First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  These things, of course, were learned afterwards. The world saw the planetoid, through telescopes, come into view as it swung from behind the sun. For three days it grew in size, until it could be seen with the naked eye as a dark speck against the bright disk of the sun. The astronomers had measured it and found its size and weight. The moment of impact was known, and the probable effect. Great loss of life was anticipated, but not such a wholesale holocaust as actually occurred. The public was told that an earthquake of unprecedented severity was to be expected, and that the part of wisdom would be to go into open fields away from tall buildings or trees. Tidal waves might, and possibly would, occur.

  On the whole, the inhabitants of the earth behaved rather well. There was comparatively little disorder. By this time the value of astronomy had long been demonstrated, and in a great migration the peoples of the earth sought the open fields on the morning the blow from the little planet was to arrive. The astronomers had made but one great error. They had greatly under-estimated the thickness of the solid crust of the earth. It was then believed that a thin stratum of solidified rocks overlay a completely liquid interior. Now we know that the pressure—the weight—of the crust keeps the earth a solid mass, which becomes liquid only when that pressure is removed. The astronomers had expected the planetoid to penetrate the “crust” and lose itself in the liquid interior as a stone will smash through a film of ice over a pond and settle down through the water below.

  As a matter of fact, the planetoid struck, not a liquid body with a solid covering, but a solid mass, kept solid by the pressure of its own weight. The impact was not like that of a small pebble striking an orange with great force, but like the same pebble striking a frozen fruit whose juices thawed and flowed out through the cracks and fissures produced by the blow.

  At twenty-seven minutes after one o’clock, Washington time (the same as Cosmopolis time of the present day), on June 14th, 1940, the world saw the planetoid enter the earth’s atmosphere. With the sun overhead, the planetoid had seemed a dark shadow in the sky from the fact that its under side was dark, though the upper surface glistened in the sunlight. Traveling at eighty-two miles a second, in less than two pulse-beats it reached the solid body of the earth. Striking in the sea, first a solid sheet of water was thrown up to a height of more than two miles. Then when the coral bottom of the ocean was reached, the world groaned and shivered. Its wounded sides opened and lava poured forth. Every human habitation on the earth had shivered into fragments at the first impact, and now the peoples of the earth crumbled and died. In the earthquake and lava flows more than three-quarters of the population of the world was annihilated, and the storm that followed nearly completed the work of wiping out the human race.

  (Editor’s note: Having summarized the first part of the account, we give the rest in the author’s own words.)

  II.

  In an obscure little workshop in a village up in the Orange mountains, a peculiar experiment was being made. A furnace sputtered in one corner. Glistening white metal bubbled in the open bowl, and a man was methodically connecting a reinforced rubber tube to an intricate arrangement of pierced metal pipes that looked as if it were intended to fit into the bowl of molten metal in the corner. Outside, a solitary newsboy was howling an extra.

  “End o’ the world comin’!” he shrilled at the top of his voice. “End o’ the world comin’! Earth’s goin’ t’be hit by a asseroid! Extra!”

  John Andrews, absorbed in his work, paid no attention. The village, like every other community in the world where the announcement had been made, was gathering into groups and agitatedly discussing the matter. There were, as usual, wiseacres who gloomily agreed with the dismal forecast of the newsboy. Other whiskered sages quoted Scriptural texts indicating that the Day of Judgment would come without warning and that this could not be such a day. Still others read avidly the official announcement of the Washington Observatory and drew comfort therefrom.

  “Don’t say th’ end o’ the world’s comin’,” said one of the last, looking up from the paper. “It says this thing is like a big shooting star and ain’t big enough to smash this here earth up much. It says there’s goin’ t’be a earthquake an’ prob’ly storm of unpar’lleled severity, that’s all it says.”

  Another man snatched the paper and bent over it.

  “It says great loss o’ life is t’be anticipated,” he pointed out triumphantly.

  “Hm. All I got t’say is, I’m glad I don’t live in no Lesser Antilles, I ain’t afraid of earthquakes. I’m goin’ out an’ tell Mary about it.”

  “Back in 1866,” observed one ancient reminiscently, “there was a earthquake…”

  The furnace inside the workshop roared rhythmically and the molten aluminum bubbled and hissed. Andrews, grimy and work-worn, finished his preparations and slipped a heavy, padded protection over his face, with double wire-glass goggles to protect his eyes. He had been burned once before by a spattering bit of metal, and took due precautions now. Slowly and carefully he slipped the intricately twisted piping into the molten metal, settling it carefully in its place. Then, with his eyes fixed on the bubbling surface, he gently pushed over a tiny lever fixed on the tank to which the rubber tubing ran. There was a faint hissing…

  The silvery aluminum alloy in the bowl seemed to expand. Slowly but surely, surely though slowly, it rose up the sides of the crucible. Andrews pushed back the lever and fitted a large mold over the crucible hanging by chains from the roof. Then he resumed his careful watching. The gas from the tank hissed again, and the molten metal rose and rose. Strangely beautiful iridescent colors played over its surface as it grew steadily in size. It overflowed the crucible and poured into the great mold fitted to the crucible’s upper rim. It filled the form, and Andrews shut off the flow of compressed gas from the tank. When he snatched off the padded mask that had protected him, his face was shining.

  For twenty minutes he paced back and forth in the little workshop, oblivious to the consternation among the villagers outside. Then he dared pull out the pins that held the great mold together. With a hack-saw he cut through the small neck where the mass that filled the crucible had flowed upward into the larger form. And then he feasted his eyes on the result of his experiment.

  The workshop had once been a barn, and in its lofty attic had been stored the fodder for many cattle during the winter. Andrews had cut away all flooring of the attic, so he had a great room nearly thirty feet high and twice as long. Now, above the crucible, held to the ground only by a light metal chain that had been fitted in the great mold and made an integral part of the casting, he saw his work. A pear-shaped, shimmering mass of metal seemed to float in mid-air. Twenty feet from the bottom to the top, and fifteen feet across at its widest, it looked like a huge pearl as it hung there, swaying gently in the minor currents of air within the workshop. Rainbow colors flitted here, there, and everywhere about its surface. It seemed actually alive to the shining-eyed enthusiast who stood there watching.

  Balloons had long since been passé. Only aeroplanes and the great TransAtlantic dirigibles now navigated the air, but Andrews saw in the metallic globule the recrudescence of all the dreams of the first aeronauts. When they first dared mount into the air beneath flimsy bags of silk and linen, they trusted far more to the providence that watches over fools and heroes than to their man-made Pegasus beneath which they swung helplessly. The bag might burst, a spark would surely set it in flames, a leak would bring them to the ground. Innumerable trivial accidents would be fatal. And above all, the cumbersome sources of the gas with which the balloons were filled made them but clumsy substitutes for the wings mankind has always longed to wear. Andrews had changed all this. One of the earliest experiments of his college course in physics had been the gas-bubble. A soap-bubble filled with illuminating gas, on being released from the bubble-pipe, had floated serenely upward until it burst.

  Simple as the experiment was, Andrews had been fascinated by the possibilities it held. The pear
-shaped globule of metal before him was the ultimate result. The obstacles to the older types of balloon had been the fact that they leaked, minutely but persistently, they caught fire readily, and that the slightest rip in the envelope brought the aeronauts crashing to the ground. Andrews had made experiment after experiment, and now had evolved a formula which enabled him to blow bubbles in molten metal so that instead of a solid mass he had a body of foam-like structure, composed of an infinitude of gas globules with walls of infinitesimal thickness. Just as children playing with soap and water will produce a mass of glittering white soap-suds, Andrews now had a pear-shaped mass of porous metal filled with gas, the walls of the bubbles of which were so thin that they were actually iridescent, leaving the whole lighter than air. Leaks would not affect its lifting power. The most savage gash in the spongy volume would pierce but a few of the innumerable cells into which the entire mass was divided, and would not appreciably diminish its buoyancy.

  A pounding on the door of his workshop aroused Andrews from the happy contemplation of the success of all his work. He went to the door and peered out.

  “Hey, come on out,” said a worried voice. “You’re a scientific man. You come out and tell us about this here.”

  A newspaper was waved before his eyes. The lurid headline caught Andrews’ attention and he emerged, closing the door of his workshop behind him.

  “How bad is this earthquake goin’ to be, anyways?” demanded the anxious one. A group of village sages stood behind him and waited solemnly.

  “Let me see the paper.”

  Andrews studied the account with increasing attention. Even the gently swaying metallic globe in the workshop was forgotten for a moment. A planetoid, some fourteen miles in diameter, would strike the earth thirteen days from that date. It would be traveling at a speed of eighty-two miles a second, and the impact would be terrific. Andrews looked up with a grave expression on his face, that had been so happy a moment before.

  “There’ll be an earthquake, all right,” he remarked grimly. “There’ll be an earthquake like none we’ve ever had before.”

  “The end of the world?”

  “No-o-o, hardly. But there’ll be an awful smash-up.”

  “And I just finished payin’ for my house,” said someone gloomily. “An’ now a earthquake is goin’ to shake it down.”

  Andrews tried to smile, but could not. He realized at once that an earthquake would not be all that would happen. Even in their assumption that the planetoid would crash through the crust of the earth and lose itself in the liquid interior, the astronomers had forgotten one thing. The planetoid would contain nearly one hundred and fifty cubic miles of rock and metal. The addition of that mass to the already compact interior of the earth would mean that the “crust” must give somewhere to provide room for the new mass of material. The addition of the body of the planetoid would be like trying to add a pebble to a bottle already full to bursting. Andrews realized that besides an outbreak of volcanic activity all over the world, the least that could be expected was the opening of fissures and great cracks in the earth through which the internal fires would break out.

  He did not speak of his fears. Astronomers throughout the globe had not minimized the danger from earthquake and had given the best warnings they could, but this was something from which there could be no escape. To make it public would merely accentuate the panic Andrews felt sure had already begun to be felt everywhere.

  He went back into his workshop to think. The iridescent, silvery globe, moving gently back and forth in the still air of the big room, gave him an idea. He stared at it for a moment while whipping the thought into shape. Then, madly, he set to work with figures and calculations, to try and save a portion of the world from the fate he feared awaited it.

  III.

  His Majesty King Adalbert of Esthonia looked with habitually cold eyes upon the general who approached him obsequiously.

  “Your Majesty, here are the reports from the foreign observatories.”

  The king took them with a grunt and abruptly began to read them over. Courtesy was never an attribute of the Hohenstaufen family, even in the olden days when as heads of the Holy Roman Empire they played politics with all of Europe, and the last of the royal line was no more Chesterfieldian than his ancestors. He read the announcements of the foreign astronomers with keen attention, and when he finished, smiled sardonically.

  “An earthquake, and possibly a storm, Ketlinghaus,” he remarked to the general before him. “It is good that we have not had to rely upon those stupid people for our information.”

  Von Ketlinghaus bowed in agreement, while a smile that matched his master’s spread over his face.

  “Our observatory had all this information twelve months ago,” he said triumphantly. “And now—”

  “The world will learn what we can do,” said the king grimly. “Have you the reports from the shipyards?”

  The general produced them instantly.

  “The over-inspector-general has completed the last of the cargo submarines and put them through their tests. The war munitions are now being loaded, and forty-five of the Z class have already gone to their stations. Your Majesty’s troops are being concentrated at the Villesbrod secret camp, and the selected persons are gradually assembling at the designated points.”

  The king thumbed the reports thoughtfully.

  “And the people?”

  “The democrats are planning a coup,” said the general scornfully. “They say that after the earthquake there will be no more organization on our part, and they will see that we do not reorganize as a kingdom.”

  “We will not,” said the king; “We will reorganize as an empire, the empire of the world!”

  The face of the general broke into a smile so broad and so triumphant that it was more like a grin.

  “And I do not think, Majesty, that the democrats will stop us.”

  The king put the documents he had just received into his pocket, and in a moment of expansiveness linked his arm in the general’s.

  “I do not think they will, Ketlinghaus, but now we will go and issue a manifesto to our loyal subjects, urging them to be orderly and await with patience and resignation the coming of the earthquake.”

  The laughter of king and subject joined in a chorus of unpleasant mirth as the two left the room.

  After the war of 1914-1918, the territory of Esthonia was made into a republic as a buffer state. In the general adjustment of Central European affairs at the Peace Conference after that war, many such small nations were created, and Esthonia was one of the least. It was one of the most backward among small nations, and the peasantry paid little or no attention to politics or the actions of those who governed them, with the result that in a very short time the government fell into the hands of a group of demagogues. They had been ignorant and irresponsible men for the most part, and their truculent attitude toward their neighbors had made Esthonia a breeding-ground for war-clouds and ill-feeling. For twelve years this had gone on, and then the larger landowners combined. Generals and officers of the aristocratic old regime of the Central nations were unobtrusively brought to Esthonia. Quietly, the loyalty of the peasants to the ancient state of things was appealed to. Then, quite suddenly, there was a flare of revolution which was hardly more than a coup d’état, and when the world looked again at Esthonia the government was in the hands of reactionaries whose royalistic ideals were no secret. Within a year an election was held, and Adalbert of Hohenstaufen, non-regnant member of a royal house, was offered and accepted the throne of Esthonia.

  The world, as a whole, was rather sick of the perpetual bickering of democratic Esthonia, and looked at the new kingdom without interest. It hoped that the quarrelings and spoutings of demagogues would be stopped, and they were. The new government was conciliatory to foreign opinion, and other nations no longer complained of Esthonia as a neighbor. Only the people found themselves ridden by arrogant aristocrats. As soon as the kingdom was firmly established
, from every quarter of the dismembered empires came the Junkers. Irreconcilable and malcontents, royalists and imperialists—all the ancient houses whose members could not content themselves with democracy came to the new haven of aristocracy. By 1933 it was said that one could not drop a brick in the capital of Esthonia without striking at least two barons and a count. By 1935 no less than twelve once-royal families made their abode there, and all the out-worn formalities of discarded pomp held full sway.

  Beneath the arrogance of their new masters, the people grew restive, and a constant struggle went on. The classes struggled to keep down the masses, and the masses to oust the crowd of mostly-foreign and broken-down aristocrats who clustered about the petty court. An army was formed, in which the newcomers paraded as ornamental officers. The clanking of swords and jingling of spurs was heard in all the cafes, while the overthrown demagogues and more numerous real democrats planned and struggled to rouse the people again to become their own masters. A constant series of riots and strikes, and strikes and riots, attested to the efficacy of the democratic arguments.