_XVIII_
THE GREEN STAR
The world was held in a savage gloom--cold and intolerable. Outside,all was quiet--quiet! From the dark room behind me, came the occasional,soft thud[10] of falling matter--fragments of rotting stone. So timepassed, and night grasped the world, wrapping it in wrappings ofimpenetrable blackness.
There was no night-sky, as we know it. Even the few straggling starshad vanished, conclusively. I might have been in a shuttered room,without a light; for all that I could see. Only, in the impalpablenessof gloom, opposite, burnt that vast, encircling hair of dull fire.Beyond this, there was no ray in all the vastitude of night thatsurrounded me; save that, far in the North, that soft, mistlike glowstill shone.
Silently, years moved on. What period of time passed, I shall neverknow. It seemed to me, waiting there, that eternities came and went,stealthily; and still I watched. I could see only the glow of the sun'sedge, at times; for now, it had commenced to come and go--lighting up awhile, and again becoming extinguished.
All at once, during one of these periods of life, a sudden flame cutacross the night--a quick glare that lit up the dead earth, shortly;giving me a glimpse of its flat lonesomeness. The light appeared to comefrom the sun--shooting out from somewhere near its center, diagonally. Amoment, I gazed, startled. Then the leaping flame sank, and the gloomfell again. But now it was not so dark; and the sun was belted by a thinline of vivid, white light. I stared, intently. Had a volcano broken outon the sun? Yet, I negatived the thought, as soon as formed. I felt thatthe light had been far too intensely white, and large, for such a cause.
Another idea there was, that suggested itself to me. It was, that oneof the inner planets had fallen into the sun--becoming incandescent,under that impact. This theory appealed to me, as being more plausible,and accounting more satisfactorily for the extraordinary size andbrilliance of the blaze, that had lit up the dead world, sounexpectedly.
Full of interest and emotion, I stared, across the darkness, at thatline of white fire, cutting the night. One thing it told to me,unmistakably: the sun was yet rotating at an enormous speed.[11] Thus, Iknew that the years were still fleeting at an incalculable rate; thoughso far as the earth was concerned, life, and light, and time, werethings belonging to a period lost in the long gone ages.
After that one burst of flame, the light had shown, only as anencircling band of bright fire. Now, however, as I watched, it beganslowly to sink into a ruddy tint, and, later, to a dark, copper-redcolor; much as the sun had done. Presently, it sank to a deeper hue;and, in a still further space of time, it began to fluctuate; havingperiods of glowing, and anon, dying. Thus, after a great while, itdisappeared.
Long before this, the smoldering edge of the sun had deadened intoblackness. And so, in that supremely future time, the world, dark andintensely silent, rode on its gloomy orbit around the ponderous mass ofthe dead sun.
My thoughts, at this period, can be scarcely described. At first, theywere chaotic and wanting in coherence. But, later, as the ages came andwent, my soul seemed to imbibe the very essence of the oppressivesolitude and dreariness, that held the earth.
With this feeling, there came a wonderful clearness of thought, and Irealized, despairingly, that the world might wander for ever, throughthat enormous night. For a while, the unwholesome idea filled me, with asensation of overbearing desolation; so that I could have cried like achild. In time, however, this feeling grew, almost insensibly, less, andan unreasoning hope possessed me. Patiently, I waited.
From time to time, the noise of dropping particles, behind in the room,came dully to my ears. Once, I heard a loud crash, and turned,instinctively, to look; forgetting, for the moment, the impenetrablenight in which every detail was submerged. In a while, my gaze soughtthe heavens; turning, unconsciously, toward the North. Yes, the nebulousglow still showed. Indeed, I could have almost imagined that it lookedsomewhat plainer. For a long time, I kept my gaze fixed upon it;feeling, in my lonely soul, that its soft haze was, in some way, a tiewith the past. Strange, the trifles from which one can suck comfort! Andyet, had I but known--But I shall come to that in its proper time.
For a very long space, I watched, without experiencing any of thedesire for sleep, that would so soon have visited me in the old-earthdays. How I should have welcomed it; if only to have passed the time,away from my perplexities and thoughts.
Several times, the comfortless sound of some great piece of masonryfalling, disturbed my meditations; and, once, it seemed I could hearwhispering in the room, behind me. Yet it was utterly useless to try tosee anything. Such blackness, as existed, scarcely can be conceived. Itwas palpable, and hideously brutal to the sense; as though somethingdead, pressed up against me--something soft, and icily cold.
Under all this, there grew up within my mind, a great and overwhelmingdistress of uneasiness, that left me, but to drop me into anuncomfortable brooding. I felt that I must fight against it; and,presently, hoping to distract my thoughts, I turned to the window, andlooked up toward the North, in search of the nebulous whiteness, which,still, I believed to be the far and misty glowing of the universe we hadleft. Even as I raised my eyes, I was thrilled with a feeling of wonder;for, now, the hazy light had resolved into a single, great star, ofvivid green.
As I stared, astonished, the thought flashed into my mind; that theearth must be traveling toward the star; not away, as I had imagined.Next, that it could not be the universe the earth had left; but,possibly, an outlying star, belonging to some vast star-cluster, hiddenin the enormous depths of space. With a sense of commingled awe andcuriosity, I watched it, wondering what new thing was to be revealedto me.
For a while, vague thoughts and speculations occupied me, during whichmy gaze dwelt insatiably upon that one spot of light, in the otherwisepitlike darkness. Hope grew up within me, banishing the oppression ofdespair, that had seemed to stifle me. Wherever the earth was traveling,it was, at least, going once more toward the realms of light. Light! Onemust spend an eternity wrapped in soundless night, to understand thefull horror of being without it.
Slowly, but surely, the star grew upon my vision, until, in time, itshone as brightly as had the planet Jupiter, in the old-earth days. Withincreased size, its color became more impressive; reminding me of a hugeemerald, scintillating rays of fire across the world.
Years fled away in silence, and the green star grew into a great splashof flame in the sky. A little later, I saw a thing that filled me withamazement. It was the ghostly outline of a vast crescent, in the night;a gigantic new moon, seeming to be growing out of the surrounding gloom.Utterly bemused, I stared at it. It appeared to be quiteclose--comparatively; and I puzzled to understand how the earth had comeso near to it, without my having seen it before.
The light, thrown by the star, grew stronger; and, presently, I wasaware that it was possible to see the earthscape again; thoughindistinctly. Awhile, I stared, trying to make out whether I coulddistinguish any detail of the world's surface, but I found the lightinsufficient. In a little, I gave up the attempt, and glanced once moretoward the star. Even in the short space, that my attention had beendiverted, it had increased considerably, and seemed now, to mybewildered sight, about a quarter of the size of the full moon. Thelight it threw, was extraordinarily powerful; yet its color was soabominably unfamiliar, that such of the world as I could see, showedunreal; more as though I looked out upon a landscape of shadow, thanaught else.
All this time, the great crescent was increasing in brightness, andbegan, now, to shine with a perceptible shade of green. Steadily, thestar increased in size and brilliancy, until it showed, fully as largeas half a full moon; and, as it grew greater and brighter, so did thevast crescent throw out more and more light, though of an ever deepeninghue of green. Under the combined blaze of their radiances, thewilderness that stretched before me, became steadily more visible. Soon,I seemed able to stare across the whole world, which now appeared,beneath the strange light, terrible in its cold and awful, flatdreariness.
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It was a little later, that my attention was drawn to the fact, thatthe great star of green flame, was slowly sinking out of the North,toward the East. At first, I could scarcely believe that I saw aright;but soon there could be no doubt that it was so. Gradually, it sank,and, as it fell, the vast crescent of glowing green, began to dwindleand dwindle, until it became a mere arc of light, against the lividcolored sky. Later it vanished, disappearing in the self-same spot fromwhich I had seen it slowly emerge.
By this time, the star had come to within some thirty degrees of thehidden horizon. In size it could now have rivaled the moon at its full;though, even yet, I could not distinguish its disk. This fact led me toconceive that it was, still, an extraordinary distance away; and, thisbeing so, I knew that its size must be huge, beyond the conception ofman to understand or imagine.
Suddenly, as I watched, the lower edge of the star vanished--cut by astraight, dark line. A minute--or a century--passed, and it dippedlower, until the half of it had disappeared from sight. Far away out onthe great plain, I saw a monstrous shadow blotting it out, and advancingswiftly. Only a third of the star was visible now. Then, like a flash,the solution of this extraordinary phenomenon revealed itself to me. Thestar was sinking behind the enormous mass of the dead sun. Or rather,the sun--obedient to its attraction--was rising toward it,[12] with theearth following in its trail. As these thoughts expanded in my mind, thestar vanished; being completely hidden by the tremendous bulk of thesun. Over the earth there fell, once more, the brooding night.
With the darkness, came an intolerable feeling of loneliness and dread.For the first time, I thought of the Pit, and its inmates. After that,there rose in my memory the still more terrible Thing, that had hauntedthe shores of the Sea of Sleep, and lurked in the shadows of this oldbuilding. Where were they? I wondered--and shivered with miserablethoughts. For a time, fear held me, and I prayed, wildly andincoherently, for some ray of light with which to dispel the coldblackness that enveloped the world.
How long I waited, it is impossible to say--certainly for a very greatperiod. Then, all at once, I saw a loom of light shine out ahead.Gradually, it became more distinct. Suddenly, a ray of vivid green,flashed across the darkness. At the same moment, I saw a thin line oflivid flame, far in the night. An instant, it seemed, and it had growninto a great clot of fire; beneath which, the world lay bathed in ablaze of emerald green light. Steadily it grew, until, presently, thewhole of the green star had come into sight again. But now, it could bescarcely called a star; for it had increased to vast proportions, beingincomparably greater than the sun had been in the olden time.
"Then, as I stared, I became aware that I could see the edge of thelifeless sun, glowing like a great crescent-moon. Slowly, its lightedsurface, broadened out to me, until half of its diameter was visible;and the star began to drop away on my right. Time passed, and the earthmoved on, slowly traversing the tremendous face of the dead sun." [13]
Gradually, as the earth traveled forward, the star fell still more tothe right; until, at last, it shone on the back of the house, sending aflood of broken rays, in through the skeleton-like walls. Glancingupward, I saw that much of the ceiling had vanished, enabling me to seethat the upper storeys were even more decayed. The roof had, evidently,gone entirely; and I could see the green effulgence of the Starlightshining in, slantingly.
The House on the Borderland Page 19
