World Beneath Ice. John Russell Fearn

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СКАЧАТЬ “I’ll be hanged if I can, though. What has happened to our own British agriculture, the Canadian wheat fields, the United States grain-growing areas? All of them are just dying, man! Dying!”

      “It has puzzled me,” Mathers responded. “The reports are similar from all sources. The seasons are said to be changing. Take today, for instance, and we’re right in the middle of spring. Snowing fast, and looks likely to continue. And the temperature hasn’t rose much over freezing point since December of last year. I have been gathering weather reports from all over the world recently, and in every case there is a marked decline in mean temperatures—even in the tropics. Crops in consequence are far behind normal.”

      “The members of the combine must be made to produce eighty percent more than they usually do,” Arnside decided. “If they don’t, there’ll be a penalty, and I’ll issue a directive to that effect. It’s the only way. Laziness, that’s what it is! Living in a world of plenty, they think they can relax. They can’t—and most certainly they’re not going to make an unusually cold spring the excuse. I’ll settle it!”

      “Yes, sir,” Mathers murmured.

      “It would help,” Arnside added, “if you showed a little more enthusiasm.”

      “I’m afraid I can’t, sir. I think I know what we are fighting, and it rather terrifies me.”

      The food controller stared. “A slowing up in crop production terrifies you? Don’t be an idiot, man!”

      Mathers knew his chief far too well to take offence at his brusqueness. “I have been studying this business pretty thoroughly—not entirely for professional reasons, but because I’m naturally curious. I may be wrong, but I don’t think we’ll ever get the crops to rights again. And I don’t think we’ll ever get warm weather again, either.”

      “Do you mind telling me what on earth you’re talking about?” Arnside demanded.

      Mathers rose and went to the immense window. He stood gazing out over the fantastically lofty roofs of New London; then he turned and motioned his superior. Arnside joined him and they stood gazing through the whirling snow into the grey sky.

      “Well?” Arnside asked bluntly.

      “Through the cloud breaks, sir, you can see the sun,” Mathers said, pointing. “There—practically overhead at this hour.”

      Arnside peered diagonally through the glass. “Yes, I see it,” he acknowledged. “Look pretty yellow, too. More like a foggy sun than a spring one. Mist intervening, I suppose.”

      “Partly,” 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.

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