would be leaving the mountain-top before sunset.
Willoughby cursed his way up the slope down which he had crashed and stood waiting for Weiner. The pain of his knee was growing and the knee was rapidly swelling into one rigid block. “Come on, bloody Presidential Agent Number One!” he shouted up the empty road. He hobbled round impatiently in painful circles. When Weiner eventually pulled up alongside him, Willoughby wrenched open the door and snarled: “You drive like you were going to a funeral, not going to see the President in his damned White House!” He slammed the door closed.
Weiner drove the car carefully. “I should put cold compresses on that when you get home,” he advised.
Willoughby looked at him with mockery and disgust. “You don’t realize it yet, do you? What’s the use of doctoring a corpse?”
Weiner did not reply. They pulled up before Willoughby’s house and Willoughby manoeuvred himself out of the front seat.
“Good-bye,” said Weiner.
“Give the President my best wishes,” called Willoughby sarcastically. Weiner drove off. It was only then that Willoughby remembered that his wife, Mona, would be out shopping with Sally in San Diego for most of the day. He could have cried with the futility of it. Here he was, damn near crippled for need of a bit of attention to his knee, and his wife and daughter were out with the other car buying stuff which they would never have time enough to consume! In intense pain he made his way slowly to the
house, let himself in, and flopped down in an armchair by the telephone. Raggedly he dialled for information and asked for the Editorial Offices of the Los Angeles Times. While he waited he reached out and pulled bottle and glass to him.
“Hallo!” he shouted impatiently into the phone, and when he was finally connected, “About time! This is Willoughby of California State Observatory. I ... yes, well you can check up on me later on ... will you shut up a moment! I’ve got a bit of news you might find mildly interesting, the Sun goes out in two days.” He took a quick gulp from the glass. “After Sunday, no more light, everything gets colder and colder. Give it a month, and life on Earth will be in deep freeze.” The man at the other end said something pithy and Willoughby gave a shout of laughter. “No, seriously, you can check this with Palomar or any other Observatory—for the past two months spectral lines have been disappearing from the Solar spectrum. Weiner and Gran have been working on the theory of this and today they reached the unanimous conclusion that the Sun will cease to emit visible light within two days. What d’you think of that, hey ? No, no—it won’t mean immediate death, but unless you can find yourself a deep warm hole within a week, you can wish everybody a fond farewell for keeps. Where’s Weiner? He’ll be arriving in San Diego in a couple of hours headed for the White House. All right, put me on to your Science Editor. In the meantime, you get somebody down to San Diego airport to give Weiner the third degree before he gets the plane to Washington.”
New Writings in SF 5 - [Anthology] Page 15