He saw a huge area of water boil in the crumbled ice where the heat had melted it. And he saw something more — the utter incineration of a carpet of malignant brown Arctic Life, forever destroyed by that discharge of electric energy.
Flan’s spirits rose. He imagined that supreme mind winging its way invisibly across the infinite towards the eternal stars. With a steadfast heart, the last determination of a last man to follow the only way of science, he turned towards the red-lighted city in the distance.
Black Saturday
The individual experiences of many thousands of people on that “Black Saturday”, as it has since become known, have been retailed throughout the world. But there is one random experience, that of Robert Maitland and Irene Carr, which has not yet been recorded. In many ways it is typical of millions, and is therefore undistinguished. It is, however, notable in that these two ordinary people, caught in circumstances very similar to millions of others and equally mystified by them, were yet able to deduce for themselves the simple explanation of what had occurred — the explanation that eluded most of us until the scientists, with all the data they needed, presented it to the wondering world.
Think back. Recall your own bafflement, your sense of utter helplessness, your fear, and you may grant the noteworthiness of this particular experience of two people who were no better equipped than millions of their kind to realize the nature of the apparent catastrophe which had overtaken them. Yet, amid all the acclamation we have accorded the scientists, we have entirely overlooked the perseverance and good sense of those few who, like these two, refused to give way to despair until they had tried to work out the problem for themselves.
*
Dr. Robert Maitland lived, at that time, in a modest house in Windermere. His practice was small but full of promise: he was making a name for himself among the villagers and the rustic community of the Lake District. On the morning of July 8th he was awakened early by a telephone call. One of his patients, badly injured in a farming accident the day before, had taken a turn for the worse. In the chill of the summer dawn, Maitland listened to the high, tremulous voice of the stricken man’s wife over the wire. He promised to be over right away, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and set about dressing hastily.
Robert Maitland was not the type that is addicted to nervous fancies. He stood five feet ten, was solidly built, and his lean, swarthy face had strength and responsibility in every line. And yet — he was seeing things. Things that, in the urgency of his dressing and with the purpose of his errand uppermost in his thoughts, did not immediately absorb his attention, yet which vaguely puzzled him.
For instance, as he brushed his thick, dark hair hurriedly before the mirror, he could have sworn that his reflection moved very slightly from side to side. A measure might have shown at least an inch of movement, as if he were swaying on his feet, though he was certain he was standing perfectly still. Then, through his bedroom window, he could see across the rolling pastureland to the distant mountains grouped about Helvellyn; and as he looked it seemed that the mountains glided slowly sideways, then drifted back into their normal position.
There were no warps in the window glass; he was sure of that. The mirror, too, was a good one. Maitland closed his eyes tightly, opened them again, and decided that he felt well enough. It must be some slight liverishness, or perhaps it was just tiredness — he wasn’t as completely awake yet as he’d thought. It would soon pass …
He was, of course, unaware that millions of people all over the world were trying to account for similar manifestations at that precise moment. Nor did he realize that the world’s scientists were even then busily communicating by cable and radio, seeking among themselves some clue to the peculiar phenomena they had observed.
Maitland left the house after scribbling a note to his housekeeper that he had gone on an urgent call. He hurried outside to the garage. It was getting warmer now. The Sun was struggling through the fast dispersing mists from the valleys and there was every sign that the day would be a perfect one. Then, on his way down the narrow drive leading to the garage, Maitland paused and rubbed his forehead as he stared bewildered before him.
The garage building straight ahead, with its bright green doors, was moving over to the right — soundlessly. The fence alongside it was moving, too! This time there was no mistake about it. The garage shifted at least two feet and came to a halt. At the same time the gravel drive bent suddenly, at a spot immediately in front of Maitland, so that he had to take a distinct, sharp corner to continue towards the garage doors.
Uncertain, he went forward slowly, turning sharply to the right even though he knew it was an idiotic thing to do. How foolish it was he discovered when he felt himself stumbling over the edge of the drive on to the flower bed at the side — yet apparently he was still on the gravel pathway. Abruptly he realized that he was faced with the impossible. He seemed to be treading on something he could see only two feet away from him, yet he couldn’t feel the thing his eyes told him he was treading on. Then, even as he wrestled silently with the riddle, the garage and the drive moved back without a sound into their accustomed position — and Maitland stared open-mouthed, conscious of the fact that he was actually standing in the soil of the flower bed two feet away from the drive.
Delusions? Incipient insanity? He considered both possibilities with a cold, professional detachment, but neither seemed to fit. This was something new, vitally different — and as yet beyond explanation. He stepped back gingerly on to the drive, found it solid enough, and went on to open the garage doors. To his relief, everything remained apparently normal as he backed the car out. He left it with the engine ticking over as he closed the doors. Then he clambered back into the driving seat and swerved out on to the road.
To the home of his patient was some twenty miles journey along valley roads, between lofty hills and through quaint old villages. He drove swiftly, but not so swiftly that he could not admire the beauty of the countryside as he went. The Sun now was high above the hills, blazing down with gathering heat, picturing itself in a myriad microscopic reflections from the dew-soaked grass and flowers bordering the road. As he drove on, Maitland forgot his strange visual aberration — until he was cruelly reminded of it.
He had climbed out of the depths of the valley where his home lay. To his right were towering hills with scrubby fields nestling at their bases; to his left was a smooth panorama stretching for fifteen miles across pastureland, tarns, and lush valley sides. Such was the aspect when the narrow road he was traversing bent suddenly, directly ahead of him — not normally, but as he approached it. Simultaneously, the grass bank at the side of the road shifted to accommodate the bend.
Maitland put on the brakes and came to a stop. He knew perfectly well that this road did not bend ahead of him: it went straight on towards Wilmington village. The only curve in it at all was a slight one about half a mile further on, where stood a lonely telephone box. If he went round this pseudo-curve now, he might run over the edge of the road and down the grass slope. No sense in risking that.
“Something’s up!” he muttered, convinced at last that it was not his eyes nor his health that was at fault, but that something in the nature of a mirage — or a series of them — must have occurred in this locality; though what could have caused such a thing was beyond him. Finally, he got out of the car with the intention of studying this particular mirage more closely. But he took only three strides forward before he stopped, tottering dizzily in the middle of the road.
In that moment he was frightened, really scared, as he had never been before. For all of a sudden everything about him seemed to have gone completely crazy. The whole landscape as far as lie could see was shifting violently. The fifteen-miles stretch of country before him was sweeping sideways at diabolical speed — shearing off to the west as a towering wall of blackness appeared to race in from the east, moving everything before it!
Maitland just stood and stared, petrified. There was no sound as the
amazing thing occurred; only the titanic shadow which raced towards him with the speed of a total eclipse. Within a few seconds it passed over him, and the bent road ahead was blotted from sight. He stood, now, drenched in darkness, feeling no other sensation but a supreme dread.
It was several seconds before he could recover himself sufficiently to move, and then he began to retrace his steps slowly and cautiously towards the car, hands outstretched gropingly before him. Not a thing was visible — except the Sun, shining high in a sky still strangely blue! Shining, yet failing to light anything …
Feeling his way forward, he came up against the bonnet of the car and clung to it gratefully. He couldn’t see even the dimmest outline of the car itself.
He stood and gazed up at the Sun, thankful that it, at least, held to normalcy but this relief was soon denied. One moment it was there in the dark blue sky; the next, it had started to sink towards the western horizon with incredible speed. It dropped like a meteor, vanished in the all-enveloping blackness that formed the limits of the landscape, and was gone.
Now it was utterly dark. Dreadfully, horribly dark …
*
There was something wrong out there in the depths of space; something so incredibly strange that the scientists who tried to examine the mystery found their accumulated centuries of knowledge faltering. It had begun with the amazing antics of the stars neighboring on the Milky Way. Fixed apparently for eternities of time in their courses, arranged much as the ancients had seen them when they stared up at them uncomprehending, they had now completely changed position — and in some cases disappeared entirely. Sagittarius, Hercules, Antares, Cepheus — they were visibly shifting across the wastes of heaven, moving at such an unthinkable velocity that the minds of the watching astronomers reeled, used though they were to cosmic speeds. And the Milky Way itself was shifting, bearing towards the westernmost limb of the sky.
The amazing part of the phenomenon, apart from its very occurrence, was the suddenness with which it had developed. On the night of July 7th the world’s observatories had noticed nothing unusual. But on the 8th, between the hours of midnight and dawn, these fantastic perambulations of the stars were only too evident. Though it just couldn’t be, because it shattered every basic law of astronomy. Yet it was … And from the space which the stars had deserted gleamed new and unknown constellations, hosts of heaven that made complete chaos of the world’s star-maps.
The astronomers immediately got in touch with one another and discussed the problem. All had to admit themselves baffled. But, hesitating to make the same admission to their respective governments, they agreed to make no announcement of their startling observations until they had been able to study the phenomenon further and consider the enigma in the light of additional data. Given time, they agreed, they might find something to account for it. And that is where they made their great mistake.
Earth, in her majestic million-miles-a-minute sweep through the universe, was moving irresistibly towards that part of the heavens whose aspects had changed so mysteriously. And, although at that time the fact could not be detected, the disturbance — the Fault — was also moving towards Earth at a similar speed. So the whole of Earth’s peoples had been caught unaware by the Fault.
*
The human mind, psychologists tell us, can absorb the most violent of shocks and still function. But it was a long time before Maitland found he could think intelligently, without letting blind panic scatter his half-formed thoughts. As he struggled to banish his primitive fears he searched the blackness around him, still clinging to the car bonnet, his only link with reality.
Here on the ground the darkness was absolute, and he could not discern the slightest hint of anything. But up in the sky from which the Sun had streaked, minutes before, there were now myriads of stars! To Maitland, who had no precise astronomical knowledge, these stars looked normal enough; but an expert would have noticed at once that not many of them were familiar and that the few recognizable constellations were far away from their customary positions.
Night, when it should be 9 a.m.? A Sun that disappeared from the sky in a flash? This was a problem beyond all understanding. Yet Maitland knew the elementary fact that the sudden shifting of such a vast body as the Sun should cause cataclysmic disturbances, perhaps throw Earth right out of its orbit. And yet everything was quite steady, without even the suggestion of a tremor. This point resolved, he felt a little better. He was still alive, with his feet on solid ground. But he was submerged in the inexplicable —
He stopped suddenly, listening. There were sounds ahead of him. Uneasy feet shambling over the gravel of the road.
“Hullo there!” he called.
“Hullo!” It was a girl’s voice that answered. It was shaken, yet somehow filled with unquenchable courage.
“I’m here.” Maitland shouted. “Come towards my voice.”
The halting steps advanced again, but nothing came out of the darkness. That was the queer thing. Though there were stars overhead, Earth lay in an abyss from which every spark of light had gone. Maitland groped with both hands as the footsteps came nearer.
“Thank heaven I’ve — found somebody,” the girl faltered, close by his ear. “I was just wondering what to do. What’s — what’s happened?”
“You’re asking me!” he laughed. “I’m as bewildered — and probably as scared — as you. I — er — I’m Dr. Maitland, of Windermere,” he said as the girl’s outstretched hand gripped his arm.
“I’m Irene Carr.” They clasped hands in the darkness. “This is the last day of my holiday — Last Day, indeed! I was on a hike to Rydal Water when — it — happened. The — the Sun’s gone out, hasn’t it? That’s what it must mean! I know scientists have said something like this would happen one day.”
“Yes, but not like this!” Maitland protested. “That must be a slow process, over millions of years. This is something different — and quite sudden! We had no warning …”
They were silent, oppressed by the unfathomable. Maitland found himself collected enough, now, to wonder with intense curiosity what the girl looked like. He was intrigued by her voice: it was slow and mellow with a slight Midlands accent, and he knew instinctively that she was young and possibly attractive. If only he could see.
“I know!” he said suddenly, and felt in his pocket for his cigarette lighter. He flicked it, but the flint made no sparks. Then he gave a yelp as, in feeling round the wick, he burned his fingers in invisible flame.
“It is working, then?” Irene Carr whispered in wonder, when he explained what had happened. “Yet we can’t see it … Do you suppose we’ve — gone blind?”
“With the stars visible up there?”
“I hadn’t noticed —” She gave a little gasp of surprise. “Yes, there are stars — billions of them. But no Sun —”
“And yet …” Maitland drew a deep breath and considered. “And yet,” he went on, awed, “I can feel the Sun’s heat on the back of my neck. Just as though it’s still there.”
The girl was silent as she evidently checked up on his extraordinary finding. He didn’t know whether to believe it himself until she said simply:
“You’re right. There is heat. I can feel it, too, on the backs of my hands. Yet there’s no Sun!”
It struck Maitland what an impossible conversation they were keeping up. At the back of his mind, too, was the remembrance of a man who lay on a bed in the dark some ten miles away.
“I wonder if I can drive the car?” he said abruptly. “Let’s see what we can do. There is a car here, you know!” He thumped the bonnet with his fist.
“I’ll take your word for it,” the girl answered, still trying to sound calm.
Maitland took her arm and they moved cautiously together over the rough surface of the roadway, felt their way round to the car door and clambered inside. Here, with the roof of the car shutting out the stars above, the darkness was crushing; it wasn’t even possible to see the outlines of the windows. But
by stooping they could see part of the starry sky through the glass, and Maitland thought he caught a brief glimpse of the girl’s head silhouetted against the stars, though the outline was blurred and unreal. He pressed the self-starter, and the engine throbbed immediately — a good, wholesome sound in a world that no longer made sense. Then he switched on the headlamp, but not the remotest suggestion of light appeared.
“No good.” He switched off. “Can’t drive in this.”
They both sat in silence for a while, listening to each other’s breathing.
“You know,” the girl said presently, “it’s funny. I’ve read stories where this sort of thing happens, and everything turns out all right. But when it happens to you, when everything you’ve known and trusted lets you down and leaves you blind and bewildered, you just don’t know what to do. I suppose,” she went on musingly, her voice steadier as she got to grips with the problem, “that there is an answer?”
“A scientist might have one,” Maitland suggested. “I’m not a scientist; I’m a doctor.”
“I’m a school teacher … But, look, we’ve both got a fair degree of intelligence. We can reason this thing out, can’t we?”
Maitland didn’t answer. Thoughts were hurrying through his mind. Memory was at work, piecing together the incredible events of the morning. The mirror reflection that trembled; the garage that shifted position; the landscape that had been swept sideways by an advancing wall of darkness …
“All right, Miss Carr. We —”
“I’d rather you called me Irene. After all, we’re in this together.”
“Irene it is, then — and mine’s Bob. As you say, here we are, two people without any specialized knowledge, but familiar with rudimentary facts. You will be especially, as a teacher. Now, if the Sun had really plunged into the deeper universe as it appeared to do, the Earth and all neighboring planets would have been wiped out in the terrific gravitational change. But that hasn’t happened. We are quite safe and undisturbed; the world still moves in its proper orbit. And a means that the Sun’s dive into obscurity was a — a delusion.”
John Russell Fearn Omnibus Page 34
