Part 3 (2/2)
”No, of course not!”
”Good! Keep it that way. How long till totality?”
”Not quite an hour.”
”There's nothing to do but gamble. It will take time to organize any really formidable mob, and it will take more time to get them out here. We're a good five miles from the city -- ”
He glared out the window, down the slopes to where the farmed patches gave way to clumps of white houses in the suburbs; down to where the metropolis itself was a blur on the horizon -- a mist in the waning blaze of Beta.
He repeated without turning. ”It will take time. Keep on working and pray that totality comes first.”
Beta was cut in half, the line of division pus.h.i.+ng a slight concavity into the still-bright portion of the Sun. It was like a gigantic eyelid shutting slantwise over the light of a world.
The faint clatter of the room in which he stood faded into oblivion, and he sensed only the thick silence of the fields outside. The very insects seemed frightened mute. And things were dim.
He jumped at the voice in his ear. Theremon said. ”Is something wrong?”
”Eh? Er -- no. Get back to the chair. We're in the way.” They slipped back to their comer, but the psychologist did not speak for a time. He lifted a finger and loosened his collar. He twisted his neck back and forth but found no relief. He looked up suddenly.
”Are you having any difficulty in breathing?”
The newspaperman opened his eyes wide and drew two or three long breaths. ”No. Why?”
”I looked out the window too long, I suppose. The dimness got me. Difficulty in breathing is one of the first symptoms of a claustrophobic attack. ”
Theremon drew another long breath. ”Well, it hasn't got me yet. Say, here's another of the fellows.”
Beenay had interposed his bulk between the light and the pair in the corner, and Sheerin squinted up at him anxiously. ”h.e.l.lo, Beenay.”
The astronomer s.h.i.+fted his weight to the other foot and smiled feebly. ”You won't mind if I sit down awhile and join in the talk? My cameras are set, and there's nothing to do till totality.” He paused and eyed the Cultist, who fifteen minutes earlier had drawn a small, skin-bound book from his sleeve and had been poring intently over it ever since.
”That rat hasn't been making trouble, has he?”
Sheerin shook his head. His shoulders were thrown back and he frowned his concentration as he forced himself to breathe regularly. He said, ”Have you had any trouble breathing, Beenay?”
Beenay sniffed the air in his turn. ”It doesn't seem stuffy to me.”
”A touch of claustrophobia,” explained Sheerin apologetically.
”Ohhh! It worked itself differently with me. I get the impression that my eyes are going back on me. Things seem to blur and -- well, nothing is clear. And it's cold, too.”
”Oh, it's cold, all right. That's no illusion.” Theremon grimaced. ”My toes feel as if I've been s.h.i.+pping them cross-country in a refrigerating car.”
”What we need,” put in Sheerin, ”is to keep our minds busy with extraneous affairs. I was telling you a while ago, Theremon, why Faro's experiments with the holes in the roof came to nothing.”
”You were just beginning,” replied Theremon. He encircled a knee with both arms and nuzzled his chin against it.
”Well, as I started to say, they were misled by taking the Book of Revelations literally. There probably wasn't any sense in attaching any physical significance to the Stars. It might be, you know, that in the presence of total Darkness, the mind finds it absolutely necessary to create light. This illusion of light might be all the Stars there really are.”
”In other words,” interposed Theremon, ”you mean the Stars arc the results of the madness and not one of the causes. Then, what good will Beenay's photographs be?”
”To prove that it is an illusion, maybe; or to prove the opposite; for all I know. Then again -- ”
But Beenay had drawn his chair closer, and there was an expression of sudden enthusiasm on his face. ”Say, I'm glad you two got onto this subject.” His eyes narrowed and he lifted one finger. ”I've been thinking about these Stars and I've got a really cute notion. Of course it's strictly ocean foam, and I'm not trying to advance it seriously, but I think it's interesting. Do you want to hear it?”
He seemed half reluctant, but Sheerin leaned back and said, ”Go ahead! I'm listening.”
”Well, then, supposing there were other suns in the universe.” He broke off a little bashfully. ”I mean suns that are so far away that they're too dim to see. It sounds as if I've been reading some of that fantastic fiction, I suppose.”
”Not necessarily. Still, isn't that possibility eliminated by the fact that, according to the Law of Gravitation, they would make themselves evident by their attractive forces?”
”Not if they were far enough off,” rejoined Beenay, ”really far off -- maybe as much as four light years, or even more. We'd never be able to detect perturbations then, because they'd be too small. Say that there were a lot of suns that far off; a dozen or two, maybe.”
Theremon whistled melodiously. ”What an idea for a good Sunday supplement article. Two dozen suns in a universe eight light years across. Wow! That would shrink our world into insignificance. The readers would eat it up.”
”Only an idea,” said Beenay with a grin, ”but you see the point. During an eclipse, these dozen suns would become visible because there'd be no real sunlight to drown them out. Since they're so far off, they'd appear small, like so many little marbles. Of course the Cultists talk of millions of Stars, but that's probably exaggeration. There just isn't any place in the universe you could put a million suns -- unless they touch one another.”
Sheerin had listened with gradually increasing interest. ”You've hit something there, Beenay. And exaggeration is just exactly what would happen. Our minds, as you probably know, can't grasp directly any number higher than five; above that there is only the concept of ”many”. A dozen would become a million just like that. A d.a.m.n good idea!”
”And I've got another cute little notion,” Beenay said. ”Have you ever thought what a simple problem gravitation would be if only you had a sufficiently simple system? Supposing you had a universe in which there was a planet with only one sun. The planet would travel in a perfect ellipse and the exact nature of the gravitational force would be so evident it could be accepted as an axiom. Astronomers on such a world would start off with gravity probably before they even invented the telescope. Naked-eye observation would be enough.”
”But would such a system be dynamically stable?” questioned Sheerin doubtfully.
”Sure! They call it the ”one-and-one” case. It's been worked out mathematically, but it's the philosophical implications that interest me.”
”It's nice to think about,” admitted Sheerin, ”as a pretty abstraction -- like a perfect gas, or absolute zero.”
”Of course,” continued Beenay, ”there's the catch that life would be impossible on such a planet. It wouldn't get enough heat and light, and if it rotated there would be total Darkness half of each day. You couldn't expect life -- which is fundamentally dependent upon light -- to develop under those conditions. Besides -- ”
Sheerin's chair went over backward as he sprang to his feet in a rude interruption. ”Aton's brought out the lights.”
Beenay said, ”Huh,” turned to stare, and then grinned halfway around his head in open relief.
There were half a dozen foot-long, inch-thick rods cradled in Aton's arms. He glared over them at the a.s.sembled staff members.
”Get back to work, all of you. Sheerin, come here and help me!”
Sheerin trotted to the older man's side and, one by one, in utter silence, the two adjusted the rods in makes.h.i.+ft metal holders suspended from the walls.
With the air of one carrying through the most sacred item of a religious ritual, Sheerin sc.r.a.ped a large, clumsy match into spluttering life and pa.s.sed it to Aton, who carried the flame to the upper end of one of the rods.
It hesitated there awhile, playing futilely about the tip, until a sudden, crackling flare cast Aton's lined face into yellow highlights. He withdrew the match and a spontaneous cheer rattled the window.
The rod was topped by six inches of wavering flame! Methodically, the other rods were lighted, until six independent fires turned the rear of the room yellow.
The light was dim, dimmer even than the tenuous sunlight. The flames reeled crazily, giving birth to drunken, swaying shadows. The torches smoked devilishly and smelled like a bad day in the kitchen. But they emitted yellow light.
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