Collected Short Fiction, page 256
The Jildo Power laboratory, established generations since to solve the myriad problems of supplying power freely to all the people of the Earth, had become a vastly important institution, its directorate an honor much coveted.
“You!” the girl exclaimed, scornfully. “You. director? When you are just a mass of muscle—and an Andrel!”
IVEC ANDREL bit his lip, repressing his own flare of anger. In an age of physical perfection, when health was universal and the average height well above six feet, he, nevertheless, possessed exceptional stature and strength. It always infuriated him to be ridiculed for his athletic prowess, with the cutting inference of mental inferiority. The girl knew his sensitive spot, from many another quarrel.
“My father is now director,” he told her flatly. “So was his father and his grandfather, Delshar Andrel——”
“But before him, the director was Athon Jildo, who founded the laboratory and invented the planetary power field. Delshar Andrel was a mechanic in his shop——”
“Who revised the theory of the power field,” Ivec put in, “and redesigned the generators to keep half the power from leaking away through the ionosphere, into space.”
“Athon’s brother, Korac Jildo,” the girt said, “was the first man to reach Mars.”
“Good!” jeered Ivec. “But he didn’t come back.”
“Anyhow,” she gasped, “my uncle, Barthu Jildo, is the greatest scientist in the world——”
“Did my father tell you that?”
“Well,” she conceded, “next to your father. But Barthu should be the next director. He’s more than a bag of muscle——”
Ivec Andrel flushed in his own turn, and bit savagely at his lip. In many visits to the laboratory, he had come to know Barthu Jildo. A tall and powerful man, almost as fair of skin as his niece, although his hair and massive brows were black. His bearing was insolently proud. He had long been assistant director, chafing at his subordination to Ivec’s father, Jendro Andrel.
“Yes, he’s more than a bag of muscle,” Ivec retorted, stung beyond restraint. “He’s a maniac. His brilliance makes him dangerous. He should be summoned to the psychophysical clinic, for examination and treatment, or elimination——”
“I understand you, Ivec Andrel,” the girl said to him, enraged. “I see the miserable cunning in your primitive brain. You know you can never win the directorate fairly, above my uncle. So you plot to have him summoned—put out of your way——”
“Thadre!” he protested, stricken. “Surely you don’t believe——”
She was turning away from him, her square chin high. Her lovely face, drained of color, was cold and hard as marble. He caught her quivering arm, stopped her. She swung on him deliberately, eyes dark and stormy.
“Animal!” Her voice was low, savage. “If you can understand nothing but muscle——”
Her open hand struck his face, with a grim and unexpected violence. Ivec released her, stared after her, open-mouthed. His fingers touched the blood oozing from his cheek, and he broke into a short, ironic laugh.
Now, aloft in the aerodyne, hurtling beneath the menace of the nebula, Ivec smiled at the memory of that quarrel. For he and Thadre had quarreled many times since they were old enough to understand the rivalry between their families. Each had striven fiercely to excel the other in their studies of science. And friendship had always endured beyond hurt feelings.
IT WAS on that same day, before he left the laboratory, that his father had told him of the nebula. Outlining the studies he was to take at the great lyceum on the Bermudas, his father said: “We Andrels have a task that must be done, Ivec—for the very life of man. Delshar Andrel began it. For three generations we have worked at it. I cannot finish it alone. But you must, my son—or it will never be finished.”
Eagerly, Ivec demanded: “What is it, father?”
His father rubbed his lean chin doubtfully.
“It is rather a terrible thing to tell a young man,” he said slowly. “But you must know, so you can be working to fit yourself for it. Promise me to say nothing to your friends about it, for it is a secret outside the council of science.”
Vastly pleased and excited, Ivec promised. His father took him to the wide, flat roof of the laboratory on the mountain, where the great electronic telescope bulked black against the sky. Ivec already knew the controls of this instrument, whose photo-electric screens were far more sensitive than the human eye.
“This telescope,” said the old scientist, “was built by Delshar Andrel to investigate the calcium clouds scattered through space. His first discovery was a dusty nebula—a colossal cloud of nonluminous particles.
“Calculating the mass, dimensions, and motion of the nebula, he found that our Sun and its family of planets must pass through it.”
Ivec asked anxiously: “There will be a collision?”
“No,” his father said. “The dusty particles are very fine, very thinly scattered. Our Sun and planets will pass completely through the nebula, in about one hundred years, without being measurably slowed down.”
“Then what harm——”
“While the particles are as far apart as the air molecules in a good vacuum, ninety-three million miles of them will make an effective filter. Most of the Sun’s radiation will be absorbed before it reaches the Earth. That hundred years will be the most terrible ice age the planet has ever known. Even the air, before the end, will freeze and fall like snow.”
The youth shuddered, wide-eyed.
“But won’t the weather control still warm the cities?”
“That takes power.” His father smiled somberly. “Most of our power comes from the tides and the solar-electric plants. When the sea freezes, there will be no tides. When the Sun is hidden, the solar plants will stop.”
“We could dig burrows,” Ivec suggested, “and go deep down until the cold is over. Volcanic heat——”
His father shook his head.
“A few might survive a hundred years,” he said. “But the ice and snow would change Earth’s albedo, make it reflect most of the Sun’s radiation. It might never be temperate again. Low forms of life might persist. But mankind would perish in the end, miserably.”
The young man looked up hopefully.
“But there is a way? You have found a way?”
His father nodded soberly. “With power enough—power independent of the Sun,” he said, “we could extend the weather-control system over all the planet. We could keep it warm, in spite of the nebula. We could light the cities and the farms, run the factories—keep life itself alive.”
IVEC was staring at the black, multiple barrel of the instrument.
“I was thinking,” he said slowly, “of an equation Thadre and I learned: E = Mc2. That is the energy equivalent of matter, when c is the velocity of light, in centimeters per second. The result is about nine hundred quintillion ergs per gram.
“The material energy in the loose boulders on this mountain would light and heat the planet through all the century of cold—if we could set it free! But I beg your pardon, father. I know that can’t be done.”
His tall father had eagerly caught his arm.
“But it can be done,” the lean scientist said. “The transformation of matter to energy is constantly going on in the Sun. The Sun’s loss of weight by radiation is four million tons per second. It is taking place in all the stars. In some—the supernova—it happens very suddenly.
“Even in certain laboratory experiments, the energy of the atom—the limited portion called the binding energy—has been set free. But we were forced to abandon such direct attempts long ago, because of the very danger of success—success that would burn up Earth and all the planets and the Sun itself in the brief flame of a supernova.
“Some catalyst is what we must have—an agent to control the process. All our research has failed to discover it. Yet mathematics assures us that it must exist—that, in fact, it must be a rather simple modulation of field tensions.”
The tall scientist paused to touch the telescope.
“Calculations tell us the process must exist,” he said. “This instrument proves that it does.”
Eagerly, Ivec Andrel demanded, “How?”
“My father,” the old man said, “searched all the known planets with this telescope, for any useful clue. From Mercury to Pluto, he found no high intelligence surviving, nor anything hopeful.
“But, in the year I was born, he discovered a new planet that he named Persephone. It is a tiny world, only two thousand miles in diameter, smaller than the Moon. Four times more remote than Pluto, it keeps a mean distance of sixteen billion miles from the Sun, so far that the solar radiation takes a whole day to reach it.
“That small globe is immeasurably the most ancient of the planets. Its volcanic energy and its store of radioactive elements must have been long since exhausted. At its tremendous distance the Sun is no more than a very bright star, unable to warm it appreciably. It should be frozen, utterly dead, but a few degrees above the absolute zero.
“Most of its surface proved to be a dark, frigid waste of time-shattered mountains, airless and barren. But my father discovered a small, shining area—perhaps a hundred miles long—which he named the Blue Spot.
“An amazing discovery. The Blue Spot radiates far more energy than the entire planet receives from the Sun. Upon a world so ancient, all chemical, radioactive and kinetic sources of energy must have been exhausted ages since. But one conclusion was possible: the energy of the Blue Spot comes from the controlled conversion of matter!
“Analyzing the emanations of the Blue Spot with the electronic spectroscope, my father found proof of that theory. The blue is monochromatic—its spectrum shows a single bright line. But, far beyond the ultra-violet, he found a few quanta so powerful that, as he demonstrated mathematically, they can originate only in the liberation of material energy.
“Life and intelligence, my father believed,” the old man concluded, “exist upon Persephone. It has discovered the catalytic agent that we must have, to save the Earth from cold——”
Ivec Andrel was eager, on his feet.
“Then,” he cried excitedly, “somebody must go to Persephone, to learn that process.”
Oddly, his father looked away for a moment, and back at him with eyes curiously glistening. He seemed to gulp, and nodded silently.
“But how?” the young man put the question. “When the penetrating radiations and high-energy particles of space destroy the bodies of men in their rocket—and when the best rocket we could build had power to take Korac Jildo only so far as Mars, where he died of his burns? How?”
“Lam working on a way, Ivec,” his father said solemnly. “A strange way. By the time you have finished your course at the lyceum, I may have it ready. And you must be ready to go and——”
“I?” He was amazed, vastly excited. “I shall go out to Persephone—”
“If I can prepare the way before the nebula stops my work.”
Trembling, Ivec again demanded, “How? It must be something more wonderful than a rocket?”
“I’ll show you,” his father said, “when you come back. It will mean effort, pain, great sacrifice. You must fit yourself for it. Follow the program I have outlined. Try to develop mental readiness, courage, endurance, strength. For the life of the world may depend on you.”
“I will.” His voice broke. “Father, I will.”
But now, in the aerodyne slipping through the dark, Ivec shivered again. What effort of his could avail against the dark might of the nebula?
II.
DAWN was in the sky as Ivec Andrel dropped the aerodyne toward the isolated laboratory upon its lonely mountaintop. The monstrous blue spiral of the nebula was drowned in rosy light. Like the flames of a. burning world, a crimson sunrise flared up behind a ragged wall of mountains he had passed. The Sun itself, red as a drop of blood, drenched the world in sinister light.
The light was red, he knew, because the fringes of the nebula already filtered out the shorter wave lengths, which carried the greater energy. Already the dread change had begun. He shivered to the coolness of the dawn.
The laboratory stood as he remembered it, a long, windowless metal building, low and rectangular, carrying the squat bulk of the electron telescope on its flat roof.
But half a mile down the grassy ridge of the summit, he saw a structure new to him. Twin towers lifted high the silver globes of colossal resonance cells, to tap the power field. Transformers, condensers, and tuning units bulked large beneath them, within screening metal barriers. Between them, connected with snakelike power cables, a small, square building rested upon tall insulating pillars.
Still shuddering to the chill of the morning, Ivec grounded the aerodyne upon a gravel plot beside the laboratory, and ran eagerly inside the long building. The ancient corridors, familiar with their chemical smell distilled from centuries of experiment, were deserted, silent.
His father’s office with the proud Legend on the door, “Jendro Andrel, Director,” was dark, locked. He found the door marked, “Thadre Jildo, Technician.” It, too, was locked. But a light caught his eye, shining yellow and pale through the translucent panel printed, “Barthu-Jildo, Assistant Director.”
Ivec rapped, entered. Barthu Jildo looked up, with hostile eyes, from a desk untidy with scientific models, instruments, and papers. His massive body, unhealthily pale, stiffened aggressively. His heavy, black brows drew into a frown of disfavor.
Harshly guttural, his voice rasped out: “Young Andrel! If you want your father, he’s down at the new photon laboratory.” His thick lips sneered. “So you’ve returned to become the new director?”
Ivec bit his tongue upon an impulsive retort. Struggling to conceal his dislike, he said carefully: “No. I have been studying at Bermuda for a job my father has ready for me. I have come back to undertake it.”
“Then it hasn’t occurred to yon that success will be rewarded. If you go alone to Persephone, and bring back the knowledge that will save the world from cold—you don’t know that any possible honor will be yours for the asking.”
Ivec clenched his hands.
“When the world is in danger, I won’t quarrel about empty honors,” he said hotly. “If my father thought another man could do this task better than I, he would send that man. But I have spent years in training——”
“You Andrels have always plotted to keep all opportunity and honor in your own family. Now your devoted father is planning to give you a power that no man has ever had, the opportunity for such an adventure as no man has ever dreamed of.
“He has refused to give it to me, when I am assistant director and it is rightly mine.” Savagely, his fist crashed to the desk. “I’ll show him that Barthu Jildo cannot be scorned and ignored. I’ll prove——”
His jaw set grimly. Ivec Andrel had retired through the door. He turned his back on the bitterly storming man, went out of the building and along the ridge to the photon laboratory.
THE THROBBING HUM of tremendous energies told him that the high argent globes must be draining a vast river of power from the planetary field. His father appeared at the door of the odd little room on its stiltlike insulators, pointed at a warning of dangerous voltages.
Ivec waited ten minutes before that throb of power ceased, and his father came down to meet him. Now in his eighty-seventh year. Jendro Andrel was yet almost as tall and straight as his son. A long weariness shadowed his ascetic face; but his features were yet firm, his clear eyes bright with a calm and invincible purpose.
His strong arms embraced Ivec, eagerly.
“I’m glad to see you, my son. I have had good reports of your work. You are ready?”
“I hope so. father.” Troubled, Ivec glanced at the red sunrise. “Last night I saw the nebula in the sky. Now the Sun is red and cold. Is there time?”
“Not too much,” his father said. “What you saw was an outlying spiral—a warning. Its absorption has dimmed and reddened the Sun. But we shall pass through it in a few weeks. It is yet four months before we shall reach the parent cloud.
“You have four months to go out to Persephone, discover the catalyst that controls the liberation of material energy in the Blue Spot, and return to Earth with the information. If you are late, you will be lost—and the world with you—because you can’t return through the nebula.”
“Four months!” whispered Ivec, alarmed. “When it took Korac Jildo’s rocket two months to reach Mars, at a million miles a day. And Persephone is two hundred times as far! But it isn’t a rocket, of course.” He caught his father’s arm. “Tell me, how am I to go?”
The old man’s eyes seemed suddenly stricken. He seemed suddenly lonely and helpless upon this bleak mountain ridge, fearful, crushed with a sense of tragic loss.
“You are tall, Ivec,” he whispered softly. “You are fine and strong and handsome. You must love your body?”
“Why—I have tried to make it strong.” Ivec was puzzled, awed. “You told me I would need strength and endurance. I guess I’m proud of it, too—even if Thadre did laugh at my strength. But why?”
His father’s eyes were full of grave pity.
“Are you brave enough, my son, to surrender—your body?”
Ivec stepped back a little, with lifted hands. He swallowed, said in a low tone, “I’ll not shirk my task. Tell me what it is.”
“I’m glad.” His father caught his arm affectionately. “Come.”
IVEC followed him up into the little square room. It was crowded with massive electrical equipment. Six huge photon tubes, of a type new to him, were set up with reflectors, lenses, prisms, and filters arranged to focus their radiations upon the top of a small, black insulating pillar that rose from the center of the floor.
Upon the pillar, glowing with soft green, lay a small cube. Ivec moved to touch it. It looked real, yet curiously immaterial, like a two-inch block molded of some giant emerald’s rays.
“Don’t.” His father stopped his hand, and found a pair of delicate insulated tongs with which to lift the cube into a padded case. “It is a frail thing, although so powerful.”
