CHAPTER I
A Warning of Doom
It was on the third day of May, 1994, that the world received its first news of the strange behavior of the sun. That first news was contained in a brief message sent out from the North American Observatory, in upper New York, and signed by Dr. Herbert Marlin, the observatory's head. It stated that within the last twenty-four hours a slight increase had been detected in the sun's rotatory speed, or rate of spin, and that while that increase might only be an apparent one, it was being further studied. That brief first message was broadcast, a few hours later, from the Intelligence Bureau of the World Government, in New York. It was I, Walter Hunt, who supervised the broadcasting of that message at the Intelligence Bureau, and I remember that it seemed to me of so little general interest that I ordered it sent out on the scientific-news wave rather than on the general-news wave.
Late on the next day, however--the 4th--there came another report from the North American Observatory in which Dr. Marlin stated that he and his first assistant, an astronomical student named Randall, had checked their observations in the intervening hours and had found that there was in reality a measurable increase in the sun's rotatory speed, an increase somewhat greater than had been estimated at first. Dr. Marlin added that all the facilities of the observatory were being utilized in an effort to determine the exact amount of that increase, and although it seemed at first glance rather incomprehensible, all available data concerning it would be gathered. And at the same hour, almost, there came corroborative reports from the Paris and Honolulu Observatories, stating that Dr. Marlin's first observations had already been confirmed independently by their own observers. There could be no doubt, therefore, that the sun was spinning faster!
To astronomers this news of the sun's increased rotatory speed became at once a sensation of the first importance, and in the hours following the broadcasting of Dr. Marlin's first statement, we at the Intelligence Bureau had been bombarded with inquiries from the world's observatories regarding it. We could only answer those inquiries by repeating the statement already sent out on the scientific-news wave and by promising to broadcast any further developments instantly from our Bureau, the clearing-house of the world's news. This satisfied the scientifically-minded, while the great mass of the public was so little interested in this slight increase in the sun's rate of spin as not to bother us with any questions concerning it. I know that I would have taken small interest in the thing myself, had it not been for a personal factor connected with it.
"Marlin!" I had exclaimed, when the Intelligence Chief had handed to me that first report for broadcasting. "Dr. Herbert Marlin--why, he was my astronomy prof up at North American University, two years ago."
"Oh, you know him," the Chief had remarked. "I suppose then that this statement of his on the sun's increased rate of spin is authentic?"
"Absolutely, if Dr. Marlin gave it," I told him. "He's one of the three greatest living astronomers, you know. I became good friends with him at the University, but haven't seen him for some time."
So that it was with an interest rather unusual for me, that I followed the reports on this technical astronomical sensation in the next few days. Those reports were coming fast now from all the observatories of Earth, from Geneva and Everest and Tokio and Mexico City, for almost all astronomers had turned their interest at once toward this unprecedented phenomenon of the sun's increased rate of spin, which Dr. Marlin had been first to discover. The exact amount of that increase, I gathered, was still somewhat in doubt. For not only did the sun turn comparatively slowly, but the problem was complicated by the fact that it did not, like the Earth or like any solid body, rotate everywhere at the same speed, but turned faster at the equator than at its poles, due to its huge size and the lack of solidity of its mass. Dr. Marlin, however, stated that according to his observations the sun's great fiery ball, which had rotated previously at its equator at the rate of one rotation each 25 days, had already increased its rate of spin, so as to be turning now at the rate of one rotation each 24 days, 12 hours.
This meant that the sun's rotatory period, or day, had decreased 12 hours in three Earth-days, and such an unprecedented happening was bound to create an uproar of excitement among astronomers. For to them, as to all, who had any conception of the unvarying accuracy and superhuman perfection of the movements of the sun and its worlds, such a sudden increase of speed was all but incredible. And when on the fourth day Dr. Marlin and a score of other observers reported that the sun's rotatory period had decreased by another 4 hours, the excitement of the astronomers was unprecedented. A few of them, indeed, sought even in the face of the recorded observations to cast doubt on the thing. The sun's rotatory speed, they contended, could be measured only by means of the sun-spots upon its turning surface, and it was well known that those sun-spots themselves often changed position, so that this sudden increase in speed might only be an illusion.
This contention, however, found small support in the face of the indisputable evidence which Dr. Marlin and his fellow-astronomers had advanced in the shape of numerous helio-photographs and time-recordings. The sun was spinning faster, that was undoubted by the greater part of the world's astronomers--but what was making it do so? Was it due to some great dark body passing the solar system in space? Or was it due to strange changes within the sun's great fiery sphere? It was the latter theory, on the whole, that was favored by most astronomers, and which struck me at the time as the most plausible. It was generally held that a great shifting of the sun's inner layers, a movement of its mighty interior mass, had caused this sudden change in speed of rotation. Dr. Marlin himself, though, when questioned, would only state that the increased rate of spin was in itself beyond doubt but that no sound theory could as yet be formed as to the phenomenon's cause.
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And while the astronomers thus pondered and disputed over the thing, it had begun to arouse repercussions of interest in the non-scientific public also. More and more inquiries concerning it were coming to us at the Intelligence Bureau in those first few days, those inquiries becoming so numerous as to cause us to switch the news on the thing from the scientific-news wave to the general-news wave, which reached every communication-plate in the world. It was, no doubt, out of sheer lack of other topics of interest that the world turned thus toward this astronomical sensation. For sensations of any kind were rare now in this peaceful world of ours. The last mighty air war of 1972, which had ended in the total abolition of all national boundaries and the establishment of the World Government with its headquarters in the new world-capital of New York, had brought peace to the world, but it had also brought some measure of monotony. So that even such a slight break in the order of things as this increase in the sun's rate of spin, was rather welcomed by the peoples of the world.
And now, the thing had passed from the realm of the merely surprising to that of the astounding. For upon the fifth and sixth days had come reports from Dr. Marlin and from the heads of the other observatories of the world that the strange phenomenon was still continuing, that the sun's rotatory speed was still increasing. In each of those two days, it was stated, it had decreased its period of rotation by another 4 hours, the same daily decrease noted previously. And the exactness of this decrease daily, the smoothness of this strange acceleration of the sun's spin, proved that the acceleration could not have been caused by interior disturbances, as had at first been surmised. A great interior disturbance of the sun might indeed cause it to spin suddenly faster, but no such disturbance could be imagined as causing an exact and equal increase in its speed of spin with each succeeding day. What, then, could be the cause? Could it be that in some strange way the universe was suddenly running down?
But while Dr. Marlin and his fellow-astronomers discussed this matter of the phenomenon's cause, it was its effects that had begun to claim the attention of the world at large. For that increase of the sun's speed was already making itself felt upon Earth. Even the great storms in the sun's mass, those storms that we call sun-spots, indeed, make themselves felt upon Earth by the intense electrical and magnetic currents of force which they throw forth, causing on Earth electrical storms and auroras and strange weather-changes. And now all the usual phenomena were occurring, but enhanced in intensity. On the third day of the thing, the 6th of May, there occurred over the mid-Atlantic an electrical storm of such terrific power as to all but sweep from the air the great air-liners caught in it, the Constantinople-New York liner and a grain-ship bound from Odessa to Baltimore having been forced down almost to the sea's surface by the terrific air-currents. Great auroras were reported farther south than ever before, and over all our Earth changes in temperature were quick and sudden. And among the other new phenomena called into being, apparently by the sun's increased spin, were the new vibrations discovered at that time by Dr. Robert Whitely, a prominent physicist and a colleague of Dr. Marlin's at North American University.
Dr. Whitely's report, though rather obscured in interest by the central fact of the sun's increased speed of spin, was yet interesting enough to physical students, for in it he claimed to have discovered the existence of a new and unknown vibratory force, emanating apparently from the disturbed sun. This was, he claimed, a vibration whose frequency lay in the octaves between light and Hertzian or radio vibrations, an unexplored territory in the domain of etheric vibrations. Dr. Whitely himself had for some time been endeavoring to push his researches into that particular territory, but though he had striven with many methods, he had been able to produce or find no etheric vibrations of that frequency until the strange increase of the sun's rotatory speed had begun. Then, he stated, his instruments had recorded new vibrations somewhere out in space toward the sun, whose frequency lay between the light and Hertzian frequencies, and which seemed a force-vibration of some sort, weak reflections from it only being recorded by his instruments. It seemed possible, he stated, that this strange new force-vibration was being generated somewhere inside the disturbed sun itself, and he was studying it further to determine the truth of this theory.
This discovery of Dr. Whitely's, however, interesting though it was, seemed to be but a side-issue of the real problem, the acceleration of the sun's rotation. After the sixth day, there were no further reports from Dr. Marlin and his fellow-astronomers. During all the seventh and eighth and ninth days there came no word to the Intelligence Bureau regarding it, from any of the astronomers who had formerly reported to us on it. And though we got into touch with Dr. Marlin and the others by communication-plate, none of them in those three days would make any statement whatever on the thing, saying only that it was being carefully studied by them and that a statement would be issued soon. It was evident from this universal sudden silence on their part that the astronomers of the world's observatories were acting in conjunction, but why they should want to withhold from an interested world the news on this strange acceleration of the sun's spin, we could not understand. The great electrical storms and temperature-changes that had prevailed over Earth continued, and we were anxious to know how much longer we might expect them to continue.
"One would think that Dr. Marlin and the other astronomers had some great secret they were keeping from us," I remarked to Markham, the Intelligence Chief, and he shook his head.
"Secret or not, Hunt, they're doing us out of the first unusual news-subject we've had for a year," he said. "Why don't they give us whatever they've learned about this change in the sun's rate of spin?"
It was a question repeated by more than one in those days, for the great public having become interested in the matter was irritated by this silence on the part of Dr. Marlin and his fellow-scientists. Whatever they had learned or guessed as to the thing's cause, why did they not give their information to the Intelligence Bureau for distribution to the world? It was hinted freely that the whole matter was a hoax devised by Dr. Marlin, which had duped the astronomical world for the time being, and which they were reluctant to acknowledge. It was suggested also that the World President or the World Congress should take action to make the astronomers give out their usual reports. The public was quickly working itself into a state of indignation over the matter, when there suddenly burst upon it that doom-laden and terrible statement by Dr. Marlin, which was to loose an unprecedented terror upon the peoples of Earth.
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It was on May 13th, the tenth day after Dr. Marlin's first announcement of the thing, that he gave to the world through the Intelligence Bureau that epochal statement, and in it he referred first to his silence and to the silence of his fellow-astronomers in the preceding few days. "In those days," he said, "every observatory in the world has been engaged in an intensive investigation of this acceleration of the sun's rotation, which I discovered. And in each of those days the sun's rotatory speed has continued to increase at exactly the same rate! In each day that speed has increased so much as to cut down the sun's rotatory period 4 hours more, so that now, ten days after the beginning of the thing, its rotatory period has been cut down by 40 hours. In other words, ten days ago the sun turned as it had always turned to our knowledge, at the rate of one turn in every 25 days, at its equator. Now the sun's rotatory speed has increased to the rate of one turn in every 23 days, 8 hours.
"And that increase of rotatory speed continues. With each passing day the sun's rate of rotation is growing greater by the same amount, with each passing day it is lessening its rotatory period by 4 hours. And that steady increase of rotation of the sun, if it continues, spells destruction for the sun as we know it! All know that the sun in rotating generates in its own mass a certain amount of centrifugal force, force which tends to break up its mass. That force is not large enough, however, in our own sun to affect its great mass, since our sun's speed of rotation is not great. We know that over vast periods of time a sun's rotatory speed will increase, due to the slow shrinkage of its mass, and that when the speed has increased to a point where its centrifugal force is greater than its own power of cohesion, the sun breaks up like a bursting flywheel, breaks up or divides into a double or multiple star. Thousands upon tens of thousands of the stars of our universe are double or multiple stars, having been formed thus from dividing single suns, whose speed or rotation became too great.
"But as I have said, our own sun seemed in no danger of this fate, since the natural increase of a sun's rotatory speed, due to the shrinkage of its mass, is so unthinkably slow, requires such unthinkable ages, that it is out of all concern of ours. For our sun has rotated once in 25 days at its equator, and it has been calculated that it would need to reach a rotatory speed of once in one hour before its centrifugal force would be great enough to divide it, to break it up. And because of that eon-long slowness of a star's natural increase of rotatory speed, there seemed, indeed, no slightest peril of our own sun dividing or breaking up thus, because before it could reach that speed of rotation required, unthinkable ages must elapse.
"But now, due to some cause, which none of us have been able to guess, some great cause utterly enigmatic and unknown to us, our sun's rotatory speed has begun suddenly to grow greater, to increase! Faster and faster every day the sun is spinning, its speed of rotation increasing by the same amount each day, its rotatory period decreasing by exactly 4 hours each day! You see what that means? It means that if the sun's speed of spin continues to increase at that steady rate, if its rotatory period continues to decrease by that amount each day, as it shows every sign of doing, within 140 days more the sun's rate of rotation will have increased so much that it will be turning at the rate of one turn in one hour, will have reached that speed at which our calculations show that its great mass can no longer hold together! So that 140 days from now, if this increase of rotatory speed continues, our sun will infallibly divide into a double star!
"_And that division means death for Earth and almost all its sister-planets!_ For when the sun divides into two great new suns, the first force of their division will send those two mighty balls of fire apart from each other, and pushing thus apart from each other, they will inevitably engulf in their fiery masses all the inner planets and most of the outer ones! Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars will undoubtedly be engulfed in the fires of the two dividing suns upon their first separation, their first division. Jupiter and Saturn and very probably Uranus will be drawn inevitably into fiery death also in one or another of those great suns, if they too are not overwhelmed in the first separation. Neptune alone, the outermost of all the sun's planets, will be far enough out to escape annihilation in the dividing suns when the terrific cataclysm occurs. For if the sun continues to spin faster, as it is now doing, that cataclysm must inevitably occur, and must as inevitably plunge our Earth to fiery doom and wreck our solar system, our universe!"