OBVIOUSLY SUICIDE
By S. Fowler Wright
“In about two seconds the Earth would dissolve in a blaze of fire,” the research worker at the N. U. Laboratories told his wife. “There would be a burst of light and—one planet less in the universe. The amazing aspect is its very simplicity. It could be made in a backyard shed. All one needs is a combination of three substances, all easy to obtain, and then nothing more than a loop of heated wire.”
“Wouldn’t it be common prudence to get rid of these substances entirely?” she asked.
“Unfortunately, they are so widely distributed, and in such general use, that their complete destruction would be quite impossible.”
“You mean that if this should become known, any lunatic
—or any criminal without hope of escape or pardon—
could destroy the human race in a form of universal suicide?”
“It is impossible not to be apprehensive.” The research worker calmly lit his pipe. “It is known to our Grade-A men— that is, to about thirty, now. We are sworn to secrecy as to its ingredients, which I should not think to disclose, even to you. But if there should be one among us who now, or in the future—”
“How has it become known to so many?”
“The possibility was first raised at the weekly conference which is attended by all of the first grade. Several of us worked separately upon it, by experiment to a point and, beyond that, by mathematical calculations. All reached the same conclusion. It is hardly a matter which could be put to experimental test, but the conclusion is beyond reasonable doubt.”
“Then it should surely be wiped out and forgotten as completely as possible from the minds of all of you who share such perilous knowledge.”
“We have discussed that already, and shall do so again at a special meeting tomorrow. It may be decided in that way.
But differences of opinion are natural among so many. At our last meeting, there were three who objected at once. No scientific fact, they argued, should be treated in such a way.
… The trouble is that, though the calculations may be destroyed, the process and ingredients are too simple to be put out of mind—especially out of such minds as ours.”
“Yet it seems the only sensible thing to do… . And if any object, I should say the best thing to do would be to put them in a lethal chamber before they would have time to do a mischief which none could limit.”
Grafton agreed to that. There was no more said, and his wife slept.
But he found that he could not sleep. During the past week he had been imagining what it would be like to live in a world in which it was common knowledge that anyone could destroy it at an instant’s caprice. Even the threat, which might soon be on every unscrupulous tongue
—”Give me what I demand, or we shall all be gone in the next hour”—would be one which the bravest might find it hard to ignore.
Apart from that, how long would it be likely that the Earth would exist, if this knowledge were once at large?
Each month there were thousands of suicides of men of different races, of every disposition. Would there be none who would elect an exit of so dramatic a kind? Cast this knowledge abroad, and it would become improbable that Earth could endure for a further week. Yet what could now be done?
But his wife, being refreshed by a night of dreamless sleep, proposed what to him had a startling sound.
Women are more practical and more ruthless than men.
She had looked at the bed where a young child slept, and she thought of his sister, a year older, in the next room.
Then she said: “If it were possible for the thirty to be destroyed before they could give their knowledge to other men, it would be the best thing that could happen now.” He said: “Oh, but my dear, think who they are! There’s Professor Gribstein and Dr. Thornton and—”
“I never did like Dr. Thornton,” she replied, as a woman would.
He did not give two thoughts to this criminal suggestion at the time, and it might never have re-entered his mind had there not been a discussion in the Council which became heated when it was clear that a substantial minority were indisposed to put the knowledge aside. One even suggested that they should make a public announcement of their discovery, so that they might become a Council of Thirty who would control a world that would crouch around them in abject fear… . And then the idea came to his mind of how simply it could be done… . At their next meeting, when they would all be assembled together, and he could be absent! He could have a bad cold! A real cold! It would be easy to contrive that… . The scentless deadly gas which was for use in the next war—a herd of two hundred cattle had been destroyed in seventeen seconds by a smaller quantity than was in the little cylinder on the high shelf of the room where they always met! Kept for special security there. And most effectually sealed. But a corrosive acid could be timed to eat through the cylinder wall. (They would not know how they died, nor, more important, would anyone else.) It was certainly an attractive idea. And even Maude, a kind-hearted, sentimental woman, said it was the right thing to do. When he came to consider the matter, he didn’t like Dr. Thornton either… . And it would certainly leave him in an unrivaled position!
So, when the Council met again, it was done.
And no one suspected him in the least.
His one mistake was that he told Maude, thinking that she would approve, as indeed she did.
He said that the power was now in his hands alone, and he must consider the wisest course.
Maude thought of many things. Among these was the doubt of what, if or when he were dying, he might be tempted to do. She looked again at a sleeping child, and then did the practical thing.
It was a purlieu in which poisons were not hard to procure. She gave it to him in his morning coffee.
It was a clear case of suicide, for she was able to say that he had told her of the twenty-nine deaths which had preceded his own, that they were due to some carelessness of omission on his part, and his remorse had been painful to see.
It was very necessary to avoid suspicion falling upon herself. She had two children for whom to live. And she was aware of the gravity with which the law might regard the death of one man—though it seemed to take lightly the killing of millions.
Earth was dead, and the explorers from the stars bid farewell to the human race—a little prematurely
RESCUE PARTY
By Arthur C. Clarke
Who was to blame? For three days Alveron's thoughts had come back to that question, and still he had found no answer. A creature of a less civilised or a less sensitive race would never have let it torture his mind, and would have satisfied himself with the assurance that no one could be responsible for the working of fate. But Alveron and his kind had been lords of the Universe since the dawn of history, since that far distant age when the Time Barrier had been folded round the cosmos by the unknown powers that lay beyond the Beginning. To them had been given all knowledge--and with infinite knowledge went infinite responsibility. If there were mistakes and errors in the administration of the Galaxy, the fault lay on the heads of Alveron and his people. And this was no mere mistake: it was one of the greatest tragedies in history.
The crew still knew nothing. Even Rugon, his closest friend and the ship's deputy captain, had been told only part of the truth. But now the doomed worlds lay less than a billion miles ahead. In a few hours, they would be landing on the third planet.
Once again Alveron read the message from Base; then, with a flick of a tentacle that no human eye could have followed, he pressed the "General Attention" button. Through-out the mile-long cylinder that was the Galactic Survey Ship S9000, creatures of many races laid down their work to listen to the words of their captain.
"I know you have all been wondering," began Alveron, "why we were ordered to abandon our survey and to proceed at such an acceleration to this region of space. Some of you may realise what this acceleration means. Our ship is on its last voyage: the gen
erators have already been running for sixty hours at Ultimate Overload. We will be very lucky if we return to Base under our own power.
"We are approaching a sun which is about to become a nova. Detonation will occur in seven hours, with an uncertainty of one hour, leaving us a maximum of only four hours for exploration. There are ten planets in the system about to be destroyed--and there is a civilization on the third. That fact was discovered only a few days ago. It is our tragic mission to contact that doomed race and if possible to save some of its members. I know that there is little we can do in so short a time with this single ship. No other machine can possibly reach the system before detonation occurs."
There was a long pause during which there could have been no sound or movement in the whole of the mighty ship as it sped silently toward the worlds ahead. Alveron knew what his companions were thinking and he tried to answer their unspoken question.
"You will wonder how such a disaster, the greatest of which we have any record, has been allowed to occur. On one point I can reassure you. The fault does not lie with the Survey.
"As you know, with our present fleet of under twelve thousand ships, it is possible to re-examine each of the eight thousand million solar systems in the Galaxy at intervals of about a million years. Most worlds change very little in so short a time as that.
"Less than four hundred thousand years ago, the survey ship S5060 examined the planets of the system we are approaching. It found intelligence on none of them, though the third planet was teeming with animal life and two other worlds had once been inhabited. The usual report was submitted and the system is due for its next examination in six hundred thousand years.
"It now appears that in the incredibly short period since the last survey, intelligent life has appeared in the system. The first intimation of this occurred when unknown radio signals were detected on the planet Kulath in the system X29. 35, Y34. 76, Z27.93. Bearings were taken on them; they were coming from the system ahead.
"Kulath is two hundred light-years from here, so those radio waves had been on their way for two centuries. Thus for at least that period of time a civilization has existed on one of these worlds--a civilization that can generate electromagnetic waves and all that that implies.
"An immediate telescopic examination of the system was made and it was then found that the sun was in the unstable pre-nova stage. Detonation might occur at any moment, and indeed might have done so while the light waves were on their way to Kulath.
"There was a slight delay while the super-velocity scanners on Kulath II were focused onto the system. They showed that the explosion had not yet occurred but was only a few hours away. If Kulath had been a fraction of a light-year further from this sun, we should never have known of its civilization until it had ceased to exist.
"The Administrator of Kulath contacted Sector Base immediately, and I was ordered to proceed to the system at once. Our object is to save what members we can of the doomed race, if indeed there are any left. But we have assumed that a civilization possessing radio could have protected itself against any rise of temperature that may have already occurred.
"This ship and the two tenders will each explore a section of the planet. Commander Torkalee will take Number One, Commander Orostron Number Two. They will have just under four hours in which to explore this world. At the end of that time, they must be back in the ship. It will be leaving then, with or without them. I will give the two commanders detailed instructions in the control room immediately. "That is all. We enter atmosphere in two hours."
On the world once known as Earth the fires were dying out: there was nothing left to burn. The great forests that had swept across the planet like a tidal wave with the passing of the cities were now no more than glowing charcoal and the smoke of their funeral pyres still stained the sky. But the last hours were still to come, for the surface rocks had not yet begun to flow. The continents were dimly visible through the haze, but their outlines meant nothing to the watchers in the approaching ship. The charts they possessed were out of date by a dozen Ice Ages and more deluges than one.
The S9000 had driven past Jupiter and seen at once that no life could exist in those half-gaseous oceans of compressed hydrocarbons, now erupting furiously under the sun's abnormal heat. Mars and the outer planets they had missed, and Alveron realised that the worlds nearer the sun than Earth would be already melting. It was more than likely, he thought sadly, that the tragedy of this unknown race was already finished. Deep in his heart, he thought it might be better so. The ship could only have carried a few hundred survivors, and the problem of selection had been haunting his mind.
Rugon, Chief of Communications and Deputy Captain, came into the control room. For the last hour he had been striving to detect radiation from Earth, but in vain.
"We're too late," he announced gloomily. "I've monitored the whole spectrum and the ether's dead except for our own stations and some two-hundred-year-old programs from Kulath. Nothing in this system is radiating any more."
He moved toward the giant vision screen with a graceful flowing motion that no mere biped could ever hope to imitate. Alveron said nothing; he had been expecting this news.
One entire wall of the control room was taken up by the screen, a great black rectangle that gave an impression of almost infinite depth. Three of Rugon's slender control tentacles, useless for heavy work but incredibly swift at all manipulation, flickered over the selector dials and the screen lit up with a thousand points of light. The star field flowed swiftly past as Rugon adjusted the controls, bringing the projector to bear upon the sun itself.
No man of Earth would have recognised the monstrous shape that filled the screen. The sun's light was white no longer: great violet-blue clouds covered half its surface and from them long streamers of flame were erupting into space. At one point an enormous prominence had reared itself out of the photosphere, far out even into the flickering veils of the corona. It was as though a tree of fire had taken root in the surface of the sun--a tree that stood half a million miles high and whose branches were rivers of flame sweeping through space at hundreds of miles a second.
"I suppose," said Rugon presently, "that you are quite satisfied about the astronomers' calculations. After all—"
"Oh, we're perfectly safe," said Alveron confidently. "I've spoken to Kulath Observatory and they have been making some additional checks through our own instruments. That uncertainty of an hour includes a private safety margin which they won't tell me in case I feel tempted to stay any longer."
He glanced at the instrument board.
"The pilot should have brought us to the atmosphere now. Switch the screen back to the planet, please. Ah, there they go!"
There was a sudden tremor underfoot and a raucous clanging of alarms, instantly stilled. Across the vision screen two slim projectiles dived toward the looming mass of Earth. For a few miles they travelled together, then they separated, one vanishing abruptly as it entered the shadow of the planet.
Slowly the huge mother ship, with its thousand times greater mass, descended after them into the raging storms that already were tearing down the deserted cities of Man.
It was night in the hemispnere over which Orostron drove his tiny command. Like Torkalee, his mission was to photograph and record, and to report progress to the mother ship. The little scout had no room for specimens or passengers. If contact was made with the inhabitants of this world, theS9000 would come at once. There would be no time for parleying. If there was any trouble the rescue would be by force and the explanations could come later.
The ruined land beneath was bathed with an eerie, flickering light, for a great auroral display was raging over half the world. But the image on the vision screen was independent of external light, and it showed clearly a waste of barren rock that seemed never to have known any form of life. Presumably this desert land must come to an end somewhere. Orostron increased his speed to the highest value he dared risk in so dense an atmosphere.
&nb
sp; The machine fled on through the storm, and presently the desert of rock began to climb toward the sky. A great mountain range lay ahead, its peaks lost in the smokeladen clouds. Orostron directed the scanners toward the horizon, and on the vision screen the line of mountains seemed suddenly very close and menacing. He started to climb rapidly. It was difficult to imagine a more unpromising land in which to find civilization and he wondered if it would be wise to change course. He decided against it. Five minutes later, he had his reward.
Miles below lay a decapitated mountain, the whole of its summit sheared away by some tremendous feat of engineering. Rising out of the rock and straddling the artificial plateau was an intricate structure of metal girders, supporting masses of machinery. Orostron brought his ship to a halt and spiralled down toward the mountain.
The slight Doppler blur had now vanished, and the picture on the screen was clear-cut. The latticework was supporting some scores of great metal mirrors, pointing skyward at an angle of forty-five degrees to the horizontal. They were slightly concave, and each had some complicated mechanism at its focus. There seemed something impressive and purposeful about the great array; every mirror was aimed at precisely the same spot in the sky--or beyond.
Orostron turned to his colleagues.
"It looks like some kind of observatory to me," he said. "Have you ever seen anything like it before?"
Klarten, a multitentacled, tripedal creature from a globular cluster at the edge of the Milky Way, had a different theory.
"That's communication equipment. Those reflectors are for focusing electromagnetic beams. I've seen the same kind of installation on a hundred worlds before. It may even be the station that Kulath picked up--though that's rather unlikely, for the beams would be very narrow from mirrors that size."
Beyond the End of Time (1952) Anthology Page 29
