Austin Hall

“ It was not the power of man. Some force had been loosened which was ripping the earth to its vitals. Across the terror of the chasm he made out the dim outlines of the opposite wall. A full twelve miles across.
For a moment the sight overcame even Huyck himself. Full well he knew; but knowing, as he did, the full fact of the miracle was even more than he expected. His long years under Robold, his scientific imagination had given him comprehension. Not puny steam, nor weird electricity, but force, kinetics—out of the universe. ”

“ Gone as soon as it was come; noiseless and of phantom beauty; like a finger of the Omnipotent tracing across the world, and as terrible. The human mind had never conceived a thing so vast.
Beginning at the sands of the ocean the whole country had vanished; a chasm twelve miles wide and of unknown depth running straight to the eastward. Where had been farms and homes was nothing; the mountains had been seared like butter. Straight as an arrow.
Then the roar of the deluge. The waters of the Pacific breaking through its sands and rolling into the Gulf of Mexico. ”

“ Much less could I surmise that the old Professor had covered, in his thumb, what he considered one of the greatest secrets of materialistic philosophy.
Professor Mason is by no means a fool. When a wan of his training comes out with a statement it is well worth considering. No one has ever accused him of being anything that is not scientific. He is a man of hard facts, no romance nor any taint of the visionary about him: he is scientific to the last degree—and practical. Certainly none of us imagined what he had discovered in his thumb—and it was unguessable that it had to do with a comet. ”

“ Matter may pass back into the ether and still be matter. It can hold its identity only through its cohesion. The ions of cohesion and adhesion are the forces that control: they are at the bottom of all life and substance, of all that man calls matter. Be it iron or flesh, matter can hold its identity only through its cohesion; and there is nothing so small or so great but what has its identity. The Universe has it. Infinity itself must have identity, at least intrinsically. Everything must have its ions. You have guessed right. A comet is an ion. ”

“ Over its white face he ran a mass of computations. He worked like lightning; his fingers plying and his mind keyed to the pin-point of genius. Not one thing did he overlook in his calculation. If the earth had a chance he would find it.
There are always possibilities. He was working out the odds of the greatest race since creation. While the whole world slept, while the uncounted millions lay down in fond security, Charley Huyck there in the lonely room on the desert drew out their figured odds to the point of infinity. ”

“ The genius of Huyck and Robold! Nobody but the wildest dreamers would have conceived it. The life of the sun. And captive to man; at his will and volition. And in the next few minutes we were to lose it all! But in losing it we were to save ourselves. It was fate and nothing else. There was but one thing more upon the mountain—the observatory and another needle apparently idle; but with a point much like a gigantic phonograph needle. It rose square out of the observatory, and to Winters it gave an impression of a strange gun, or some implement for sighting. ”

“ We knew that the light is intrinsic, that it comes from the comet itself, and not from the sun. We knew that it is composed of three parts, the head, the nucleus, and the tail. The head, or coma, of a comet, is its main visual part, a ball of transparent light; the nucleus is the bright spot of light directly behind it; and the tail is the wonderful luminous cloud that streams from the head out over the heavens. ”

“ Before he knew it he was telling Jennie Ross his whole history—outside his homestead experience—and almost everything that he knew.
“Then you are a real Western cowboy,” she exclaimed. “All my life I have wanted to know one, one who lived on the range, who lived out in the open and thought the great free things of nature. You must meet my brother and get acquainted.”
Then she went on to tell of their dreams—of a well, and alfalfa, fruit trees, a mansion, avenues, driveways—a dream that was half homesteader and half school-teacher; and most of all out of a girlish heart. Billy listened. ”

“ Charley Huyck had found a new toy, it was a simple thing and as old as glass. Fate will ever be so in her working.
And the doctor? Why should he have been waiting? If it was not destiny, it was at least an accumulation of moment. In the heavy eye-glasses, the square, close-cut beard; and his uncompromising fact-seeking expression. Those who knew Dr. Robold are strong in the affirmation that he was the antithesis of all emotion. He was the sternest product of science: unbending, hardened by experiment, and caustic in his condemnation of the frailness of human nature. ”

“ There was no sky such as we know upon the Earth, and no sunlight. The air ‘was full of a red glow that came from the coma above us. The gravitation was vertical as it is upon the Earth; and I did not notice that I felt a bit stronger or lighter than I had felt in Sansar. This, I learned, afterward, was because of the extreme magnetic pitch of the nucleus. The horizon, where the whirling rim shot up its wreaths, was the blaze of glorious crimson. ”

“ We know the scientist and his habits. He is the one man who will believe nothing until it is proved. It is his profession, and for that we pay him. He can catch the smallest bug that ever crawled out of an atom and give it a name so long that a Polish wrestler, if he had to bear it, would break under the burden. It is his very knack of getting in under that has given us our civilization. You don't baffle a scientist in our Utopia. It can't be done. Which is one of the very reasons why we began to believe in the miracle. ”

“ What an inconceivable thing is the Universe! This incredible body coming at the speed of multiplied whirlwinds had been traveling for millions of years without ever touching the sides. Whence had it come? Where was it going?
“ 'The last hours were terrible. The light grew so intense that it was like looking into the sun. The coma had grown until it filled half the sky; red, whirling, pulsing, a vast whirlwind of fiery flame, a rolling sea of omnipotence. Though there was no sound within the ether ship, I could sense an undercurrent of terrific explosions. ”

“ Robold knew no middle language;he was not relished by science.
His memory, as we have it, is that of an eccentric. A man of slight compassion, abrupt of manner and with no tact in speaking. Genius is often so; it is a strange fact that many of the greatest of men have been denied by their fellows. A great man and laughter. He was not accepted.
None of us know to-day what it cost Dr. Robold. He was not the man to tell us. Perhaps Charley Huyck might; but his lips are sealed forever. We only know that he retired to the mountain, and of the subsequent flood of benefits that rained upon mankind. ”

“ You are puzzled only so long as you regard the nucleus of the ovum as mere matter, as atoms—substance. It is not that; it is both below and above it. The nucleus is a sac of ions, cohesive and adhesive, male and female, gathered from the life of the parents. Cohesion is life. It is the function of these ions to gather the atoms out of the blood and food and to build up the body. Each ion, while it remains, is a lord and an architect; it gathers its own particular atoms. ”

“ And I am convinced; but as yet I hardly dare propound it to science. Do you know, Doctor, I am a bit sorry for astronomy. No! Do not interrupt me. What I mean is this—that we astronomers, humble as we hold ourselves, are a bit too exalted. We behold and speculate on vast distances; and, because we do, we unconsciously accept, as it were, a sort of psychological Ptolomaic theory. That is, we, as men, weigh up the Universe with ourselves, mere men, as the center; we measure distance with our intelligence—and we strive for solution. ”

“ Robold had a theory on kinetics. It was strange at first and a thing to laugh at; but he reduced it to laws as potent and as inexorable as the laws of gravitation.
The luminous Opalescence that has almost destroyed us is but one of its minor manifestations. It is a message of sinister intelligence; for back of it all is an Intelligence. Yet it is not all sinister. It is self-preservation. The time is coming when eons of ages from now our own man will be forced to employ just such a weapon for his own preservation. ”

“ Perhaps he will grant you what he has denied to me.
"' "Had it not been for Sora I would have driven the comet through the Universe long ago. But my child came first. Love is greater than all. I have the love of a father. Had I been alone I would have gone to the other side—perhaps perished. But at least, I would have seen."
"' "How is it possible," I asked, "to drive this comet out of the Universe?"
"' "It is easily possible. Have you seen the rim of the nucleus?"
"' "Only as I came through. Sora has kept me away from it, since. She swears it is death." ”

“ At least that is what we have from Winters. Living, luminous, burning, twisting within with a thousand blending, iridescent beautiful colors. Not like electricity but something infinitely more powerful. Great mysterious magnets that Huyck had charged out of chaos. Glowing with the softest light; the whole mountain brightened as in a dream, and the town of Robold at its base lit up with a beauty that was past beholding. ”

“ Not even Winters, with all his alertness, could avoid it. Perhaps he was weary. The tedious hours, the racking speed had worn him to exhaustion. They had ceased to individualize, their way a blur, a nightmare of speed and distance.
It came suddenly, a blind barranca—one of those sunken, useless channels that are death to the unwary. No warning.
It was over just that quickly. A mere flash of consciousness plus a sensation of flying. Two men broken on the sands and the great, beautiful roadster a twisted ruin. ”

“ It was small compared to the rest of the comet, but of such an intensity that against its light the rest was as shadow. Red is a terrible color; but this red had the terror of hell!
“ 'It seemed to be living; like the evil eye of some magnetic devil, winking, blinking, and shooting red fire into the onrushing coma. Great wreaths of hot splendor shot out from its rim, one upon another, a whirling, blinding, dazzle of spasmodic ascending glory. ”

“ From the bottom of the mountain to the top and for milse beyond went forth the salt call. Three thousand head bellowed to the delight of salting.
Pizzozi rode along. Each lope of his pinto through the tall tangled miserie was accented. "Alleewahoo! Alleewahoo!" The rending of brush, the confusion, and pandemonium spread to the very bottom of the leafy gulches. It is no place for a pedestrian. Heads and tails erect, the cattle were stampeding toward the logs. ”

“ A coincidence is a fact—and as such it stands out by itself with no law, nor reason, nor formulated rule whatever—an entity out of the abstract that stands as a unit—a thing that happens. I took it as a coincidence that my friend had run afoul of the old Professor's comet—for, be it known, I myself had been insulted and ignored in exactly the same manner: and not once, but three times during the previous fortnight. It was really curdling to friendship to have the old professor pull out that microscope just when you were in the most interesting part of your talk, and go peering at his thumb. ”

“ But the horse fought backward; warned by instinct it drew back from the sheer banks of the gulf. It had no reason but its nature. At the instant it sensed the snapping of the iron will of its master. In a moment it had turned and was racing on its wild way out of the mountains. At supreme moments a cattle horse will always hit for home. The pinto and its limp rider were fleeing on the road to Jackson.
Pizzozi had no knowledge of what had occurred in Oakland. To him the whole thing had been but a flash of miracle; he could not reason. He did not curb his horse. ”

“ Huyck had imagination; his universe was alive and potent; it had intelligence. Matter could not live without it. Man was its manifestation; just come to consciousness. The universe teemed with intelligence. Charley looked at the stars.
He crossed the office, passed through the reception-room and thence to the stairs that led to the observatory. In the time that would lapse before the coming of his friend he would have ample time for observation. Somehow he felt that there was time for discovery. He had come down to Arizona to employ the lens of his friend the astronomer. ”

“ My people of Sansar are dead, the Northern Pole is frozen, and I return to the Earth a stranger.'
“I could but listen. Was it possible that there had been life, even civilization, upon the moon? Could it be that this man, coming out of mystery, would unriddle the past? Who of us has ever gazed at the moon, without speculating over its history, without considering what it might have been when it was a whirring planet, alive and atmospheric? Surely, it was not impossible that there had been life, even civilization! ”

“ Man is the intelligence of the earth. The time will come when he must be the intelligence of a great deal of space as well. At the present time you are merely fortunate and a victim of a kind fate. That I am the instrument of the earth’s salvation is merely chance. The real man is Dr. Robold. When he picked me up on the streets I had no idea that the sequence of time would drift to this moment. ”