The Big Eye (20 page)

 

 

"No right? What do you mean by that?" Only Brewer and the Old Man
were doing the talking now. The others hung on the discussion, quiet
and absorbed.

 

 

"Did you ever hear of an English astronomer named Eddington, Mr.
Brewer?"

 

 

"No."

 

 

"Well, Eddington pointed out that actually we are interlopers in creation,
intruders. We really have no right to be here. We are here because one
chemical element out of the whole ninety-two -- carbon -- happened to be able
to combine with others in thousands of different ways. We are, in short,
here on this earth as a freak of nature, unique in all the universe.

 

 

"Think of this, Mr. Brewer, consider this extraordinary state of
affairs. We are alive only because we cling to a tiny bit of dust just
the right distance from the right sun. Around us the vast bulk of cosmic
material is either blazing at temperatures of millions of degrees, or
else scattered remotely in the cold absolute void. A small deviation in
either direction, a slight jarring of our lucky position -- and we would be
wiped out in an instant." The Old Man stopped and then said very quietly,
"That deviation has now come."

 

 

There was a full minute of silence. The Old Man waited on the platform
for someone to speak further. No one did.

 

 

"Are there any further questions, gentlemen?" the Old Man asked.

 

 

No one broke the silence.

 

 

"Very well. I know you gentlemen will want to contact your offices
immediately. You'll find a telephone in the reception room and others
in the various offices off the corridor. You're welcome to them." The
Old Man nodded. "Good morning, gentlemen -- and thank you."

 

 

David Hughes, standing by the projector, watched the newsmen curiously
as they rose and slowly moved toward the door.

 

 

They had the greatest story on earth, but they did not rush for the
phones in a frantic race to get the story in. On the contrary, they
seemed almost reluctant to leave.

 

 

They shuffled out of the auditorium as though they were walking in
their sleep. The look of the condemned was already upon their pallid
faces. Already their heads were shaved and their trousers slit for the
electrodes and they were hearing the last rites.

 

 

An hour later the whole world knew about Planet
Y
.

 

 

The shock radiated outward from Palomar and shuddered through the earth
like a great earthquake.

 

 

The phones at the observatory rang incessantly, and already the Highway to
the Stars was choked with cars racing upward into the San Jacinto range,
toward the new magnetic center of the earth. The military guard at the
observatory was alerted for trouble.

 

 

The people of Palomar were nearest, and they came to the observatory
first. Almost with a single accord the stafE astronomers, the physicists,
the mathematicians and calculators, the telescope mechanics and
maintenance men, the janitors and Diesel workers had dropped whatever
they were doing. They had gone to their homes, gathered their wives and
children, and, like the Israelites drawn to the temple in time of crisis,
had headed for the main observatory, as though somehow they would find
salvation there.

 

 

Now they gathered in little voiceless knots, their faces white and
dazed. Some of them, without knowing why, had dressed in their Sunday
best, they and their wives and children, as though it were a holiday.
They searched each other's faces dumbly, looking for hope, but they saw
no hope. All they saw in each other's faces were mirror reflections of
their own. They wandered about aimlessly, like pale automatons, eddying
and flowing through the corridors and foyers and reception rooms.

 

 

They gathered before the closed door to Dr. Dawson's study, waiting for
a word.

 

 

But there was no word.

 

 

And finally, inevitably, they climbed the parquet stairs toward the
transparent partition blocking off the telescope from the rest of the
observatory.

 

 

The Big Eye seemed to hypnotize them. They pressed their noses against the
glass wall and stared at it mutely, as though somehow it could rectify
what it had done, as though, by merely stirring itself, it could make
amends for its crime.

 

 

"What have you done to us?" the staring eyes on the other side of the
glass said. "What have you done to us?"

 

 

But the monstrous apparatus, soaring up into the semi-darkness of
the dome, was silent. It stood there, unmoved, vast and massive and
triumphant. It seemed to leer back at the white faces malevolently,
as though it were well aware of what it had done, as though it knew the
havoc it had wrought.

 

 

Yes, the great telescope was conscious of its power and proudly flaunted
it. It had a right to revel in its own strength. After all, it had
created all the havoc merely by producing only a tiny glint of light
deep in its Pyrex cornea.

 

 

To those who watched it through the transparent wall, it was a Thing,
it was alive. Its massive piers, its yoke, its girders and cylinders
were muscles which it flexed in glee on ball-and-socket joints. Its
burnished eye was invisible, but they were aware that it was mocking
them. They almost expected a bellow of triumph to roar up and out from
the yawning mouth of the giant and echo through the dome.

 

 

It was the telescope who was alive, not those who watched it. They
were inanimate, dead. They could only stand and stare, like images of
fleshy wax.

 

 

Had the heavily armed soldiers not been there, as stunned as anyone else,
but still watchful for the first sign of violence, the hatred might have
bubbled out of the onlookers and exploded into hysteria. They might have
come to life, a wild and avenging mob. They might have found axes and
sledges somewhere, surged forward, smashed through the glass partition,
and rushed toward their leering tormentor, chopping and hammering at it,
blinding its eye and hacking at its muscles imtil it came crashing to
the floor.

 

 

Elsewhere the great observatories of the world were attacked by mobs.
Unlike Palomar, they had been unprotected, caught off guard. The attacks
came simultaneously, shortly after the announcement, and they came without
warning. In the rioting, millions of dollars' worth of delicate precision
instruments were smashed and destroyed before guards could be summoned.

 

 

But at Palomar they could not move, they could not act. They could only
stand and stare at the telescope through the partition. No one spoke;
the silence was like that of a death watch.

 

 

Finally a pair of lips in one of the white faces against the glass moved,
muttered:

 

 

"You big bastard. You big bastard. What have you done to us?"

 

 

By early afternoon the observatory yard was choked with cars. And still
they kept coming up the steep road to Palomar.

 

 

They had no valid reason for coming, no real purpose, blindly seeking
the oracle, perhaps hoping for a crumb of comfort from the same mighty
source that promised them disaster.

 

 

The observatory was crowded with newsmen, photographers, Army officials,
public officials, and just plain people, dazed by the shock.

 

 

Everyone wanted to see Dr. Dawson.

 

 

But the Old Man would see no one. He was locked in his study with David,
and they had Francis's small radio turned on.

 

 

None of the regular programs was being broadcast. There was nothing but
music -- somber music -- funeral music. David twisted the dial to station
after station, with the same result.

 

 

"You're sure the President is going to make a statement. Dr. Dawson?"

 

 

The Old Man nodded. "He assured me he would, when I spoke to him over
the phone yesterday, David. Just as soon as we couIg give him absolute
confirmation of this phenomenon, beyond any element of doubt."

 

 

The dirgelike music continued.

 

 

David remembered something like this a long time ago when he was a boy.
It was the day Franklin D. Roosevelt died, fifteen years ago. There was
the same interminable music, like this.

 

 

And yet it was nothing like this.

 

 

Then, back in 1945, the people mourned for one man.

 

 

Now, in 1960, they mourned for themselves, and the music was their
own requiem.

 

 

The music occasionally stopped and then resumed jerkily. Sometimes there
were long blank spaces of dead air. Sometimes a hesitant voice came in
from somewhere and then was cut off in the middle of a sentence. The
whole radio frequency dial, from left to right, was uncertain, jittery,
frightened. The networks had been caught short. Their organization
had broken down. The studios were still there; the microphones, the
transmitters, they were intact. It was the people operating them who
collapsed.

 

 

Like everyone else, they had been stunned by the blow, numbed by the
shock; they had lost control.

 

 

David and the Old Man listened to one station playing the same
transcription over and over. Someone in a studio somewhere seemed to have
gone out of his mind. He put the needle on the record, ran it through,
began it all over again. It didn't occur to him to turn the record over
or put a new one on the turntable. It was enough that something was on
the air, anything.

 

 

"They've gone crazy out there somewhere," David remarked to the Old Man.

 

 

He recalled something Carol had once told him.

 

 

Back in New York the networks had prepared and recorded dramatic
obituaries of every living great man. When one of them died the studios
could almost instantly broadcast his obituary. They'd been making up
these transcriptions in advance ever since they got caught short when
Roosevelt died.

 

 

But this was one obituary they didn't figure on, thought David grimly.

 

 

This was everybody's obituary.

 

 

The music stopped abruptly and a shaky voice broke through:

 

 

"Ladies and gentlemen, we bring you a special message -- from the
President of the United States. The next voice you hear will be that of
the President."

 

 

The announcer's voice broke off. There was a long silence, perhaps a
minute of dead air. Then suddenly they heard the President.

 

 

His voice trembled with emotion; it was halting, still almost incredulous:

 

 

"This morning, only a few hours ago, a dramatic announcement was flashed
to the entire world from the Palomar Observatory in California. By now
there are few in this country, and indeed in every other nation of the
earth, who do not know that our days are numbered. At this very moment,
this cosmic body, this Planet
Y
, is speeding toward us from somewhere
out of the limitless heavens, bent on our complete and final destruction.

 

 

"In this solemn hour, this hour of tragedy, there is nothing I can say to
give you comfort. To those of you who are still skeptical of this coming
catastrophe, I bring bad news. I have been reassured that for us on earth,
and for the earth itself, there is no possibility, no hope of escape.

 

 

"No one can doubt that we have been visited with some kind of divine
judgment. We must accept it as such and try to face it tranquilly,
and with resignation.

 

 

"I ask you now, the people of the United States, to remain calm in
this great crisis. We cannot, we must not, fall prey to violent and
destructive hysteria. We cannot, we must not, have anarchy or chaos. As
Commander in Chief of the armed forces of this nation, I have already
instructed the Army to keep order wherever necessary. I now call upon
the governors of every state to alert the National Guard for any local
emergency that might occur.

 

 

"For some months we have faced the threat of terrible war, the prospect
of possible destruction. Now -- this period of uncertainty is over. Now
our destruction has been made certain and complete by a far higher Power
than man -- perhaps in righteous retribution for our own sins. And we
are powerless to avert our terrible destiny.

 

 

"I ask you now to turn to God Himself for solace and forgiveness. I ask
you now to go to your churches and temples and pray."

 

 

The President had finished. There was a moment of silence after his
last word had died away. Then a famous clergyman followed with a short
prayer. And after him the mournful music again.

 

 

And finally a news announcer, the first David and Dr. Dawson had heard,
pouring out early fragments of information in an almost hysterical voice:

 

 

"The whole world is stunned and dazed. In the cities throughout
the country people have left the factories, the offices, the homes,
and swarmed out into the streets, tying up traffic. All transport has
been halted, all schools closed as hysterical parents called for their
children. The streets are jammed with surging crowds. Authorities fear
mass panic.

 

 

"From China it is reported that soldiers of warring factions have throw
down their weapons and embraced each other. . . . The Pope is preparing
to address the world from Rome.