Legacy from Sirius. John Russell Fearn
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in space must have been nuts.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Bob responded. “I’ll carry on. Stand by for reports.”
He switched off and with a troubled frown reseated himself in the control chair and went to work.
* * * * * * *
Once she had arrived at the Los Angeles airport Mona went to the briefing room for her instructions, and found that they gave her about forty-five minutes breathing space before she had to take off for Rio. Just enough time in fact to see the airport surgeon.
As it happened he was on night duty, and greeted her in his usual matter-of-fact style as she walked into his office. He knew her well enough, since routine physical check-ups were the law for all men and women pilots engaged on public work.
“I think Bob may have been right, Mona,” he commented, when she had outlined her disorder. “Probably the altitude. Anyway, I’ll have a look. Step over here, will you?”
Gone were the days when a doctor had need to poke and probe. Mona simply stepped, fully clothed as she was, into a cabinet and the surgeon closed the door upon her. Beneath a battery of radiations, predominant amongst which were X-rays, every detail of her physique was reflected on to screens. Meters and gauges automatically showed respiration, heartbeats, and blood pressure.
Finally the surgeon switched off, unlocked the cabinet and Mona stepped out to find him considering his notes.
“I’ve seen a few healthy young women in my time, but few like you,” he commented, smiling. “You check up in every detail, Mona—and with a heart like yours, you ought to live to be a hundred and fifty.”
“You’re not—just cheering me up, doc?” Mona asked, seriously.
“Why on earth should I? I state facts as I find them....” The surgeon put down his notebook and frowned at her. “What are you worrying about, girl? This machine does not lie, and it says you are in perfect health. Your fainting spell was purely the attenuated air of that Observatory; I’m sure of it.”
“Yes—I suppose so.” Mona reflected for a moment, and then she gave her sunny smile. “I’ve never been the worrying type, so I suppose I shouldn’t start now. It’s not the faint that has me worried, doc, but something else. The feeling of awful revulsion I had when I looked at Sirius in that reflector mirror. It was as though I’d looked at something indescribably obscene.”
The surgeon shrugged. “Can’t help you there, Mona. It’s a mental reaction and a psychiatrist’s job: I only deal with the body....”
He broke off, alert and listening. Mona, too, detected at the same moment a distant bass rolling sound. It only took her a second or two to interpret it—the same dreaded note she had heard in many a stricken city—
“Earthquake!” she gasped. “No doubt of it....”
She flung herself to the doorway with the doctor immediately behind her. The instant she reached the corridor the earthquake arrived in all its shattering fury. The rumbling became a roar, drumming above the steady crack of fissuring walls. Mona reeled and stumbled her way along the main corridor of the medical department, surrounded now by nurses and medical students who had also nothing in mind save escaping the disaster.
Panting for breath Mona reeled outside into the big open quadrangle of the building. Behind her, the big main edifice split and crumpled like grey tissue paper. Dazed she looked around her. The metal flooring of the quadrangle was splitting in all directions. In the distance buildings were visibly swinging out of the perpendicular and then avalanching downwards. Fire spurted reddishly in all directions; electric sparks flew as cables became entangled with metal. And the vast, overpowering din which gulped and rolled from the Earth’s interior—
Then silence. So sudden it was startling. Steam hissed from somewhere. A chunk of metal dropped with a clang. Mona stood looking about her, disturbed air currents blowing a fast rising wind past her face. She began moving through the excitedly chattering medical staff, inwardly astonished at finding herself alive. Apparently the quake had been severe, but not of very long duration. Many light-standards were still standing, though some of them were drunkenly tilted.
She gained the main airport field to find that nothing was much disturbed. Her own rocket-flyer was just as she had left it.
“What’s the damage, Harry?” she asked one of the ground mechanics.
“Pretty bad,” Mrs. Driscoll,” he answered grimly. “Just had word through. Quake destroyed all eastern Los Angeles. We got the tail end of it.”
Mona sighed as she climbed through the doorway of the flyer’s control cabin.
“Bang goes our happy home,” she commented. “It was in that part of the city. It’s getting these days that you don’t know where to settle.”
“Sure is,” the mechanic agreed, and slammed the cabin door.
At the same moment the door of the Mount Wilson Observatory opened, and Professor Leeman, curator of the observatory and astronomical figurehead throughout the world, came silently across the polished floor. Bob, at the end of his night’s work on the reflector, turned in his control chair.
“Hello, Professor,” he greeted respectfully. “I was just wrapping things up for the night.”
Leeman nodded. He was a tall, gaunt, eagle-like being—forbidding in appearance yet good-natured enough upon close acquaintance.
“Feel the quake?” he asked brusquely, aiming sharp grey eyes.
“Slightly,” Bob acknowledged. “Up here we have the mass of the mountain to support us. Just as well, too with so many valuable instruments about.”
“Just so. I hear that all eastern Los Angeles has been smashed. Hundreds dead. Same old story.”
Bob said nothing, his mind flashing instantly to Mona. He could only hope that she had been in the air when the quake had struck.
“I have here a report from the geologists,” Leeman continued, taking a printed sheet from his inside pocket. “It makes hay of the idea that neutronium might be causing the earthquake trouble. Seismographers and geologists working together have positive evidence of an internal volcanic cause, so we can call the search for neutronium definitely off.”
“I understand, sir,” Bob assented. “And what about the President? Am I to tell him that?”
Leeman smiled frostily. “I have already done so. Naturally, it is no secret to any of us here that he gave you special orders. As chief curator my position ranks with yours.”
Bob said nothing. If anything, the curator was a niche higher, but he never traded on his superiority.
“What we have to do,” Leeman continued, “is follow out new Presidential orders. The geologists hold out little hope of stopping these quakes—so we have to prepare accordingly. The Space Agency have received orders to build Space Arks on the rocket-principle.... An ill-starred project, to my mind,” Leeman finished gloomily. “However, the hand of urgency is pushing us. So, then, with your staff you will work out a full report on Mars—the only planet that we might hope to colonize. That clear?”
“Clear enough, sir,” Bob agreed, reflecting. “Only I don’t really see we have much to add to information already gained from the probes we sent to Mars years ago. Planets don’t change much. Our trouble is, we don’t have any probes there at the moment that are still transmitting. The government have scaled right back on expenditure on space exploration these last few years....”
“That’s about to change,” Leeman replied, with his usual brevity. “Anyway, those are the orders, Bob; I’m leaving it to you to carry them out.”
With that he departed, leaving Bob looking thoughtfully after him. Fifteen minutes later Bob was leaving the Observatory for his State-maintained home two miles further along the mountain road. Actually, as Mona herself had remarked, it was little more