Fool's Paradise. John Russell Fearn
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scale maps for the world’s observatories, and cross-checking much astronomical data. In a word, the commercial genius of Mortimer Bland had turned science to account in the matter of money. He held the rights on nearly every scientific product, but it was the brains of Anton Drew that made the whole complicated scheme workable.
“So here you are!” Ken exclaimed cordially, advancing with hand extended.
Anton Drew did not answer. He was seated at a desk near the giant reflector, busy studying a sheet of figures. A short briar crackled in his mouth; his untidy brown hair was flung back in confusion from his wide forehead. With a smile Ken noticed that the collar of the scientist’s overall was half up and half down. For the rest he could only see the slim, wiry shoulders, hooked nose, jutting chin, and unusually large mouth.
Then Drew looked up, and after gazing absently with pale blue eyes for nearly thirty seconds, he seemed to awaken.
“Hello,” he greeted, and remained thoughtful.
Ken sat down, not in the least offended. That three weeks had passed since he had last seen Drew did not signify. Drew always talked as though there had been no gap in conversation.
“Busy?” Ken ventured.
“Eh? Oh, busy? Yes, of course I’m busy!” Drew brooded, allowed his pipe to go out, then brooded again. “Very busy,” he resumed at last. “It’s this unusual weather.”
“Unusual—but glorious,” Ken smiled.
“Calm before the storm,” Drew muttered, and got to his feet.
He was only small, spare as a youth, certainly not looking his forty-eight years.
“You mean thunder?” Ken asked, puzzled. “Well, I suppose it will break up in that. So what?”
Drew gave an odd glance, somehow mystifying. He made another effort to light his pipe. Propping himself against the massive eyepiece of the reflector, he scowled pensively.
“I thought you’d like to know, Anton, that Thayleen’s expecting a youngster in the autumn,” Ken hurried on. “I’ve been holding it back. Bit of a surprise, eh?”
Drew gazed into distance. “It must be the beginning of the hundred-year cycle,” he said.
“What is?” Ken looked blank. “Dammit, man, listen! I said Thayleen is expecting a baby.”
“She is?” Drew smiled briefly. “Good! Fine! Normal enough for a married couple, isn’t it? Simple biological function— Er, where was I?”
“At the beginning of a hundred-year cycle,” Ken answered sourly. “And thanks for the congratulations!”
Drew came to life for a moment. With an apologetic grin he lounged forward.
“Sorry, old man—really I am.” He clapped Ken on the shoulder. “I’ve been so absorbed in this sunspot business I haven’t been able to think of much else. Of course I congratulate you, and Thayleen too. Don’t spoil the.…”
He sucked at his pipe and continued, “This weather has something to do with sunspots. I don’t quite know what. It is rather like a man who is about to die suddenly finding himself healthier than he has ever been before. Just as though Earth, about to die, is enjoying all the calmness preceding the hell to come.”
“What are you rambling about?” Ken demanded. Drew turned to the desk and raised six photographic plates. He handed them over and, as he looked at them Ken recognised spectro-heliograph records of the sun.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Drew said. “Study them.”
“Mmmm—sunspots,” Ken said finally. “About a dozen of them, big and small. How far does that get us?”
“They are getting bigger,” Drew said. “If you’ll look carefully, you’ll find the first plates were taken eight weeks ago. There are six plates there, taken at different times. First we see two spots—one big and one small. Then, as the weeks progress, they become more numerous; until on this last plate you will find them splotching away from the solar equator down towards its poles. That has never happened before in the sun’s history.”
“I’m a bit hazy about this,” Ken said, “but shouldn’t an outburst of spots like this cause magnetic storms?”
“It should, but we don’t happen to have had any in our part of the world. Sunspots are queer phenomena. Sometimes they violently upset the weather conditions and electrical equipment; at other times they create anticyclone conditions, and calm, burning weather such as we have been experiencing lately. What is somewhat terrifying—to me anyway—is that we are at one start of a hundred-year-period of sunspots. This sunspot spread may continue indefinitely.”
Ken ventured a suggestion. “With a consequent dimming of the sun, due to so much of his face being caverned with spots? Is that it?”
Drew took the plates back and relit his pipe.
“There will be a decrease in light, yes, but that isn’t what is worrying me. It is the appalling danger to Earth’s magnetic field! The Earth is a magnet, you know, and like any other magnet is surrounded by a magnetic field. If you want proof of it, look at the compass needle revealing the lines of force between the two poles.”
“High school stuff,” Ken said. “What about it?”
“That magnetic field, Ken, is our protection against appalling disaster! If it were to break down, the consequences would be terrible, and it is because the possibility exists that I am so worried. As yet I cannot seem to get all the astronomers to worry with me, but they will as the spots multiply. The more the sunspots increase, the greater becomes the danger of the magnetic field collapsing.”
Ken gave a half-smile, and then it faded. Knowing Drew as he did, knowing his profound scientific knowledge and that he only concerned himself with facts, it was disturbing to find him so uneasy. He never worried without good reason.
“Sunspots go in cycles,” Drew, explained. “Highs and lows return in approximately eleven years—but there are other variations in their regularity which are the outcome of another independent cycle of more than a century’s duration. Up to now, the highs of the eleven-year and the hundred-year cycles have never matched, though astronomers have known for long enough it must do so about a year hence. It means the absolute maximum of sunspot activity, an activity never known in the history of the world. With those high cycles working together, and at maximum, our magnetic field might collapse!”
Ken cast a glance towards the window. There was a rectangle of evening sky with a star gleaming between the sides of lofty buildings. The extraordinary peace made it hard for him to believe.…
“Frankly, Anton,” he said, after a moment, “I’m hazy about what the magnetic field does. I’m an engineer, not an astronomer.”
“The magnetic field,” Drew said, “is our only protection against cosmic rays. It is so strong that only cosmic rays of energy greater than 200-million electron volts can penetrate it, but when these do penetrate, things happen. You find two-headed chickens, double-fingered children, five-legged calves—all kinds of monstrosities. Why? Because the parental germ plasm has been accidentally struck by cosmic radiation which has completely distorted it, with the result that a freak is born.…”
Drew took his pipe from his teeth and contemplated it.
“Under present conditions, Ken, with the magnetic field doing its normal job, the chances of a hit by cosmic rays are infinitely remote, but the cases I have instanced show it does happen every now and again. Roughly speaking, the cosmic rays aim thirty shots at every living body every second, and each body has something like a thousand trillion trillion atoms. But consider these atoms, as apart as island universes, each with their planetary electrons separated from the nucleus by distances proportionate to those between members of the Solar System— Then we see why a direct hit is unlikely. The cosmic radiation projectiles, as we might call them, go straight through empty space.