Austin Hall

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nevertheless, I do not think that any one before my time had ever thought of taking the laws of the atom and applying them to the stars.
“ ‘Understand, we had attained a very high standard of civilization, and there was no one, even upon the streets, who did not regard astronomy as being the vanguard of all science. It was an age of astronomy. Every one was interested in its questions, in the moon and its inhabitants, whom we knew, but had not reached; in the planets, and in the whole continuous mystery of the solar system. ”

“ The comet looked to be a few feet away; and yet I knew that it was thousands of miles from the ether ship. It was boiling crimson, cataclysmic. Never was there a thing so terrible, nor a man so fascinated. I intended to wait for the moment and then plunge into its heart.
“ 'At last the coma had passed, and I knew by the chart that I had come to the tail. The intense light grew dimmer, and, though still a bright crimson, semi-transparent. After a bit I caught a glimpse of the nucleus gleaming like a ruby or violent coal directly behind the coma. ”

“ Once or twice he glanced at his thumb, and at length he placed his hand upon the table—thumb erect.
It behooved me to be deliberate. After all, I thought, though a scalpel draws blood and is ruthless, it is necessary. I would be a psychological surgeon. So I plunged heedlessly into a discussion of comets.
It was as I thought. For an instant there was a look of helplessness in the old man’s eyes—a sort of wistfulness that might have been akin to fear—or then, it might have been a silent dread of offending. He seemed helpless—and, without ado, out came the microscope. ”

“ In the first ages the whole Earth must have been surrounded and enveloped by an immense pall of vapor through which the sun could not penetrate, and under which the Earth lay swaddled for eons, warmed by its own heat and entirely independent of anything external. In the first ages, then, the poles were much like the equator. There was no sun—only a half light, and moisture dripping never ceasingly from the everlasting clouds. It was an age of mushroom-like vegetation; but of very little animal life. ”

“ The man was covered with mantle or tunic of beautiful purple feathers—a down as soft as that that comes from under the breast of the eider duck; his arms were bare, and likewise his legs—a splendid strapping man of almost unearthly strength and beauty—such a being as might come to a poet in the midst of a classic dream; a youth who, but for his eyes, might have stood as a model for our conception of physical perfection. ”

“ And I showed that, so long as we are bound up in a Universe that centers about ourselves, we can get nowhere. It is impossible to gaze through the stars without finding more beyond them. Therefore, I maintained that we had better study the secret of our own solar atom, and find out, if possible, the secret force or cohesion that holds our solar system in its approximate relation to the rest of the stars. And I proposed to do this through the medium of a comet. ”

“ Suppose the atomic engines should refuse to function? Would I go falling through space forever? What would be my fate?
“ 'By the thirtieth hour the Earth had dimmed to a large star, and the moon had grown to be her twin sister. On the other hand the whole Universe seemed to be turning to comet. The coma was now as big as a wagon wheel, a vast ball of winding, whirling, crimson. I could feel its motion, and even at this distance I could sense its terror. The whole Universe was seeping red and trailing in omnipotent beauty. There was pulsation to its light, and vibration ”

“ We know also, that, before the beginning of life, the Earth was a ball of fire. It is a part of the solar system, and much like the sun about which it rotates. We know that uncounted ages must have elapsed before the planet had cooled sufficiently to allow the hot vapors to condense and settle into the hollows to form the oceans. ”

“ I think our civilization was much older than yours. Though we had no record of Man in the beginning, we had, nevertheless, a written chronicle that ran back many thousands of years.’
“ 'And you say that all this was in the past—millions of years ago—that you are millions of years of age—and that the Caucasian races of today are your descendants?'
“ 'I am sure of it. You speak the Sansar language, and that is proof of the relation. If you live here’—he pointed to California—‘you must be living on an Earth where the Poles are frozen; and that alone is a proof of the Time. ”

“ For we were approaching the days of the Blood Red Comet.
“ 'I had always been interested in the laws of Alvas, and I had studied carefully all of his discoveries and speculations. He was the first to solve the atom and to prove that matter is everlasting. He had shown that the atom is nothing other than a solar system entirely analogous to our sun and planets, and that there is not a particle of difference in its Jaws other than a variance in the degree of vibration. For instance: that the movement in an atomic world is infinitely faster than in the world that we call our own. ”

“ Iberians, Greeks, Latins, Celts, Goths, Hindoos, Persians, Scandinavians, Germans, Slave—each swarm sweeping and crowding its predecessor, and each one bearing in its multitudes embryonic seeds that were to bear out in the complex fruit of modern civilization. ”

“ Then I struck the ether; the atomic engines giving out the strange hum that is peculiar when they are generating their own propulsion. Unless struk by an oncoming meteor, I was now in a region of comparative safety. I ventured a look down at the Earth.
“ 'What I beheld was a red sea of color—the Earth bathed in the crimson light. Above, spread the weird unhallowed glow of the comet. Even the moon was red. ”

“ There were some, super-wise, who predicted that the time would come in the eons of the future, when the whole world would freeze up entirely, and life be impossible,’
“I nodded at this.
“ ‘That is so,’ I said. ‘We have proof of that in the moon. There is no life upon the moon. And as the moon has gone so must go the Earth.'
“ 'Yes. That is where we got our proof of the future. But in our day the moon was inhabited.’
“ 'Inhabited? Then your civilization must have been greater than ours of today. ”

“ Have you not been upon the Earth?’
“ 'It is a strange story that I have to tell. After I am through you will understand; and we can compare notes, and figure out what became of the civilization that I left behind—and perhaps establish some legitimate fact concerning the origin of your Man. For I have no doubt that the Sansars were your progenitors. There must have been some calamity to overthrow the civilization of the Northern Pole—some terrible cataclysm that destroyed all but a few survivors; it seems incredible that what we worked out through millions of years should go for naught. ”

“ There was the possibility of the atomic engines going to pieces and tho consequent danger to the ether ship. In such a case I would employ electrical propulsion. I knew nothing of a comet and I was by no means certain that what was a law upon the Earth would continue so when under cometary influence. If atomic force should fail I would fall back upon electrical propulsion and vice versa. By means of electrical discharge I proposed to test out the poles of the comet (if it had such) , and so, in ease of mishap, guide the course of the ship. ”

“ It is no more than natural that I, who have found everything, should fail in the end. It is God’s will. It is his rule that Man can go only just so far. I had forgotten vibration.’
"'What do you mean?'
“Just this, dear. You and I are only a youth and a maiden. The stuff that this man placed in my hand just now is ice, or frozen water, which we could make only under process. If it is true that it is heaped about the poles it can mean but one thing—that you and I are very very, old. Old!’—there was a depth of despair in the word—'Our world has been buried and forgotten these millions of years! ”

“ It was merely a trail of harmless light, through which the ether ship passed without a bit of inconvenience. If it has substance, the density of a comet’s tail is so slight that one could condense a million miles into a handful. ”

“ Ajacite is a mineral that we had discovered through our Lunar neighbors. It is the only substance that will withstand the strain of absolute zero, and the only metal that would insure against explosion when in vacuum space. For we had learned to our cost that most crafts have a tendency to explode, when above the atmosphere of the Earth, in exactly the same manner that a deep sea fish goes to pieces when brought to the surface of the ocean. ”

“ The Earth, when it cooled, allowed life at the poles before anywhere else; when the rest of the Earth was a swirl of steam, when the crust of the equator was a mass of fire, the temperature of the poles, alone, was of sufficient coolness to allow the beginnings of life. ”

“ From my earliest youth I have made the study of language an avocation; and you know I am almost as good a philologist as I am an astronomer. After I had essayed the same attempt in the sixth language I stopped. They were both, apparently, of Caucasian extraction; and I knew from the expression upon their faces that they had heard me. Certainly they were normal; and not defective. I do not know who was the more puzzled. For a moment we all stood still.
“Now the moon was rising to the eastward—the full moon—and its light was flooding through the window ”

“ No science has ever been able to tum up a fact of transition. Evolution teaches; physiology, palaeontology, embryology, everything tends one way; except to the one and the main thing—we have never been able to dig up the manlike ape who is said to have been man’s progenitor. ”

“ I am Alvas the Astronomer—son of Alvas the Wise, the fourteenth king in direct line from Alvas the Great, he who was the lord of the atom, the first king of the Sansars to conquer and harness the laws of atomic force. I am Alvas the Sansar, the first of the Scientific Kings to penetrate through matter and solve the substance. I am the first man to cut through Infinity.’
“All this was like talk from Fairyland ”

“ How could we speak?'
“ 'How do you know there is no life upon the moon?’
“ 'Because there is no atmosphere upon the moon. Any astronomer, even a boy, knows there is no oxygen. Life could not be—for an instant.’
“He thought for a moment; then he spoke:
“ 'You say there is no life there; you say that it is not possible ”

“ You are not English, nor French, nor German—yet you are Caucasian. How did you come here? What do you mean by saying that we are too far south?'
“For answer he stepped to the globe, and placed his finger on the upper part of Greenland:
“ 'We should be here. Life is not possible as far south as you say. It is impossible.'
“To say that I was interested is to say nothing. I could not understand. Was ‘it possible that there was life to the north of Greenland? ”