Part 7

The tail of a Comet is fraught with still other possible dangers. Our atmosphere contains a certain amount of hydrogen, a marvellously light gas to which balloons owe their buoyancy. Besides its lightness, this gas is characterized by an extreme inflammability. The law of the diffusion of gases teaches us that part of this hydrogen in the air is mechanically mixed with other gases, and that part of it probably floats in the upper air, far beyond the reach of any balloon. A Comet may be regarded as a huge lighted torch whirling through space, which may be brought dangerously near that upper layer of highly inflammable hydrogen. If the gas shall ever be touched off by this flying torch, our planet will be ignited. The whole atmosphere will become a seething ocean of flame, in which forests and cities will burn like straw, in which oceans will boil away in vast clouds of steam, and in which all animal life will be snuffed out of existence before it shall realize that the world is on fire. In a word, the globe will become a planetary funeral pyre. Since water results from burning hydrogen in oxygen, this same fierce and terrible flame must be speedily extinguished by a mighty deluge which will engulf the Earth.

A spectroscope analysis of Halley’s Comet has furthermore revealed the presence of cyanogen gas in the tail. Cyanogen is a compound of nitrogen and carbon, one of the most poisonous compounds with which the chemist is familiar. Prussic acid, potassium cyanide and many other cyanides, all of them almost instantaneously fatal if taken into the human system, are compounds of cyanogen. If that gas is present in large enough quantities, one flick of a Comet’s tail will end all human and animal existence.

So much is certain. A collision of the Earth with a Comet will undoubtedly prove disastrous—how disastrous will depend largely on the size of the Comet’s head and on its speed. That a violent heat will be developed, we have every reason to believe, from our knowledge of meteors. The mere movement of a meteor through the thin upper layers of our atmosphere produces a dazzling trail and reduces the meteor itself to a molten metallic mass. Arrest a body in swift motion, and you must dissipate its energy in some way. As a rule, the energy is converted into heat. A bullet discharged from a rifle is often melted when suddenly stopped by steel armour. A Comet travels at a pace compared with which a projectile, fired from the most powerful twelve-inch gun, seems only to crawl. What, then, must be the frightful effect when it strikes the Earth?

A Comet rushes through space not at the bullet’s rate of thousands of feet an hour, but of a million miles an hour. The bigger it is, and the faster it moves, the greater will be the heat developed by its stoppage.

“At the first contact with the upper regions of the atmosphere,” writes Prof. Simon Newcomb, “the whole heavens would be illuminated with a resplendence beyond that of a thousand Suns, the sky radiating a light which would blind every eye that beheld it, and a heat which would melt the hardest rocks.” The same conclusion was reached by Prof. Faye.

When the time comes for a collision with a Comet of formidable size, the human race will be in the horrible predicament of knowing the exact hour and minute of its doom. The newspapers will print a dispatch from some great observatory, reading perhaps like this:

“A telescopic Comet was discovered by Caxton in right ascension 7 hours 13 minutes 1 second, and declension 17 degrees 28 minutes 31 seconds. Moderate motion in a northwest direction.”

[Illustration: “If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to strike the Earth—a thing by no means impossible—the shock would reduce this beautiful world to its original chaos.”—EDMUND HALLEY.]

At first the discovery produces not even a ripple of excitement. Telescopic Comets are discovered too frequently. Three days later the discoverer has worked out an ephemeris, which gives the date when the body will pass around the Sun, and which indicates the Comet’s path. He finds that on a certain date and at a certain hour the Earth and the Comet must crash together. Again and again he repeats his calculations, hoping that he may have erred. The utmost permissible allowance for accelerations and retardations caused by the outer planets of the solar system fails to change the result.

The Earth and the Comet must meet. With some hesitation the astronomer sends a telegram to a central observatory, which acts as a distributor of astronomical news. At first his prediction is discredited and even laughed at. Another computation is made at the observatory. Again mathematics infallibly indicates the exact time and place of the encounter, and the last lingering hope is dispelled. Telegrams are sent to astronomical societies, to the leading scientific periodicals and to the newspapers.

At first the prediction of the Earth’s doom is received with popular incredulity, engendered by years of newspaper misrepresentation. The world’s end has been too frequently and too frightfully foretold on flamboyant double-page Sunday editions. When the truth is at last accepted, after days of insistent repetition of the original announcement, a wave of terror runs through the world.

There is no escape. International committees of astronomers meet daily to mark the approach of the Comet. Bulletins are published announcing the steadily dwindling distance between the world and the huge projectile in the sky. The great tail, arching the Heavens as the Comet approaches, seems like a mighty, fiery sword held in an unseen Titanic hand and relentlessly sweeping down. The temples, churches and synagogues are thronged with supplicating multitudes on bended knees, in a catalepsy of terror. The stock exchanges, banks, shops and public institutions are deserted. Business is at a standstill. The roar of the street is hushed. No wagons rattle over the pavement; no hucksters call out their wares.

As the Comet draws nearer and nearer, night changes into an awful, nocturnal day. Even at noon the Comet outshines the Sun. There is no twilight. The Sun sets; but the Comet glows in the sky, another more brilliant luminary, marvellously yet fearfully arrayed in a fiery plume that overspreads the sky. The Moon is completely lost, and the Stars are drowned out in this dazzling glare. Warned by the astronomers, mankind takes refuge in subterranean retreats to await its fate.

Long before the actual collision—long before the Earth is reduced to a maelstrom of lava, gas, steam and planetary debris—mankind is annihilated with merciful swiftness by heat and suffocation. A candle flame blown out by a gust of wind is not more quickly extinguished.

When the Comet encounters the upper layers of the atmosphere, there is a blinding flash, due to friction between the air and the Comet. A few seconds later the crash comes. From within, molten rock and flame, pent up for geologic ages, burst forth, geyser-like. The Earth is converted into a gigantic volcano, in the eruption of which oceans are spilled and continents are torn asunder, to vanish like wax in a furnace.

When it is all over, the Earth swims through space, a blackened planetary cinder,—desolate and dead.

THE END OF THE WORLD

Camille Flammarion, the French astronomer, in his story, “The End of the World,” gives this graphic description of the results of a collision between a Comet and our Earth:

In Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, New York and Chicago—in all the great capitals of the world, in all the cities, in all the villages—the frightened people wandered out of doors, as one sees ants run about when their ant-hills are disturbed. All the affairs of every-day life were forgotten.

All human projects were at a standstill. People seemed to have lost interest in all their affairs. They were in a state of demoralization—a dejection more abject even than that which is produced by sea-sickness.

All places of worship had been crowded on that memorable day when it was seen that a collision with a Comet had become inevitable.

In Paris the crowds in the churches were so great that people could no longer get near Notre Dame, the Madeleine and the other churches. Within the churches, vast congregations of worshippers were on their knees praying to God on High. The churches rang with the sounds of supplication, but no other sound was heard. The great church organs and the bells in the steeples were hushed.

In the streets, on the avenues, in the public squares, there was the same dread silence. Nothing was bought or sold. No newspapers were hawked about.

The only vehicles seen on the streets were funeral hearses carrying to the cemeteries the bodies of the first victims of the Comet. Of these there were already many. They were people who had died from fright and from heart disease.

With what anxiety everyone waited for the night!

Never, perhaps, was there a more beautiful sunset. Never a clearer sky. The sun seemed to dip into a sea of red and gold.

The huge red ball of the sun sank majestically to the horizon. But the stars did not appear. Night did not come.

To the solar day succeeded a new day, the daylight of the Comet. Its intense light resembled that of an Aurora Borealis, but more vivid, coming from a great incandescent spot, which had not been visible during the day because it was below the horizon, but which would certainly have rivalled the splendour of the Sun.

This luminous spot rose in the East almost at the same time as the full Moon. The two luminous bodies rose together, side by side. As they rose, the light of the Moon seemed to pale, but the head of the Comet increased in splendour with the disappearance of the Sun below the western horizon.

Now, after nightfall, the Comet dominated the world—a scarlet-red ball with jets of yellow and green flame which seemed to flutter like fiery wings.

To the terrified people it seemed like a giant of fire taking possession of all Heaven and Earth.

Already the outermost jets of flame had reached the Moon. From one instant to the next the flaming rays would descend upon the Earth.

All eyes were distended with horror when it was seen that the horizon was lighting up with tiny violet flames as from a vast fire.

An instant afterward, the Comet diminished in brilliancy. This was apparently because the Comet, upon touching the atmosphere of our Earth, had come within the penumbra of our planet and had lost part of its reflected light coming from the Sun. But in reality this apparent extinction was the effect of contrast. When the less dazzled eyes of the awestruck, human spectators had grown used to this new light, it appeared almost as intense as at first, but paler, more sinister and sepulchral.

Never before had the Earth been lit up with so sickly a light.

The drouth of the air became intolerable. Heat, as from a huge burning oven, came from above. A horrible stench of burning sulphur—due, no doubt, to electrified ozone—poisoned the atmosphere.

All the people then saw that their time had come. Many-thousand-throated cries rent the air. “The World is burning. We are on fire!” they cried.

All the horizon, in fact, was now lit up with flame, forming a crown of blue light. It was, indeed, as had been foreseen by scientists, the oxide of carbon igniting in the air and producing anhydrid of carbon. Clearly, too, hydrogen from the Comet combined with it.

On a sudden, as the people were gazing terrified, motionless, mute, holding their breath, and scared out of their wits, the vault of Heaven seemed to be rent asunder from the zenith to the horizon. Through the gaping breach there seemed to appear the huge red mouth of a dragon, belching forth sheaves of sputtering green flames.

The glare of the atmosphere was so fierce that those who had not already hidden themselves in the cellars of their houses, now all rushed helter-skelter to the nearest underground openings, be they subway steps, cellar doors or sewer manholes. Thousands were crushed or maimed during this mad stampede, while many others, frantic from fright and stricken with the heat, fell dead from apoplexy.

All reasoning powers seemed to have ceased. Among those cowering in dark cellars and subterranean passages below, there was nothing but silence, begot by dull resignation and stupor.

Of all this panic-stricken multitude, only the astronomers had remained at their posts in the Observatories, making unceasing observations of this great astronomic phenomenon. They were the only eye-witnesses of the impending collision.

Their calculations had been that the terrestrial globe would penetrate into the core of the Comet, as a cannon ball might into a cloud. From the first contact of the extreme atmospheric zones of the Earth and of the Comet, they had figured, the transit would last four hours and a half.

It was easy to compute, since the Comet, being about fifty times as large as the Earth, was to be pierced, not in its centre, but at one-quarter of the distance from the centre, with a velocity of 173,000 kilometers an hour.

It was about forty minutes after the first atmospheric impact with the Comet, that the heat and horrible stench of burning sulphur became so suffocating that a few more moments of this torment would put an end to all life. Even the most intrepid of astronomers withdrew into the interior of their glass-domed observatories, which they could close hermetically as they descended into the deep subterranean vaults.

The longest to stay above was a young assistant astronomer, a girl student from California, whose nerves had been steeled during the ordeal of the San Francisco earthquake. She remained long enough to witness the apparition of a huge, white-hot meteorite, precipitating itself southward with the velocity of lightning.

But it was beyond human endurance to remain longer above. It was no longer possible to breathe. To the intense heat and atmospheric drouth, destroying all vital functions, was added the poisoning of our air by the oxide of carbon.

The ears rang as from the tolling of funeral bells, and all hearts were in a flutter of feverish palpitation. And always, everywhere, there was that suffocating stench of sulphur.

Now a shower of fire fell from the glowing sky. It was raining shooting-stars and white-hot meteorites, most of which burst like bombs. The fragments of these, like flying shrapnel, crashed through the roofs and set fire to the buildings.

To the conflagration of the sky were added the flames of fire everywhere on earth.

Claps of ear-splitting thunder followed each other incessantly, produced partly by the explosions of the meteors, and partly by a tremendous electric thunderstorm. Rifts of lightning zig-zagged hither and thither.

A continuous rumbling, like that of distant drums, filled the ears of the cowering people below, awaiting their fate. This low rumble was interspersed with the deafening detonations of exploding meteors and the high shriek of hurtling aerial fragments.

Then followed unearthly noises, like the seething of some immense boiling cauldron, the wild wailing of winds, and the quaking of the soil where the earth’s crust was giving way.

This unearthly tempest became so frightful, so fraught with agony and mad terror, that the multitudes grovelling below were overcome with paralysis, and lay prone. Laid low like dumb brutes, they met their doom.

The end of all had come.

_COLOPHON_

_POST HOC, NON PROPTER HOC: Sic veteres de multis rebus opinabantur, Eodemque dicto eas jugiter absolvisse Recte sibi visi sunt, Vt puta quaecumque et qualiacumque Cometarum saeculares reditus sequuntur. CVR TV ITAQVE, forsitan quaeras, Haec auditu minime jucunda nobis narrasti, Terrae motus, fluminum inundationes, annonae defectus, Pestes mortiferas, incendia, bella, regumque magnorum excidia? Si tibi cordi est, LECTOR BENEVOLENTISSIME, rationem nostram didicisse, eia, veram accipe: MVNDVS VVLT DECIPI._

_FINIS._