World Beneath Ice. John Russell Fearn
Mathers acknowledged, “but look at the sun itself. What do you notice about it?”
Arnside did not think it strange at that moment that he could gaze at the sun without difficulty. It hurt the eye no more than if seen through dense, orange-tinted glass. Curious for it to be so dim in late spring. For some moments he stared, then clouds drifted across and hid the view.
“It looks a bit speckled,” he decided. “Rather like a pudding into which somebody has spattered currants.”
“An apt simile, sir,” Mathers observed. “Sunspots.”
The food controller thumped the window frame. “Look here, Mathers, talk sense, will you? What have sunspots got to do with it? There have been sunspots ever since—well, ever since the sun came into being, I suppose. They cause trouble, sure—such as radio interference, thunderstorms, and so forth, but they can’t interfere with crops, surely?”
“Not directly, sir, but I think that an excess of them is causing the cool weather. The sun has not been free of spots for the last two years. I know, because I’m an amateur astronomer and I’m interested in such things. The average citizen hardly seems to know what a sunspot looks like, and he certainly doesn’t study them. It’s extraordinary for sunspots to keep on growing on the sun’s disc. They usually abate after their normal cycle is complete. This time they haven’t.”
There was something tremendously wrong up there in the bleak grey sky, Arnside realized. He knew Mathers intimately. He was a cold-blooded, youngish man, a clever scientist in his way, and certainly not given to exaggeration.
Arnside groped for words. “Are you telling me that the sun’s gone haywire or something?”
“There is that possibility,” Mathers replied. “It is as prone to disorder and death as any other living thing. Scientists are perfectly aware that the sun must die someday from some cause or other, and I have the uneasy feeling that that day may not be far distant.”
This time Arnside did not say anything. The situation was too preposterous to grasp.
“Only one person or group of persons can solve this,” he said at last. “The astronomers. And if they have been withholding vital information, I’ll tell them publicly exactly what I think about them! Book me a reservation on the next helicoliner following the Mount Everest route. I’m going to find out what Dr. Blandish has to say.”
Dr. Luke Blandish was the astronomer-in-chief of Everest Observatory, that lofty eminence built ten years earlier and jointly controlled by every nation on the Earth. Here, above the clouds, surrounded by scientific appliances, which brought a tempered warmth to the former climbers’ paradise, the spare, middle-aged Blandish with his quiet voice and profound thinking kept a constant watch on the heavens, pooling the information supplied him by his own army of assistants, and from the orbiting satellites and other observatories scattered about the world.
With space travel as common as flying, the presence of any danger in outer space was his responsibility. Thousands might die if he made one miscalculation upon a flying meteorite or deadly cosmic gas area.
He confessed to a certain inner surprise when from his office he saw the London-Tibet helicoliner detouring from its normal course to land in the observatory grounds. He was even more surprised when only one passenger alighted, and almost immediately he recognized the heavy figure and blunt features of the food controller.
When Arnside had been shown into the office Dr. Blandish said: “Unexpected pleasure. Have a seat.” And glancing through the window he added: “I take it you are not returning immediately, since you have permitted the liner to continue its journey?”
“I expect to be here quite a few hours,” Arnside replied. “I’m going to dig for information—lots of it! My job and maybe the fate of the world’s population may depend on how much you can tell me.”
“Indeed? What’s the trouble?”
“What in blazes is the matter with the sun?”
“You have anticipated me by a few days,” Blandish remarked. “I was—and still am—intending to make an announcement after consultation with the various officials responsible for the world’s well-being.... Yourself included, of course.”
Arnside said: “Dr. Blandish, my assistant—a keen amateur astronomer—tells me that the sun is going crazy or something. That it has spots longer than it should have. Now, I’m a commercial man. But even I can’t help but notice that the sun looks queer. What do you think is going to happen?”
“I think,” Blandish answered, “that we are witnessing the death of a monarch, and the inevitable end of the world.”
The food controller sat motionless.
Blandish went on: “You must be aware of the lowering temperature all over the world? Even the tropical regions are chilly compared to what they should be.”
“That I know. I’m here because crops are failing and I’ve got to find out why.”
“I’m afraid there is nothing you can do—except provide synthetic foods. I have withheld the facts for as long as possible to be sure that there’s no possibility of a mistake. Now I am forced to the staggering truth. The sun is dying. One might call it a solar cancer.” The astronomer got to his feet. “Come with me, controller, and let me explain in more detail. You will merely have a preview of what all the world will have to know shortly.”
Arnside rose and followed Blandish through an adjoining doorway and into the filing room. Blandish took some pictures from a cabinet.
“These,” he said, as the food controller looked on, “are spectro-heliograph plates of the sun taken in the last eighteen months. You wish me to be as non-technical as possible, of course?”
“Yes, I’m a practical man.”
“Well, then, normally sunspot cycles reach a certain maximum and then fade out. These show the beginning of the present cycle eighteen months ago.”
Blandish laid down a series of plates. The sun was flawlessly photographed with two irregular marks on the centre of his disc.
Blandish continued: “Last year, and the plates showed as many as six sunspots, with the two original ones vastly enlarged. And this was taken two days ago,” Blandish finished. Arnside stared at the final plate with a queer feeling at his heart. The sun was visible as a circle, but all over his face were mottled holes and chasms, infinitely more of them than the naked eye could see. The sun looked like a football spattered with mud.
“Never before,” the astronomer resumed, “have sunspots spread to the solar poles, where they are now. Instead of passing away after their normal cycle, they have gone on multiplying.” A shade of emotion quavered his voice. “Imagine our feelings when we saw this happening—when we could watch it in a movie film photographed day by day. The death pangs of the lord of day and—”
Arnside interrupted impatiently. “What’s the cause of it? Can’t we stop it? We’ve got space travel. We can reach the sun if we want—”
“And do what?” Blandish shook his head. “The explanation is scientific, Mr. Arnside, and perfectly in accord with astronomical law. There are two types of stars in the universe—main sequence or red stars, and white dwarfs. Our sun is a main-sequence star with a stellar absolute magnitude of 4.85. The absolute magnitude is between 4.88 and 3.54. Therefore, our sun being at 4.85 was dangerously near the line of instability. You follow me?”
“What’s that got to do with his spots?”
“The internal temperature of our sun was about thirty-two million degrees when it was normal. It was a star in which the atoms were still surrounded by the K-rings of electrons, while the exterior rings had been stripped away by the tremendous heat. But any substantial rise in the internal temperature of the sun would cause the atoms to no longer exist as such. There’d only be free electrons and stripped nuclei. The star would rapidly become unstable and gradually move on to