World Beneath Ice. John Russell Fearn

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      “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 the next state of instability—that of the white dwarf.”

      “And what would that mean—in plain language?”

      “That the sun would never again recover his radiation. It would become small and useless—like the Companion of Sirius.”

      The astronomer seemed impossibly calm considering what he was saying. Nor had he finished. He continued quietly:

      “Something—we are not certain what—caused the sun’s internal temperature to become enormously increased for a brief time. It coincided with an abnormal number of spots. The spots, with their cooling blanket, kept in the sun’s internal heat and the atoms were stripped. It was, in effect a vast cave-in, of which the sunspots are the outward sign. Finally the sun’s photosphere will collapse, and the white dwarf stage will then have been reached. Some of those sun spots are even now tens of thousands of miles across.”

      Arnside gazed up again through the window on the yellow orb. It looked a mockery as it hung there, blotched and ugly. About it stars were faintly visible in the violet-tinged heaven. Arnside’s own thoughts of a holiday in Florida under blue skies upon sun-drenched beaches suddenly underwent a drastic revision. With difficulty he found words.

      “There’s—no possibility of a mistake?”

      “I wish there were.” The astronomer returned the file to its cabinet and stood with hands in pockets, musing. “It is for the government of the World Council to decide what shall be done. As I see it, there are two alternatives facing the human race. One is to go underground and there be prepared to spend the rest of its life until Earth crumbles away with age—or to somehow create another sun.” He shook his head and smiled wanly. “Great though our science is, it is not great enough for that.”

      The first shock having abated somewhat, Arnside stood musing. Then presently he spoke:

      “Doctor, there must be some reason why the sun increased its internal temperature as it did. It just couldn’t do it in the ordinary way, could it?”

      “It could, but it is most unlikely,” Blandish responded. “Stray matter in space, drawn into the sun and exploded atomically by the terrific heat might have caused it. But I don’t think it that it was such an accident....”

      “Why not?” the food controller asked sharply.

      The astronomer said: “Two years ago the Earth was invaded by robotic probes that settled into close orbits above our planet. Naturally, they were eventually destroyed by interceptor craft and our missile defences, but by that time they had already completed their work—which was to spy out the land. Captured probes proved that—they were all equipped with transmitting cameras and electronic apparatus of obviously alien origin. Not long afterwards an alien armada was detected entering our solar system and headed for Earth. The implication was obvious—we were about to be invaded. So Violet Ray Brant—or as she is more popularly called, the Golden Amazon—flew into space to try and deal with them. Her private vessel the Ultra was the only spaceship capable of intercepting them whilst they were still in deep space. She then somehow caused them to be hurled into the sun and destroyed....”

      Arnside frowned heavily: “But how could something as relatively tiny as a fleet of spaceships affect the sun?”

      Blandish shrugged. “Don’t forget they were alien machines. To have crossed an interstellar gulf they must have had fantastically powerful engines. The power plants in those machines employed technologies unknown to us, perhaps utilizing contra-terrene matter. Could not that armada and the exploding contra-terrene engines—if such they were—set up a vast solar disturbance?”

      Blandish paused thoughtfully, then added: “There, I think, you have the answer. It occurred to me long ago, and the time of the disturbance’s commencement dates from when that armada fell in the sun, hurled there by the Golden Amazon. Whatever the initial cause, we have to face the consequences.”

      “You mean the Golden Amazon has,” Arnside snapped. “If she hadn’t caused that armada to be flung into the sun it wouldn’t be dying now! That makes her directly responsible!”

      “But unwittingly,” the astronomer protested. “She risked her life to destroy that armada. It saved the world from horrible invasion. It would be preposterous to accuse the Amazon of being the cause of our troubles.”

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