by Earl
And Master Ichnor vanished with it.
LIFE DISINHERITED
A gripping picture of man under the influence of the Red Spot on Jupiter
MANKIND has a strange faith that its career on Earth will endure for unthinkable ages—a belief that worldly dooms are fantastic conceptions formed by overimaginative minds. Not one person in a million ever stops to think that there might be such a catastrophe. All are sure that the Sun will rise and set over an industrious world of humans, good and bad, for—oh, for millions of years.
Does mankind forget that only 50,000 years ago there had been a devastating ice age, which veils from us to-day any knowledge of a previous civilization that also said, “The world will go on as it is for—oh, for millions of years” ?
An ice age is only one of many other possible holocausts. An appreciable change in the percentage of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere would precipitate new conditions of frightful magnitude. An overabundance of cosmic rays, perhaps shielded from us by the mysterious Heaviside Layer, would undoubtedly wreak great havoc. A chance strain of Earth’s crust, bringing into conjunction an ocean and the molten interior, would make our world writhe like a scalded cat.
There might be another sinking of Atlantis, a second deluge, a quirk of evolution that would give the insects heritage of Earth, an uncatalogued menace from space—any of a number of things. And any of these might wipe out mankind, partially or totally.
Mankind, so far as it knows, has been dominant on Earth for some 20,000 years. 20,000 years is a second in the timepiece of the cosmos. For 20,000 years the tremendous, mysterious forces in the universe have let us in peace to pursue our confident way.
What gives us the right to say that even to-morrow our doom is not at hand?
WALWIN HOFFMAN painted the gold-striped bass which were clustered in a small swarm outside the bathysphere’s port window. But after a moment his swift brush strokes stopped. He frowned.
What was that curious red glow that suffused the water around him? It changed the gold to copper, the delicate green to a blotchy brown. And it intensified his scarlets to hideous, bloody-looking smears. He threw down his brush in disgust.
“Damn that red reflection,” he said. He had noticed it for the past week, each day getting stronger and more bothersome.
“Finny!” he called up the air tube. “Finny, you snoring wretch——”
“I’m not sleeping, sir,” came the answer. “Not to-day. I don’t like that red color in the sky. I can’t sleep while that’s going on. I don’t like it, sir.”
Down below Walwin reflected a moment. Finny’s voice had a distinct note of uneasiness in it. “Haul me up, Finny,” he ordered finally.
Up above on the huge raft, Finny pulled valiantly on the rope and raised the small bathysphere, which was just a little more than sea water in density. It came up faster than it ever had before. The round, upper side came up in the cutaway center of the raft. Finny anchored it there, after carefully coiling the double tube of thick rubber. Then he helped Walwin swing back the hatchway plate, which had been held shut by water pressure and a simple bolt lock on the inside.
Finny’s face, usually bland, had a queer, scared look in it, accentuated by the odd effect of the red glow on his florid skin.
Walwin gazed up into the sky, squinting against the bright Sunlight. The red glow seemed to come from everywhere. It masked the blue of the sky; made it a deep, poisonous purple, and whatever the light touched was crimson. It was ominous, somehow.
Transferring his paintings to the launch, Walwin started the motor, while Finny pulled up the anchors at the four corners of the raft. The young artist put the engine in gear and, slowly, the whole outfit—raft, bathysphere, and Finny—was towed toward shore. They seemed to move in a sea of red ink.
An hour later they had tied the raft at their little private dock in a small landlocked bay, and made their way through a tree-shaded lane toward the large, dilapidated house that Walwin had chosen to live in.
Already disgruntled, Walwin swore eloquently when he found his car with two flat tires. One flat tire might not have stopped him. But two flat tires!
“Finny,” said Walwin later, as the other came in with a jug of cool lemonade, “I saw you rolling your witches’ bones this morning—don’t deny it. What did they tell you—about this red glow thing?”
Finny looked at the artist solemnly. “I’m not superstitious, mind you, sir, but there’s blood coming to the Earth! There’s going to be a big war, or hurricane, or—or earthquake. Yes, sir.”
He left, more solemn than Walwin had ever seen him in the two years he had been his personal valet and general handy man.
Walwin laughed. But somehow, 3II through the evening of brooding Moonlessness and scarlet darkness, he could hot shake Finny’s disquieting predictions from his mind. He started uneasily when, from the kitchen, he heard the soft tattoo of Finny’s prophecy bones on the hard floor.
“To-morrow evening,” Walwin promised himself, “I’ll drive to town and find out——”
SEVEN MONTHS BEFORE, word had flashed around the civilized world that the Great Red Spot of Jupiter, observed for 105 years, had disappeared!
No one, it seems, had actually seen the Red Spot go. But one person, an amateur astronomer with a small, six-inch refractor, had been peering at the belted image of Jupiter and had seen the Red Spot bunch up like a bubble and slowly shift position across the planet’s disk. He had then turned away from the lens, sure that sleeplessness and eyestrain were playing him tricks. He had not looked again till an hour later, to find the Red Spot gone entirely.
The officials of Yerkes Observatory, receiving his telegram, could not afford to ignore the startling message. The indefatigable amateurs seemed to see everything else first—new comets, novae, etc—so it was just possible——
The image of Jupiter shimmered there in the lens, belted and storm-ridden, but without its Great Red Spot! It had been there the night before, the hour before, but now it was gone! And in its place was a raging, swirling tempest of doudy gases, as the atmosphere of Jupiter filled the gap.
Yeirkes flashed the word that ran around the world with almost the speed of light itself, by telephone, telegraph and radio. Immediately, every telescope on the night side of Earth at the time had swung its lens or mirror toward Jupiter. One and all they saw it was true. The Red Spot, undeniably, wasn’t there!
That was a night long to be remembered. Newspaper offices became madhouses. Radio programs were cut off abruptly to announce the amazing news. With true news instinct, every public news conveyance played the thing up till the masses were more excited about it than the astronomers themselves. Full-page pictures were printed of Jupiter, with huge, white Xs to show where the Red Spot had been. Inevitably, nonsense was printed by the mile, speculating as to what had happened up there on Jupiter, and comparing it to one of Earth’s oceans suddenly rushing up and dancing away.
For a week the headline hurlers played the event up, till it died of sheer overnutrition. With a sudden and natural reaction, the public got sick of it, and the vanishing Red Spot slid from the front page to the back filler spots.
For almost 200 days it was forgotten by the public. Then one day the Red Spot jumped back into the headlines, but in a new, more significant way——
IN THE MEANTIME, the world of science had puzzled mightily over the phenomenon. Astronomers and physicists scratched their heads for an explanation. Speculation ran the gamut of plausibility and then expanded into the field of incredulity. The Great Red Spot, 30,000 miles long and 7,000 miles wide, and perhaps 1,000 miles deep, had disappeared from Jupiter, true—but how?
Three theories sprang up, and the scientists took sides, each to his own inclination. One was that the Red Spot had not left Jupiter at all, but had simply burst, like a pricked balloon, and diffused itself into the general atmosphere. The Red Spot had always been understood to be an area of violently turbulent storm gases, somehow disconnected from the rest o
f the planet’s atmosphere.
The second theory was that the Red Spot had left Jupiter all right, but had then burst and diffused out in space, under stress of the planet’s great gravitation. Almost as though Jupiter had been a sentient being and had cast off a boil or canker sore.
The third theory was that the Red Spot, attaining the escape velocity of forty miles per second, had left altogether. This theory gained the least adherents and was attacked most bitterly.
How could this gigantic bubble of heavy gas, at least as large as Earth in volume, break away from the powerful gravitation of Jupiter? It required a velocity of about 140,000 miles an hour to escape, and its only natural velocity—from rotation with the planet—was one fifth that. What gigantic force could have increased the Red Spot’s speed fivefold and thus allowed it to break free of the planet?
And so the scientific world argued the matter for seven months, long after the public had forgotten even the jokes about it. And in the seven months, while the Earthlings bickered, the cosmos opened Act II of its stupendous drama.
And Act II was to be much shorter than Act I—a few days instead of seven months.
II.
JOHN APPLETON watched the overalled worker smooth the last square foot of fresh plaster.
“There you are,” said the latter. “It’s the first time in my life that I’ve plastered a room from ceiling to floor, but, mister, that’s your affair.”
The workman gathered up his implements, took the money handed him and left, grinning openly.
“All right,” said Appleton, swinging around to his friend, “I suppose you think I’m crazy, too?”
The friend looked at him curiously. “Appleton, you’re a good man, and reasonably sane, but when you go to having a room of your summer cabin completely plastered off——”
The rest was eloquently unvoiced. Appleton spoke calmly, unembarrassed, “That’s not all. I’m going to have this one window nailed shut and sealed off with putty. I’m going to have several square yards of leather handy to fit the door so it’s air-tight. Lastly, I’m going to stock this room with food and water and—compressed oxygen.”
“I see,” said the friend, not surprised. “You’re taking stock in certain wild stories that have gone about ever since the Red Spot of Jupiter vanished.” Appleton nodded. A writer of scientific articles for the upper half of the lay mind, and considered a mere dabbler in science, he saw, or thought he saw, a significance that escaped every one else. Not having his nose too close to the fundamentals, and possessed of a wide range of knowledge, he had looked over the whole situation, always scratching, with the writer’s instinct, for something underneath.
Three months after the event of Jupiter’s loss of its Red Spot he had struck something—and gasped. At the time the Red Spot had disappeared, Jupiter had been turned at a definite angle toward Earth—in the direction, in fact, of Earth’s orbit. That meant—if the Red Spot had left Jupiter as a sort of planetoid—it would eventually reach Earth’s orbit, depending on certain factors of relative speed. And a certain speed, one which was wholly feasible, would bring the object to Earth’s orbit, when Earth was there at that spot!
A quick check-up showed that neither Mars nor any of the asteroids was in between. The Red Spot—if it were really plunging through space like a cannon ball—might conceivably collide with Earth!
When, a month before the Red Spot dramatically reappeared, he read of amateur astronomers’ reports of a misty red ball approaching Earth, he was convinced in his own mind that the collision would occur. He wrote an article, suitably embellished with his own figures and speculations, announcing this astounding thing, but no one would accept or publish it, not even a newspaper.
He was not later dismayed to find out that the amateurs who had sighted the almost invisible ball of red mist had plotted a course that would take it far beyond, and never near, Earth. It was their figuring of the course of the red mist ball against his own figuring of its aim at the time of departure, and he preferred to accept the latter. These, naturally, were in error.
And so, although his figures and half proofs were all wrong, he knew it would happen. Knew it so positively that he was taking no chance of being caught unawares.
“Any day now,” said Appleton to his friend, “the big telescopes are going to sight the ball of red mist which is approaching Earth. It won’t be long after that, either, that it will grow and grow, fill the sky, and finally——”
But the friend did not wait to hear any more. His car roared away and down the highway. Appleton, left to himself, looked over the Upper Hudson unseeingly. His mind was picturing a gray-green ball hanging in space, toward which was speeding a world-sized globe of heavy mist, crimson in the bright light of the Sun——
RED CLOUD APPROACHES EARTH!
This was the headline that blared forth its voiceless thunder, days in advance of the object’s visibility to the naked eye. And underneath, the column head:
Astronomers say it may be linked to mysterious disappearance of Red Spot of Jupiter seven months ago!
After this, people everywhere discussed it in awed tones, for it was the most gigantic celestial phenomenon ever to occur—far outrivaling eclipses, Sun spots, novae, and such. Scientists, and especially astronomers, were talking of nothing else.
Official recognition of the ball of red mist came about a month after the amateurs had announced it. The large telescopes, trained on the spot designated by the amateurs who knew their astronomy, never sighted the object, simply because their large magnification diffused the image beyond the point of visibility. Comets’ tails, in the same manner, are best seen in small telescopes.
But when the huge red cloud had approached within 25,000,000 miles, it became a certainty, rather than a phantom improbability, like the canals of Mars. Immediately the public news machines began grinding out large type. And the masses were informed that the Red Spot, which had orphaned itself from Jupiter, was now in Earth’s vicinity. For three days the public was entertained by rag bombasticness, and was told that perhaps in another day the Red Comet would become visible to the unaided eye.
There was no sign of fear till this point. The day of fear over comets and mysterious clouds in the sky had passed a half century before. The cry of “Wolf!” failed to arouse excitement. Then, on the very night that the Red Cloud became visible to sharp eyes, as a faintly shimmering tuft of rose cotton in the sky, wires hummed—and were pulled—and a rigid censorship blanketed all public news.
The public, next morning, gasped in dismay to find news about the marvelous Red Cloud off the front page. The items, when found in the back, were disappointing. Before they had been elaborate, detailed, flamboyantly tabloid. But now, even though the Red Cloud had approached closer and become bigger news, the accounts had become smaller, and carefully worded to mitigate interest.
They avoided any mention of the Red Cloud’s distance from Earth, or its direction of motion. It was obvious that a heavy censorship had been laid down—censorship as strong, or stronger, than that of wartime.
“Something is wrong!” every one cried, and the effect among the masses was second only to what the news itself, told truthfully, would have made.
IN SCIENTIFIC and authoritative channels, bedlam reigned. For it was now inescapable that the Red Cloud, which was the Red Spot come all the way from Jupiter in the past seven months, was going to collide with Earth! What made it so incredible was that weeks before, according to the amateurs’ figures, the Red Cloud’s course would take it no nearer than about 20,000,000 miles.
“What in Heaven’s name,” cried every scientist, “made that Red Cloud actually turn and plunge toward Earth!”
And saying this, each scientist set about to find the answer. And, in finding the answer, they found something worse.
Spectroscopic tests immediately showed that the Red Cloud was a hell brew of bromine, cyanogen and a dozen other deadly gases. The cold of space had caused condensation and contraction, but th
e internal heat produced by this had kept the Red Cloud in its gaseous form. Perhaps in a few years it might have condensed to a solid, or dissipated away, but at present it was a globe of hot and virulent poisons—and heading straight for Earth!
Tentative figures, scrawled by shaking hands, showed the total volume and quantity to be enough to saturate Earth’s entire atmosphere. Billions of tons of poison gas were to be poured over Earth, and the only result could be universal death.
With this realization, the scientists went on with their work like automatons. They went on recording data about the Red Cloud, as though their lives depended on it, when all the while their lives were forfeit. One thing they were able to figure—which perhaps gave a momentary thrill of pride—was the explanation of the Red Spot leaving Jupiter, and its strange turning in space to strike Earth.
It was not, as the newspapers might have speculated, because an alien race had fired it as a Cyclopean projectile toward Earth, aiming it by some cosmical radio control. It was rather to be explained that the Red Spot, in rotating at a different speed than either the planet or the rest of the atmosphere, had, by friction, become a highly electrified unit. The charge had built up enough since its formation, over a century before, to one day propel it away from the neutral planet, like a pith bait repelled by any charged object. The force of expulsion from Jupiter’s surface had been enough to give it a velocity of 140,000 miles an hour, thus freeing it of the planet entirely.
Only a very malign fate could have aimed this accidental projectile directly on Earth, or on any other planet. The laws of chance were overwhelmingly against it.
But the laws of chance could not prevent the positively charged Red Cloud from being attracted by the neutral Earth, in an electrical experiment on a macrocosmic scale!
