The Universe Wreckers
Chapter 1 A Warning of Doom
It was on the third day of May, 1994, that the world received its first news of the strange behavior of the sun. That first news was contained in a brief message sent out from the North American Observatory, in upper New York, and signed by Dr. Herbert Marlin, the observatory's head. It stated that within the last twenty-four hours a slight increase had been detected in the sun's rotatory speed, or rate of spin, and that while that increase might only be an apparent one, it was being further studied. That brief first message was broadcast, a few hours later, from the Intelligence Bureau of the World Government, in New York. It was I, Walter Hunt, who supervised the broadcasting of that message at the Intelligence Bureau, and I remember that it seemed to me of so little general interest that I ordered it sent out on the scientific-news wave rather than on the general-news wave.
Late on the next day, however—the 4th—there came another report from the North American Observatory in which Dr. Marlin stated that he and his first assistant, an astronomical student named Randall, had checked their observations in the intervening hours and had found that there was in reality a measurable increase in the sun's rotatory speed, an increase somewhat greater than had been estimated at first. Dr. Marlin added that all the facilities of the observatory were being utilized in an effort to determine the exact amount of that increase, and although it seemed at first glance rather incomprehensible, all available data concerning it would be gathered. And at the same hour, almost, there came corroborative reports from the Paris and Honolulu Observatories, stating that Dr. Marlin's first observations had already been confirmed independently by their own observers. There could be no doubt, therefore, that the sun was spinning faster!
To astronomers this news of the sun's increased rotatory speed became at once a sensation of the first importance, and in the hours following the broadcasting of Dr. Marlin's first statement, we at the Intelligence Bureau had been bombarded with inquiries from the world's observatories regarding it. We could only answer those inquiries by repeating the statement already sent out on the scientific-news wave and by promising to broadcast any further developments instantly from our Bureau, the clearing-house of the world's news. This satisfied the scientifically-minded, while the great mass of the public was so little interested in this slight increase in the sun's rate of spin as not to bother us with any questions concerning it. I know that I would have taken small interest in the thing myself, had it not been for a personal factor connected with it.
"Marlin!" I had exclaimed, when the Intelligence Chief had handed to me that first report for broadcasting. "Dr. Herbert Marlin—why, he was my astronomy prof up at North American University, two years ago."
"Oh, you know him," the Chief had remarked. "I suppose then that this statement of his on the sun's increased rate of spin is authentic?"
"Absolutely, if Dr. Marlin gave it," I told him. "He's one of the three greatest living astronomers, you know. I became good friends with him at the University, but haven't seen him for some time."
So that it was with an interest rather unusual for me, that I followed the reports on this technical astronomical sensation in the next few days. Those reports were coming fast now from all the observatories of Earth, from Geneva and Everest and Tokio and Mexico City, for almost all astronomers had turned their interest at once toward this unprecedented phenomenon of the sun's increased rate of spin, which Dr. Marlin had been first to discover. The exact amount of that increase, I gathered, was still somewhat in doubt. For not only did the sun turn comparatively slowly, but the problem was complicated by the fact that it did not, like the Earth or like any solid body, rotate everywhere at the same speed, but turned faster at the equator than at its poles, due to its huge size and the lack of solidity of its mass. Dr. Marlin, however, stated that according to his observations the sun's great fiery ball, which had rotated previously at its equator at the rate of one rotation each 25 days, had already increased its rate of spin, so as to be turning now at the rate of one rotation each 24 days, 12 hours.
This meant that the sun's rotatory period, or day, had decreased 12 hours in three Earth-days, and such an unprecedented happening was bound to create an uproar of excitement among astronomers. For to them, as to all, who had any conception of the unvarying accuracy and superhuman perfection of the movements of the sun and its worlds, such a sudden increase of speed was all but incredible. And when on the fourth day Dr. Marlin and a score of other observers reported that the sun's rotatory period had decreased by another 4 hours, the excitement of the astronomers was unprecedented. A few of them, indeed, sought even in the face of the recorded observations to cast doubt on the thing. The sun's rotatory speed, they contended, could be measured only by means of the sun-spots upon its turning surface, and it was well known that those sun-spots themselves often changed position, so that this sudden increase in speed might only be an illusion.
This contention, however, found small support in the face of the indisputable evidence which Dr. Marlin and his fellow-astronomers had advanced in the shape of numerous helio-photographs and time-recordings. The sun was spinning faster, that was undoubted by the greater part of the world's astronomers—but what was making it do so? Was it due to some great dark body passing the solar system in space? Or was it due to strange changes within the sun's great fiery sphere? It was the latter theory, on the whole, that was favored by most astronomers, and which struck me at the time as the most plausible. It was generally held that a great shifting of the sun's inner layers, a movement of its mighty interior mass, had caused this sudden change in speed of rotation. Dr. Marlin himself, though, when questioned, would only state that the increased rate of spin was in itself beyond doubt but that no sound theory could as yet be formed as to the phenomenon's cause.
Chapter 2 To Neptune!
"Doom faces us, a fiery doom in which the dividing sun will annihilate Earth and most of its sister-planets! Panic even now grips all the peoples of Earth, such panic as has never been known before, as that doom marches inevitably toward them! Yet inevitable, inescapable as that doom seems, we of the World Congress, we who represent here all the gathered peoples of Earth, must endeavor to find even now some last chance of lifting this awful menace from us!"
The World President paused, his dark, steady eyes searching out through the great room at whose end, upon a raised platform, he stood. Behind him on that platform sat a row of some two-score men and women, garbed like himself and all others in the modern short and sleeveless garments of differing colors, while before him in the great room stretched the rows of seated members of the great World Congress, the twelve hundred men and women who represented in it all the peoples of Earth. Just beneath the great platform's edge sat Markham, the Intelligence Chief, and myself; before us were the switches that controlled the communication-plates throughout the room that broadcast all proceedings in it to the world. And sitting there, I could glance up and see among those two-score behind the World President two figures well known to me; the strong figure of Dr. Marlin, with his intense gray eyes and gray-touched hair; and the lounging, dark-haired form of Dr. Robert Whitely, his somewhat sardonic countenance and cool eyes turned now with keen interest toward the World President before him. And as the latter began again to speak my own gaze shifted toward him.
"It has been just three days," the World President was saying, "since Dr. Herbert Marlin and his fellow-astronomers gave to the world a warning of this doom that hangs above it, gave to us a warning that in less than five months more, if the sun's rotatory speed continues to increase, it must inevitably divide into a double star and in so doing wreck our universe and plunge most of its planets into fiery death. I need not speak now of the terror that has reigned over Earth since that announcement. It is sufficient to say that the first wild riots, inspired by that terror in Europe and Northern Asia, have been suppressed by the dispatch of police cruisers, and that throughout the world order is being maintained and most of our world's activities are being carried on as usual. Yet it is clear to all that the panic which that statement inspired has not subsided, rather it is growing in force over the Earth's surface with the passing of each day. For each day is bringing our Earth nearer to death!
"For each day, each of these three intervening days, the sun's speed of rotation has continued to increase by the same exact amount! Each day its rotatory period has decreased by 4 hours more! It cannot be doubted then that whatever is causing this strange acceleration, it will keep on, until in a mere 137 days from the present, the sun's rotatory period will have reached the figure of one hour. When that occurs our sun will, as Dr. Marlin has warned us, divide into a double star! Nothing in the universe can save our Earth or its neighboring planets then. Our one hope, therefore, to save ourselves, is to prevent that thing from happening, to halt this acceleration of the sun's spin before it reaches its critical point 137 days from now! For it is only by halting that steady increase of its rotatory speed that we can avoid this terrific cataclysm that means death for us!
"But can we halt this acceleration of the sun's spin when none of our astronomers has been able to ascertain its cause? That is what you will ask, and in answer to that I say, some hours ago two of our scientists did ascertain that cause. They learned at last what great, what almost incredible cause is responsible for this acceleration of our sun's rotatory speed. Those two scientists are well known to all of you, for they are Dr. Herbert Marlin himself, who first discovered the fact of the sun's faster spin, and Dr. Robert Whitely, his physicist-colleague, who has been studying the new vibrations recorded by his instruments since the beginning of that acceleration of the sun's rotatory speed. These two men have found, at last, the terrible cause of our sun's strange behavior, and it is that you might hear it that I have called you of the World Congress together at this time. It is Dr. Marlin himself, then, who will tell you what he and his fellow-scientist have discovered."
The World President stepped aside, and as he did so Dr. Marlin rose, stepped forward to the great platform's edge, and looked quietly out over the great room's occupants. I was aware as he did so of a quality of utter tension in all the hundreds in that room, of a hushed silence, in which the slightest sound seemed unnaturally loud. Through the great windows there came a deep hum of sound from the sunlit surrounding city, but in the big room itself was silence almost complete until Dr. Marlin's strong, deep voice broke it.
"It was thirteen days ago," he said, "that the acceleration of our sun's rotatory speed was first noted, thirteen days ago that it first began to spin faster. In those days we of the world's observatories have sought unceasingly for the cause, whatever it was, that was behind this strange acceleration of the sun's spin, and have sought for that cause even more intently in the last few days, since it was recognized by us, that this increasing rotatory speed foreshadowed the division of the sun and the doom of almost all its planets. That acceleration of speed was too exact, too uniform each day, to be the result of interior disturbances. It could not be the result of the influence of some dark body passing the solar system in space, for such a body would affect the planets also. What, then, could be the thing's cause? That is what I and all astronomers have been seeking to solve in the last days. That great enigma has finally been solved, not by an astronomer, but by a physicist—by Dr. Robert Whitely, my fellow-professor at North American University.
"It will be remembered that when the first great effects of the sun's increased spin became apparent on Earth, the great electrical storms and temperature-changes that still are troubling Earth, Dr. Whitely announced the discovery of new vibrations which were apparently emanating from the troubled sun also. That new vibration lay in frequency between the Hertzian and the light vibrations, an unexplored territory in the field of etheric vibrations. It seemed, Dr. Whitely then stated, a force-vibration of some sort, the weak reflected impulses from it, that reached his instruments, affecting them as tangible force. It seemed reasonable to suppose, therefore, that this new force-vibration or ray was being generated inside the sun's disturbed mass, just as light vibrations and heat vibrations and cosmic-ray vibrations and many others are generated by and radiated from the sun.
Chapter 3 The Space-Flier Starts
"Three more days and the last work will be done—the space-flier will be finished!"
It was Dr. Marlin who spoke and Whitely beside him, nodded. "Three more days," he said, "and we'll be starting."
We four, Marlin and Whitely and Randall and myself, were standing on the flat roof of the great World Government building, that gigantic cylindrical white structure that looms two thousand feet into the air at the center of the new world-capital, New York. All around us there stretched the colossal panorama of New York's mighty cylindrical buildings, each rearing skyward from its little green park, extending as far away as the eye could reach, many of them rising on great supporting piers out of the waters of the rivers and bay around the island. In the late afternoon sunlight above them there swirled and seethed great masses of arriving and departing aircraft, unfolding their helicopter-vanes from their long hulls as they paused to rise or descend, seeming to fill the air, while away to the south the great Singapore-New York liner was slanting smoothly down toward the great flat surface of the air-docks. Yet it was to none of these things, nor to the masses of humans that swarmed and crowded in the city's streets far beneath us, that we four were giving our attention at that moment, for we were gazing intently at the great object that stood on the roof before us.
That object was a great gleaming metal polyhedron that loomed in a supporting framework beside us like a huge ball-like faceted crystal of metal. This great faceted ball of metal, though, was fully thirty feet in diameter, and here and there in the great, smooth, faceted, plane-surfaces of it were set hexagonal windows of clear glass, protected by thick raised rims of metal around them. There were also set in six of the facets six round openings a foot in diameter, one of these being in the faceted ball's top, one in its bottom, and four at equi-distant points around its equator. In one of the flat facet-sides, also, was a screw-door of a few feet diameter that now was open, giving a glimpse across a small vestibule-chamber inside through a second open screw-door into the great polyhedron's interior. That interior seemed crowded with gleaming mechanisms and equipment, attached to the inner side of the great metal shell.
Marlin was contemplating the great thing intently as we stood there on the roof beside its supporting framework. "Finished—in three more days," he repeated. "Everything's ready for the last generator."
"That will be done in two days more," said Randall, beside me. "Everything else at the World Government's laboratories has been suspended in order to get these generators ready for us."
"They've worked fast to get three of the generators in the flier already," Marlin acknowledged. "Especially since Whitely here, in directing them, had only his own first crude models to work on."
"Lucky we are to get the generators completed and the space-flier finished in the month we estimated!" I exclaimed. "If the whole world hadn't centered its energies on the space-flier's completion we'd never have done it—and even so it's been a tremendous task."
It had, indeed, been a period of tense and toiling activity for Marlin and Whitely and Randall and me, that time of four weeks that had elapsed since Marlin had proposed his great plan to the World Congress. In those weeks all our efforts, and all the efforts of the world too, it seemed, had been concentrated upon the building of that space-flier in which we four, first of all men, were to venture out into the great void, to flash out to Neptune in our attempt to halt the great ray that was spinning our sun ever faster to its destruction and to ours. For each day of those four weeks the rotatory speed of the sun had grown ever greater, its rotatory period decreasing by an exact four hours each day. The instruments of Dr. Whitely, too, showed that the mighty force-ray was still playing unceasingly from Neptune upon the turning sun's edge, spinning that sun ever faster. Already the terrific pressure of that great ray had lowered the sun's rotatory period to 18 days, 4 hours, and in hardly more than a hundred days more, we knew, would have brought the sun's rotatory period down to that critical figure of one hour at which it could no longer hold together, at which it would divide into a double star and plunge Earth to doom and wreck the solar system.
And with that knowledge, all the world had sought to aid in the construction of our space-flier. Dr. Marlin had directed that construction, aided by his assistant, young Randall, whom I had met for the first time and had found a sunny-haired fun-loving fellow of my own age. And it had been Dr. Marlin who, after consultation with the world's greatest engineering authorities, had chosen for the flier the form of a great polyhedron. Such a form, it had been found, could resist pressure from within and without much better than the spherical form that had been at first suggested, and it was realized that this power of resistance would be necessary. For upon venturing out from Earth's gravitation-field into gravitationless space, the very interior stresses of such a space-flier would tend to explode it unless it was braced against those stresses. Also the space-flier was to be shot out through the void and maneuvered in that void by the pushing reaction of its own great force-rays against the Earth or other planets, and though that force would thus hurtle the flier out at terrific speed, it would also crumple the flier itself unless it were strong enough to withstand the force-ray's terrific pressure.
Chapter 4 Through Planetary Perils
"Mars ahead and to the left—we ought to pass it in three more hours!"
At my words Marlin nodded. "We won't be bothered much by the pull of Mars," he said.
We sat again in our chairs before the control-panel, Whitely to my left, gazing through the big window before us. Ahead and above and all around us there stretched a great panorama, stunning in its brilliance, the vast panorama of the starry heavens as seen from the airless interplanetary void. Blazing in their true brilliant colors on all sides of us, the hosts of stars were like jewels of light set in the black firmament. And as our flier throbbed on through the great gulf of empty space at terrific speed, its acceleration still pressing us down somewhat in our chairs, we could see now amid the flaming stars dead ahead the far green spot of light that was Neptune, our goal, visible now to our unaided eyes in the clearness of empty space. Nearer toward us and to the right Jupiter was like a brilliant little disk of white light, now, the four white points of its greater moons visible about it. To the left, too, yellow Saturn shone much brighter, while nearer toward us on the left, almost beside us, hung the dull-red little shield, white-capped at its poles, that was Mars.
Behind us, by this time, Earth had dwindled to a steady spot of bluish light that was like a tiny moon, the smaller spot that was Earth's moon gleaming near it. Hardly visible as Earth was in the blinding glare of the great sun that beat upon us from behind, its great corona and mighty prominences appalling in their splendor, yet it was visible enough to show how far from it out into the void our flier had already flashed. For forty-eight hours indeed, our great space-flier had rushed outward at a speed that had already reached over a million miles an hour, and that was steadily mounting still beneath the terrific reaction of our great force-ray, that great pale ray only visible at its ray-opening source, that was stabbing back with colossal power and by the reaction of that push sending us hurtling on at greater and greater speed. Out and out we had flashed, Randall and I relieving each other every four hours at the controls, and already now had almost reached the orbit of Mars, more than fifty million miles outward. Now, as Marlin and Whitely and I gazed out toward it, the red disk of Mars itself was but several million miles from us, to the left and ahead.
Gazing toward it, we could see clearly the great ice caps of the poles of Mars, brilliant white upon its dull red sphere, and could see clearly also the long straight markings upon it, a network of inter-connecting lines, that for long had been the subject of discussion and disputation among Earth's astronomers. It was with fascinated eyes that we gazed toward the red planet as we drew nearer to it, and now Randall had joined us, moving with great efforts against the acceleration-pressure inside the flier. Marlin, though, had turned the telescope by that time toward the crimson planet, was gazing intently toward it. Minutes he gazed before he straightened, shaking his head.
"There can be no doubt that those canals—those lines—are the work of intelligent creatures," he said. "I saw great geometrical forms that seemed structures of some sort, but our space-flier is moving at such tremendous speed that it's all but impossible to get a clear focus on the planet in the telescope."
We stared toward the red disk and its dark markings. "If we could but stop there—who knows what wonders Mars may hold, what science——," Whitely mused.
Marlin nodded thoughtfully. "Neptune's our goal, and we can't stop for Mars now, whatever may be there. But if we succeed in our great task, if Earth is saved from this doom that Neptune's beings are loosing on the solar system, we'll come yet to Mars—and to all the others."
"In the meantime," I told them, "Mars is pulling our flier out of its course more and more. I thought our speed would take us by it, but it seems we'll have to use another ray."
For even as we had gazed toward the red planet, I had noted from the dials before Randall that the gravitational pull of Mars upon our space-flier from the left was becoming more and more powerful as we approached it to pass it, and that it was pulling us slowly toward it out of our course toward Neptune. Our deviation to the left was not great as yet, but even the slightest deviation we could not permit, since not only must we head as straight toward Neptune as possible to save time, but it was necessary that we avoid also the colossal force-ray which was stabbing from Neptune across the solar system toward the sun's edge, which was turning that sun ever faster. That great force-ray, invisible to us, but lying away to our left, we knew; would mean death for us if we blundered into it, would drive our flier with titanic force and speed straight into the sun!
So that now, as our space-flier moved nearer and nearer toward the distant red shield of Mars, pulled farther and farther out of its path toward Neptune, I swiftly manipulated the ray-direction dials on the control-panel, then grasped and threw open another of the six ray-opening switches. At once there leaped from our racing flier's side, from one of its ray-openings there, a second great force-ray like that which stabbed from the flier's rear toward Earth. This second ray, though, vaguely visible like the first at its source, but fading into invisibility in space, shot out toward the red sphere of Mars, away to our left. And in a moment more, as that light-swift ray reached Mars and pressed against the red planet with all its force, our flier was being pushed away from it, was being pushed back to the right, back into its original line of flight! Thus we hurtled on, the great rear ray of the flier pushing back with terrific force and sending us hurtling on through space, while the side-ray, striking Mars with lesser force, was sufficient to keep us out of the red planet's grip as we flashed onward.
Within a few hours more Mars was behind us, its red sphere fading rapidly into a crimson spot of light to the left and behind. The planet's two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, we had not yet seen despite our nearness to it, but it was with something of regret that we saw the crimson world and all the strange mysteries that we felt existed upon it, dropping behind us. Neptune alone, as Marlin had said, was our goal, and on toward its calm green light-dot we were rushing. I turned off our side-ray, therefore, which was no longer needed to counteract Mars's pull, and we gave all our attention to the panorama ahead. Save for Neptune's distant green dot, the only planets now visible amid the brilliant hosts of stars before us were Jupiter and Saturn. Saturn was shining ever more brightly to the left, its strange ring-formation already becoming visible to our eyes. But it was Jupiter that now dominated all the scene before us, his mighty sphere, its oblateness plainly visible, moving in majestic white splendor at the center of his four great moons.
It was not the planets ahead that held my attention now, though, as our throbbing flier raced onward, Mars and its orbit dropping behind. "The asteroids!" I exclaimed. "We're almost into their region now—will be among them soon!"
"And they're one of the greatest perils we'll encounter," Marlin said. "Hold ready to the controls, Hunt, for if we crash into one it means our end—the end of Earth's chance!"
