by Max Ehrlich
THE BIG EYE
Ehrlich, Max Simon, 1909-
1950
To Doris, Amy, and Jane
THE BIG EYE
1.
It was eleven o'clock at night, in the month of November, in the year 1960.
The great stratocruiser, eastbound from California, slowly began to lose altitude. David Hughes shivered a little as he stared at the empty seats yawning ahead of him along the lower deck. His shiver was one of relief as much as anything else. Outside of the stewardess, he was the only passenger in the huge, luxurious belly of the plane, built to accommodate seventy. It had been an eerie experience to ride alone that way for almost three thousand miles.
In a few minutes the plane would dip and settle into a long glide for Idlewild Airport. And then he would be in New York -- and with Carol again.
New York.
People spoke of the city in hushed tones these days. David remembered the startled look on the reservation clerk's face, back at Lindbergh Field in San Diego, some five hours ago.
"New York?"
The man had echoed the word, as if in a dream, as though he couldn't believe what he heard. When David turned toward the ramp leading through the gate, he had felt the man's curious eyes on his back. And when he had entered the plane, even the stewardess, a pert little redhead, had stared at him as though he were a little mad.
She had not expected any passengers. Not on the non-stop flight to New York. Not these days.
He had almost felt impelled to explain: "Look, I'm not out of my mind. I didn't expect to be on this plane myself a few hours ago. No one in his right mind would. But it's orders. Something big."
He clutched the bulging brief case close to him and thought of Carol. This was his chance. This was his chance to get her out of New York before it was too late.
The trouble was that it might be too late almost any hour now.
But all that was back on the Coast, five hours ago. Now he pressed his face against the window and looked down at the earth sliding by below. It was drowned in darkness, but this time it wasn't an ordinary kind of darkness. It was blacker, more suffocating. It was a darkness of Fear, of agonizing suspense, of anxious waiting for God knew what.
This was November, in the year 1960.
The stratocruiser's motors changed pitch, became a little louder. David glanced at his wrist watch -- the watch his father had given him just before he had entered Harvard University for his Ph.D. in astronomy.
Eleven-three.
That would be eight-three, Coast time. And just about now, back home on the flat top of isolated Palomar Mountain, six thousand feet above the Pacific, things would be humming. The curved observatory dome would be down, and the great electric driving clock motors would be droning as they set the Big Eye and pointed it up into the thin, clear California air.
The Big Eye was the 200-inch reflector telescope, the biggest in the world, a gigantic marvel of steel and glass, encased in a building fifteen stories high. Working with it was part of David's nightly routine, and he was the envy of every other young research astronomer in the country. Yet he could never get used to the Big Eye; he could never get over his awe of it. Its great mirror alone weighed twenty tons. It could trap and hold the light of a candle sixteen thousand miles away in space. It was a million times sharper than the human eye, and ten thousand times more powerful that the little lens with which Galileo Galilei discovered the moons of Jupiter back in the seventeenth century. It reached twice as far into the hungry vault of the universe as its nearest competitor, far beyond the sun and the planets, into the outer boundaries of space itself.
This was the Big Eye, and it took a big man to run it.
David could almost see Dr. Dawson now, standing on the aerial platform, a pygmy on a dizzy flight, moving upward and outward on curving rails toward the mouth of the giant telescope.
Or perhaps he had already gone down the pipe-rail ladder leading into the top of the yawning tube and was not at his instrument desk in the cistemlike observer's cage. Huddled in his fur coat, heavy gloves, and pull-over wool hat, he would look like some futuristic gnome crouched at the tiny revolving desk up in the top of the Big Eye. It was cold up there in the dome when the roof was down, and the sharp night air blasted downward and in.
David could almost hear the Old Man's gentle, detached voice over the telephone coming to him as he stood at the control switchboards on the lower tier.
"All right, David. All short settings tonight. Give me the first star."
This was his boss, the man who had taken him out of the Harvard Observatory three years ago and brought him to Palomar. This was the man they called the Wizard of Palomar, a world-famous celebrity in his own right, whose personal arena stretched two billion light years into the outer limits of the universe. This was Dr. Charles Dawson, the astronomers' astronomer, who spoke the language of Einstein, Eddington, Bohr, Thompson, Chadwick, Zwicky, and De Broglie; who did magic tricks with the mathematics of quantum mechanics; whose contributions to the theory of the expanding universe had won recognition and backing in the great observatories of the world.
Most people thought the Old Man never took the trouble to step off his airy eyrie at the top of the telescope and survey his own planet. They believed that to him the earth was a kind of globular platform, conveniently located so that, like an acrobat, he could plant his feet upon it and swing in an arc through space and stare at the heavens. The newspapers played him up as a cold fish, an ascetic with a special and remote kingdom of his own, a kind of sky giant to whom the interplay of earthy peoples seemed to be a disorderly and rather messy Lilliputian game.
But, reflected David, they didn't know the Old Man as he did.
In the past month something had happened to Dr. Dawson. He'd been absorbed about something he had caught in the Big Eye, something big, spending every night at the telescope and locking himself in his study almost every day. He hadn't told David what his research line was, but he would, all in good time. It was characteristic of the Old Man never to break anything, no matter how important it was, till he had it all down on photoplates and charts, signed, sealed, and delivered.
But there was no doubt about it. Something was in the wind back at Palomar -- something big.
"Better fasten your safety belt, sir. We're coming in."
The voice of the stewardess, coming from the shadow in the rear of the cabin, startled him, pulled him abruptly out of his reverie. As if in response to her voice, the sign over the pilot's compartment flashed red: "Fasten Safety Belts -- No Smoking." He fumbled with the clasp and felt the belt draw tight just as the stratocruiser hung in space for a moment and then dipped for the descent.
He looked down at the city of New York and drew in his breath at what he saw. He suddenly felt cold; a kind of dread possessed him. No wonder he hadn't been aware that they had reached their destination.
It was unbelievable, unbelievable. . . .
New York, at night, had always been a brilliant sight, man's best imitation of the galaxy of stars. It had always been a be jeweled riot, like a reclining dowager wearing a million diamond tiaras.
Now it was a great eerie blanket of darkness, with only a few illuminated islands breaking through the forbidding expanse.
Mechanically David picked out the islands. The Telecast Building way downtown, a hundred and twenty stories high and the biggest of them all, was still a cluster of light. So was Radio City. But the Empire State Building had only a red cylindrical glow on its topmast to identify it. Some of the main thoroughfares were dimly lit, crisscrossing through the darkness like chains of old gold. As for the rest of the city, there was a solitary light here, another there, and the occasional flicker of automobile headlights crawling along.
That was al
l.
The stewardess came down from the lounge on the upper deck and moved forward up the aisle. She watched her only passenger covertly as she did so, trying to figure him out. She was a woman, and curious, and she was wondering why he was going to New York now, of all times. She had tried to draw him out in the rather desultory conversation they had exchanged on the way in, but he had been very vague. Perhaps it was something in the brief case he guarded so jealously. She had offered to take it from him when he had boarded the plane back in Dago. But he had refused to let go of it, despite the fact that there were no other passengers.
Something Very Important, she decided.
Still, he didn't look important. The name on his baggage tag had read simply: "David Hughes. Palomar Observatory." If he was an astronomer, he certainly didn't look it, not the way she'd pictured the type. He was young, for one thing, about thirty, and good-looking in a quiet sort of way. There was nothing tweedy about him, he didn't wear a Vandyke beard, he didn't need a haircut, and he didn't wear glasses, as you might expect of a scientist. Or at least what you had been taught to expect from the television screen or the movies. He was tall, with a pair of good, broad shoulders, and his clothes were as well cut as those of any of the young men of Hollywood-to-New-York-and-return, who used to ride her flight.
Now the stewardess leaned over and looked out of the window in front of him and said: "The lights get fewer every trip."
"Many people left in the city, Stewardess?"
"Very few, outside of the soldiers. Most New Yorkers, especially those with somewhere to go out in the country, have left. They really started to evacuate about a month ago." She straightened, and now David Hughes saw that there was a flicker of fear in her eyes. "We're canceling all New York-bound flights in a couple of weeks. I hope nothing happens -- before then."
He stared back through the window again. "Funny. About the lights, I mean. They used to warn you that you were coming into the city long before you got there. Now -- it just jumps right up at you all of a sudden. This is worse than the brownout."
"Brownout?"
"Oh." He glanced at the stewardess. "You wouldn't remember. It was during the last war. I was just a kid then, and my dad and I flew to Chicago from the old field -- La Guardia. They had the curtains drawn, and we weren't supposed to look out, but, well -- being a youngster, I peeked. They'd dimmed the lights -- afraid of air raids -- and the city looked pretty dull. But this?"
Idlewild Airport came up suddenly, a huge white wash of light directly ahead and below. A minute or two later, David, unable to find a porter, was carrying his bag up the wind-swept ramp and into the terminal.
Coming out of the night and into the building was like walking into a frightened beehive. The place was jammed with an excited, nervous crowd. Nobody seemed to be sitting down; everyone was milling about. People were crowded around the reservation counters, their faces strained and eager, trying to get passage out of the city. And always the refrain of the weary ticket clerks:
"I'm sorry. . . . We're sold out solid, . . . Every flight booked. . . .All booked up. . . . I'm sorry, I know you've got a priority, but we won't be able to accommodate you for weeks. . . . Yes, sir, if we get a cancellation we'll try to call you. . . . I'm sorry, madam, we're all booked up. . . ."
The voices of the crowd were taut and tense and shrill. They rose and fell in a frightened, unnatural babel. They were urgent, they demanded, they wouldn't take no for an answer.
But the answer was always no.
No one was in the terminal to meet a plane. The airliners coming in from the North, the West, and South were all empty. Only those that were leaving the city were gorged with human freight. The Fear was upon the city and the people of the city. Every face in the terminal was stamped with it, branded with it, so that each was a carbon copy of every other face. The Fear was a kind of Personality, omnipotent, overshadowing all other personalities, making them neutral. It was written in the eyes of the people there, it quavered in their voices, it motivated their restless and agitated movements. It walked with them, stood with them, sat with them, like their own shadows.
It wasn't just a state of mind. It was a Presence. You could almost smell the Fear. It had feel and texture, like a stifling shroud. It had movement, too, like a slow, creeping paralysis, reaching clammy fingers into every nook and crevice of the building, permeating the place.
It was there, and it was inescapable. David felt it seep into his flesh and bones. His skin prickled a little; his mouth suddenly felt dry. He carried his bag to a phone booth and dialed a number.
"David! DAVID!"
It was good, hearing her voice again. He felt a surge of quick hunger. It had been lonely at the observatory, damned lonely. Three months straight, working nights and sleeping days, without a woman. Three months straight -- without Carol.
"Where are you?" She was breathless, almost incoherent. "David, what on earth are you doing in New York? Where are you?"
"At Idlewild Airport. Just got off the plane. I was afraid you'd be down at the studios, broadcasting."
"I just got in, darling. This very minute. The phone rang -- and there you were. But what are you doing in New York, of all places, now?"
David hesitated. His free hand tightened on his brief case in a kind of muscular reflex brought about by Carol's question. He couldn't tell her, he couldn't tell anyone. He had strict orders. Security. He was there for a reason, a reason so big that it frightened him when he even thought about it. He evaded Carol's question. But she was insistent.
"Darling, what are you so mysterious about?"
"I can't tell you."
There was a pause at the other end of the wire. "Oh," she said finally. "It's hush-hush."
"Something like that. But that's only one reason I'm in town. The other is you, Carol. I've been writing and writing you to come to the Coast. Now I'm going to take you back with me."
"But, David, I told you why I can't go. You know why I've got to stay "
"Yes, I know," he interrupted. "But enough's enough. When I fly back I'm taking you with me, and that's final!"
She was silent for a moment. Then: "We'll talk about it when you get here, darling. And, David, David, don't stop anywhere, for anything. Come right up to the apartment."
"Okay. But what about a hotel?"
"I'll make reservations for you at the Rutherford. You can check in there later."
"The Rutherford? Never heard of it."
"It's a small hotel -- one of the few still open in town. All the big ones are closed and boarded up -- the Waldorf, the Park Central, the Ambassador. They've been closing in droves for the last month, ever since the trouble began. And, David "
"Yes?"
"Try to get a cab up here. There's no other way to get around, unless you walk. The subways and busses stopped running a week ago. And oh -- you'll have to walk up ten flights."
"I will? Why?"
"Our elevator man quit on Wednesday. He's visiting a second cousin somewhere out in Kansas." She tried hard to be light. "Everybody's digging up distant relatives out in the country these days."
He laughed and said he was only thirty and he thought he could make the ten flights in slow stages, and hung up. Then he walked through the terminal and out of the gate. A big black air-line limousine waited for him, to take him to the Forty-second Street terminal. The other limousines, coming from the city, were loaded with passengers. But he was the only passenger in his car, headed for New York.
The driver, a big, beefy, red-faced man, raised the telephone receiver on the dashboard and spoke briefly to the terminal in town. Then he swung the big black car onto the Van Wyck Expressway and gave it the gas. Theirs was the only car in the right-hand lane, and they raced along at high speed. But the other lane, moving away from the city, was clogged with cars, bumper to bmnper. Horns honked continuously, and the drivers cut in and out of traffic.
They're all going in the same direction, away from town, thought David, and they're
all in a hell of a hurry.
He stared at the long line of headlights hugging the curves of the parkway like a great illuminated snake.
"They've been heading out on Long Island like this for days," said the driver. "Anywhere, so long as it's away from the city. Babylon, Sayville, Southampton, Montauk Point -- the further, the better. You'll find the same kind of traffic moving into Jersey, up into New England and New York State. And I don't blame 'em."
"Still, you seem to be sticking it out," said David.
"Yeah." The driver lit a cigarette, and his fingers trembled a little. "But don't get me wrong, mister. I'm just as scared as they are. The company's giving me triple pay for staying on the job, and they flew my wife and three kids out of town, but I'm going to quit in a couple of days anyway. I don't like money enough to stick my neck out like this."
