“Very good, Rollo. And now, what is light?”
“T’hell with light! I can think of lots better things to discuss.” He flicked the communicator switch, and the round face of the commissary clerk looked out at him from the view plate. “Send up two—no—four liters of beer! And make sure it’s cold!”
Carter grinned like a ghoul, and slid farther down in his neck. “Make that six liters, will you? But this is serious. What happens when a positron meets an electron?”
“All right,” Doc Mike said wearily. “You get a photon of light coming out of where the two met. Can be most any frequency—usually very high, cosmic or gamma. I wish he’d hurry with that beer! And what’s this all about, anyway?”
“Wait and see—and get ready for a trip. I need the information on those plates, though, and several sets of observations some days apart. Here’s the beer!”
* * * *
II.
Two weeks later two frightened scientists looked at each other over the final results from the calculating room. The figures were before them. The unknown, which continued to radiate faintly but continuously in its peculiar fashion, was some ten thousand million miles from the Earth, and was coming closer. And unless the gods of mathematics had completely forsaken them, within two years it would hit the Earth, or come so close to it that the latter would be as thoroughly wrecked as though it had sustained a direct hit.
The body was not large—no larger than the Moon—but its manner of radiation was unique. High-frequency light comes from a hot body. And a body that small couldn’t be that hot; it would have cooled off long ago. And if it were that hot, the intensity of the radiation received by the Earth would have been much greater—greater, in fact, than that received from the Sun, in spite of the small size of the unknown and its great distance from the Earth. It just didn’t make sense. And it didn’t make sense to the other astronomers of the solar system. Nothing had appeared in the popular press, nor was it likely to. An iron-clad censorship had been clamped down. The danger was serious enough, and panic would make it worse.
Carter spoke. “We’re going out to take a look, Mike. Or I am, anyway. Would you like to come along?”
“Uh-huh. You need somebody to take care of you. When do we leave?”
“In half an hour. My ship is ready to go. It has a lot of new gadgets on it, too. This should be a good chance to try them out. Let’s go.”
Just half an hour later the rocket blasted free from the snow-covered space port near the observatory. It was an improved experimental model of those used at the time, all of which depended upon the principle discovered and developed by Carter himself, which had made space travel something more than an insane gamble.
Hydrogen gas was fed into the converter, where terrific static and magnetic fields converted it into helium. Immense energy, developed from the loss of mass, appeared in the process, which energy imparted a tremendous velocity to the flaming helium gas which escaped through the rocket jets at the stern of the ship. An acceleration up to ten times that of gravity could be maintained, but five gravities was the usual limit for any length of time. More than that, and the passengers lost consciousness. Five was uncomfortable enough, but men in good training could stand it, if they didn’t attempt to move from their padded and pivoted chairs.
The trip was uneventful. A week later the rocket was circling cautiously around the unknown body. It was about the size of the Moon, but little could be seen of its surface, which appeared to be under a continuous bombardment with some immensely high explosive. The flashes from the explosions, consisting mainly of cosmic, gammas, and UV’s, were evidently the source of the light which had puzzled the observers. Carter and Poggenpohl crouched behind their lead-glass screens and watched.
“Looks like a fluorescent screen being bombarded by electrons, Jimmy. Somewhat larger scale, though. More bombardment on the forward side, too.”
“Yes, there is. It looks as though it were sweeping a path through space as it approaches the Earth. Man that gun, will you, please, and fire a solid shot at it when we go around the rear of it again?”
“O. K. Don’t see what you’re driving at, though. Do you expect a bell to ring, like in a shooting gallery? I’ll signal when I fire, and aim directly at the center when we’re exactly behind it.”
The minute went by, then, “Ready—fired! Watch for it!”
There was no need to watch. Twenty minutes later, when the hundred-pound piece of steel hit the surface of the wandering planet, there was a tremendous flash, dwarfing those which had been observed.
Carter appeared to be pleased, or at least satisfied, and called to the other. “All right, Mike. I’m going to cut the rockets and let the ship take up an orbit around this peculiar object. You take the measurements of distance to the surface and time the orbit, and I’ll measure its diameter. Considering the fate of that piece of steel you sent out of the gun, I don’t think we’ll land this time. It might be unhealthy.”
* * * *
There followed a period of several hours, during which the only sound was the click of the calculating machine, and Mike’s gasp as he saw the final result. “Good Lord, Jimmy! This cockeyed animal isn’t any bigger than the Moon, and she weighs as much as Jupiter! Are we nuts—or is it?”
Jimmy laughed as he cut in the rockets and swung the ship around for home. “The latter, Mike! It’s demented—completely. We’re no crazier than usual. Gather around and I’ll explain.”
“It’s about time! Now, what have you got up your sleeve, anyway?”
“You remember, when we first saw this thing, I put you through a quiz on matter? I had a hunch then, and I’ve proved it. You described the sort of matter with which we are familiar. Look here. You said that matter was made up of neutrons and positrons, in the last analysis, in the nuclei, and of electrons on the outside. Well, there is another sort of matter possible. What is to prevent an electron from combining closely with a neutron, and forming a negative proton? The possibility was mentioned way back in 1934, and I think the old boy even gave his hypothetical particle a name—an ‘antron,’ I think he called it. Now take some of these antrons, and some extra neutrons, and make a nucleus out of them, and then release enough positrons on the outside to balance the antrons. And one has an atom with a negative atomic number, since the atomic number of an atom, of course, is the number of positive charges on the nucleus.
“And now one makes a whole universe with these minus elements. And one makes oneself out of them, too, and lives in the place, and can’t tell the difference between it and a regular universe. All the physical laws will be the same—but just wait until part of your new universe hits part of a regular universe! Then there’ll be the devil to pay and no pitch hot! Figure it out. What do you think will happen?”
“Uh—let’s see. First the outer electrons in our matter will neutralize the outer positrons in the reverse matter—and there’ll be a hell of a lot of light or other radiation—UV, gamma, cosmic and what not. Then the nuclei will get together. Nothing will happen to either set of neutrons. But the positrons on the protons will neutralize the electrons on the antrons, and there’ll be another burst of radiation and a lot of neutrons left over. So the net result will be a mob of neutrons and a flock of radiation. What do you think? Is that thing out there”—he gestured toward the anomalous planet they were leaving behind—”out of a reverse universe?”
“I think so. It has all the symptoms. Long, long ago, how long ago, Heaven only knows, it escaped from some nebula in outer space—some nebula that’s built in reverse—and headed this way. And here it is. The glowing and flashing surface is the result of its contact with cosmic dust— the little particles of matter that drift around through all space. And every time it picks some up there’s a flash; all the charged particles are neutralized and head away from it as light. And it has added a few more neutrons to its collection. They probably sift down to the center of gravity of the thing. That’s why it’s so infernally heavy.”
“Then, teacher”—Mike was having an idea—”it was probably a rather ordinary planet when it started out on its travels. Barring being built backward, that is! I’d make a guess that it was about half the mass of Jupiter when it started, and, I suppose, had about half the volume. But every time it picked up some normal matter it both shrunk and got heavier. The mass of the positrons and electrons lost would be too small to lose sleep over, and, on the average, it would pick up one neutron for every one of its own freed from a nucleus.
“So it’s ‘most used up now—an awful flock of neutrons left, and just a little bit of normal reverse matter. The neutrons will have most of the mass, and the reverse matter will take up almost all of the space. Neutrons don’t take up any volume to speak of.”
“Right. So now it has twice the mass it started with, approximately, and a minute fraction of its original volume. When the rest of the reverse matter is finally neutralized it will be a little heavier, and so small that it’ll be completely invisible. Maybe there’ll be a few cubic centimeters of neutrons, or some absurd amount like that, with all that mass. But we’d better hurry! It won’t be very amusing if that neutralizing is done with some of the Earth’s surface! Hold tight—here comes some acceleration!”
* * * *
III.
Ten days later Carter and Poggenpohl presented their report to the commissariat of science of the United States of America, and two days later they attended an emergency meeting of the heads of the departments of science of the governments of the world. Carter was speaking.
“So you see, gentlemen, what the situation is. You all understand the theory of the phenomenon, and you know that the observatories of the world and of the other two inhabited planets have checked our own telescopic observations. In addition, there is the phenomenon we observed when the six-inch projectile hit this—this--”
“Call it ‘Gus,’” whispered Mike disrespectfully.
Jimmy glared at him, and continued, “—this—minus planet. I am aware of no alternative theory to explain the behavior of this anomalous body, and most of you appear to be inclined to adhere to the one Dr. Poggenpohl and I have presented.” He looked around the table and saw nothing but a succession of reluctant nods.
“Then, the question is, what to do about it? If it were normal matter it would be bad enough. But then, it might be possible to install huge rocket tubes on the intruder and drive it out of its course sufficiently to miss the Earth by a safe margin. But what can we do with this thing, when, if we touch it, we shall be annihilated? And if we don’t touch it, we shall be annihilated anyhow. At least the Earth, and those who can’t escape to the other planets will be annihilated, and that means ninety-nine per cent of the population. For you know that our combined rocket fleets aren’t enough to move one per cent of the Earth’s population in the time we have available. And even if we could move them—the other planets are only barely inhabitable by man, and certainly could not support all of us.”
“There’s one thing we must do,” remarked the science commissary of the Russians, “and that is to keep this situation a secret, for the present at least. For if we don’t, there will be such a rush for the few rockets we have that half the world’s population will be killed in a few days in the panic. And the rockets themselves will be smashed. We won’t be able to do anything at all with them.”
“There’s no doubt at all on that point,” said the delegate from the Federated States of Europe. “I take it that the meeting is unanimous on that point?” There was another chorus of nods, but this time more enthusiastic. “But has anybody any idea of how to move this—minus planet—out of the course it’s following?”
There was a sodden silence, and then Mike rose slowly to his feet, his red hair bristling with what looked like an idea. “Gentlemen, there’s one other way to move our little country cousin out of his course. Hit him with something heavy that’s moving fast enough to do the job.”
“But what will happen to that thing, whatever it is? Won’t it be annihilated?”
“Not so you could notice it, when it comes to the effect. All the electrons and positrons will be gone, and it won’t be normal matter any more, but the neutrons will be left, and they will have the momentum they started with.”
“Very well, Herr Poggenpohl, but what can we hit it with that will be big enough to make any difference? All the space ships in the solar system, firing all their biggest guns for a year, wouldn’t be enough to do anything to its course! After all, it weighs as much as Jupiter!”
“There’s one projectile available that would be big enough to make quite a perceptible dent in its path: the Moon! We can spare it. All it does is produce the tides. Mount rocket tubes on the Moon, pry it up out of the solar system, and sock the intruder so that its course will be changed and it will fall into the Sun! We can do that if we hit it while it’s still far enough away from the system.”
* * * *
The council gasped at the suggestion, and there was a chorus of excited protests, which slowly died, as the sheer magnitude of the plan gripped the imaginations of the assembled scientists. Nobody thought of putting the question to a formal vote, and in twenty minutes the meeting had been changed, automatically, into an executive council, which was in an excited argument about ways and means, in which calculating machines, reference books, celestial mechanics, the quantum theory, and polylingual profanity played a prominent part.
Carter pounded on the table and shouted until he managed to attract the attention of the disputants. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I suggest that we present our plans to the various governments, in order to obtain their cooperation in the execution of our project. And I also suggest that publicity can do no harm now, since we have an apparently practicable remedy for the difficulty. The amateur astronomers will let the cat out of the bag very soon, anyway, if we don’t make some statement. And finally, may I suggest that we request the President of the United States to make a television broadcast, explaining the situation to the public, asking their cooperation, and assuring them that the said situation is, as it were, well in hand?”
The assembled scientists stared blankly at him, nodded absent-mindedly, and returned to their discussion, more violently than before. Carter grinned at Mike, lighted a cigarette, and wandered out of the room, in search of a communicator in some place that was quiet enough so that he could make his message to the President heard above the din.
The President revealed the danger to the world in one of his famous fireside broadcasts, concluding with a request that every one remain quietly at his normal duties, unless called upon to cooperate in some way with the scientists who were working at what appeared to be a practicable method of saving the planet.
The heads of the other governments of the world made similar broadcasts.
As might be expected, most of the population of the Earth paid no attention at all to the broadcasts, being quite unable to realize the situation. The Earth had never been destroyed, therefore it could not be destroyed, and the scientists were crazy as usual. That attitude was typical of the major part of the inhabitants of the globe—the great, average masses.
But there were two other attitudes apparent. On the one side there were those intelligent enough to understand the danger and the measures that were being taken against it. They were the scientists, engineers, and technicians of the world, and the well-educated part of the other classes of the population.
On the other side were the unbalanced, the fanatics, and the extremely ignorant, who were the tools of the first two. They rioted, for no apparent reason, but merely because they were frightened, they tried to make up in two years for the dullness of their lives, not realizing that the dullness of those lives was largely due to the dullness of their intellects. Some of them—and they were less trouble than the others—merely got drunk and remained that way. A few of them actively obstructed the work that had to be done.
One of them, one Obidiah Miller, who had been, it was rum
ored, a circuit rider in the Tennessee Mountains, was the most virulent. He was an ignorant man, but he possessed a native shrewdness which, combined with his surprising oratorical powers and his religious fanaticism, had a tremendous effect on the more ignorant and weak-minded portions of the population.
Fanatics are always followed by fools, of which there is an inexhaustible supply. When the danger appeared, the intelligent parts of the populace decided that the reasonable thing to do was to cooperate with the scientists who were trying to cope with it. The fanatics proclaimed, and the fools believed, that the approaching calamity was the judgment of God on an impious world. Especially did they protest that the Moon should not be moved. First, because it couldn’t be moved; second, because the Lord hadn’t intended it to move; and third, because, since God had evidently intended that the minus planet should destroy the Earth for its wickedness, it would be an act of impiety even to attempt to avert the collision.
“Would ye seek, brethren, to attempt to stave off the Day of Judgment, as foretold in the Holy Scriptures? Would ye seek”—his hill-billy accent rolled out over the sheep-faced crowd—”to avert the day when the righteous shall be raised to the right hand of God, and the wicked shall be cast down to Hell? Will ye let the wicked meddlers into matters that are best left alone attempt to stave off the almighty hand of God? Wreck the space ports! Smash the rockets! Kill the idolaters!”
Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s Page 120