# Astounding Science Fiction/Volume 44/Number 05/The Xi Effect

Appears in Astounding Science Fiction, vol. 44, no. 5
THE Xi EFFECT
BY PHILIP LATHAM
If time slowed down to a standstill, the world wouldn’t come to an end with a roar—rather, perhaps with a whimper...
Illustrated by Orban
For a week the team of Stoddard and Arnold had met with nothing but trouble in their solar infrared exploration program. First the lead sulfide photo-conductive cell had refused to function. Next an electrical storm—practically unknown in September—had put a crimp in the power line to the mountain observatory. And now for some wholly inexplicable reason the automatic recorder stubbornly refused to register a single quantum of radiation beyond 20,000 A.
"Here's the end of the atmospheric carbon dioxide band at sixteen thousand," said Arnold, indicating a point on their last record sheet. "You can see everything's all right out to there. But beyond twenty thousand we aren't getting a thing."
Stoddard grunted, "That's what comes of our big economy drive. Trying to cut expenses by buying from the dime store." He walked over to the spectrometer and regarded it gloomily. It was the product of his own mind, an impressive series of slits and parabolic mirrors fed by a beam of sunlight from the top of the tower. When the optical setup was in perfect adjustment the apparatus would bring just the desired band of infrared radiation onto the sensitive surface of the photoconductive cell. But obviously all was not in perfect adjustment.
"Maybe it's in the amplifier this time," Arnold suggested hopefully.
"Well, that's the only part of this contraption that hasn't balked on us so far," said Stoddard. "Suppose you look it over while I check the cell again."
For the next hour the astronomers probed the interior of the spectrometer as intently as two surgeons performing an exploratory laparotomy, ​passing tools back and forth and generally anticipating each other's wants with scarcely a word spoken. For fifteen years they had thus worked together, one of the oddest looking scientific teams at the Western Institute of Technology, but one that had also proven itself amazingly productive. Stoddard at forty had the general shape of an old-fashioned beer barrel, with big hands, big feet, and a big protruding stomach. His half-closed eyes gave him a perpetually sleepy expression, a highly effective mask for one of the keenest minds in the business. Arnold, although nearly as old as his partner, somehow still gave the impression of youth. He was small and slight with an eager boyish expression that often caused visitors to mistake him for a graduate student embarking on his first research problem. Stoddard was the practical man of the firm who designed the apparatus for their various investigations and took the bulk of the observations. Arnold was the one who reduced the observations
"Find anything wrong?" Stoddard inquired at length, straightening up and replacing the cover that housed the cell assembly.
"Nothing worth mentioning," said Arnold. "Think there's time for another run?"
"Yeah, I guess so. Put the sun back on the slit and we'll take another crack at her anyhow."
But the second run proved no better than the first; in fact, if anything the cutoff occurred a trifle farther in toward the violet than before.
"I might as well take the whole works down to the laboratory for a complete overhaul," Stoddard declared, looking at his brain-child as if he would like to heave it over the side of the mountain. He watched a cloud drift lazily across the disk of the sun projected against the slit. "Get any weather predictions on the radio this morning?"
Arnold gave him a quizzical glance. "Haven't you heard yet? All the radio stations have been dead for more than a week."
"What's the matter with 'em?"
"Well, it's really quite mysterious. Last Monday KLX faded out right in the middle of a program, and then stations farther up the dial began to be hit one after the other. For awhile all you could get were the amateurs and the police department. Now they're dead, too."
Stoddard, who regarded the radio as one of the major threats to his peace of mind, took the news philosophically. "Well, I'm glad to hear we aren't the only ones having trouble these days. But I'll bet my wife was sore when she couldn't hear what happened to Priscilla Lane, Private Secretary, last night."
Stoddard was in his laboratory in the basement of the Astrophysics Building at Western Tech hard at work on the wiring diagram for the amplifier system when Arnold came breezing in, his bright young face aglow with enthusiasm.
"Guess what?" he exclaimed. "Friedmann's in town. He's agreed to give a talk this afternoon in Dickinson Hall on his theory of the Xi effect. You know Friedmann, don't you?"
Stoddard shook his head. "Never heard of him."
Arnold hooked one leg over the corner of the desk. "Well, in my opinion he's the foremost cosmologist in the world today. He had so much trouble getting published at first that his reputation isn't as big as it should be. Everybody thought his first paper was written by some crank until Eddington saw it and recognized its value immediately. Now Friedmann won't send his articles to any of the regular journals. You've got to dig his stuff out of all sorts of queer places, like the Proceedings of the Geophysical Society of Venezuela or the Annals of the Portuguese Meteorological Union."
"I know how he feels," said Stoddard sympathetically.
"Well, I thought we should hear ​him because his theory might possibly have some bearing on our infrared observations last week."
"Think I could understand him if I did hear him?"
"Oh, probably not but then that goes for a lot of the rest of us, too."
Stoddard reached for the wiring diagram. "Well, I'll see if I can manage it. But you know what I think of these high-powered theoretical fellows."
Arnold laughed. "I've been briefed on that before." He got up and started for the door. "Room 201 at four-thirty. I'll save a seat for you."
The meeting was already in progress when Stoddard opened the door and slippd to his seat without creating any more commotion than a horse backing into a stall. As usual, the front rows were occupied by the hardened campaigners among the faculty, the grizzled veterans of a thousand seminars: Fosberg and Ballantyne from the math department, Blacker and Tinsdale from the radiation laboratory, and Denning the nuclear physicist. The remainder of the audience in the rear was composed of a miscellaneous rabble of graduate students and professors from neighboring institutions of learning and culture.
"Who's ahead?" asked Stoddard, sinking into the chair beside his partner.
"You should have heard Friedmann put old Blacker in his place a minute ago," Arnold whispered with evident relish. "He sure slapped him down plenty that time."
To Stoddard, all theoretical physicists were strange creatures far removed from the rest of mankind. It was his experience that they could be divided with remarkable uniformity into two types, A and B. A typical specimen of Type A, for example, is mentally accessible only with the greatest difficulty. As a general rule, he moves through life with the vague detached air of a confirmed somnambulist. Should you summon the courage to ask his opinion on a paper, he regards it with much the same expression of critical disapproval that a secondhand car dealer instinctively assumes when inspecting a battered automobile brought in for sale. Everything is in a pretty bad state. It is possible, however, that a little progress may be made along the following lines, et cetera. A pure Type B, on the other hand, gives the impression of being always on the point of boiling over. He trembles with suppressed excitement. One of his former pupils has just proposed a theory that constitutes a tremendous advance. Where there was only darkness before now all is sunshine and light. As soon as a few odds and ends are cleared up the whole problem will be practically solved, et cetera, et cetera.
Stoddard classified Friedmann as predominantly Type A with a few overtones of Type B thrown in. He was a tall, thin man of about thirty, with sharp angular features, and a way of looking at you as if his eyes were focused on a point ten feet ​behind your back. His voice was dry and flat with the barest trace of foreign accent.
Stoddard had not listened for more than five minutes before he began to experience the same sense of bewilderment that little Dorothy must have felt on her first trip to the land of Oz. As nearly as he could gather, Friedmann considered the familiar everyday world to constitute merely a tiny corner or "clot" in a vastly higher order of space-time or "Xi space." Ordinarily, events in the Xi space are on too gross a scale to exert a sensible effect on the finegrained clot space. On rare occasions, however, a clot might be seriously disturbed by events of an exceptional nature in the Xi space, in somewhat the same way that the atoms on the surface of a stick of amber may be disturbed by rubbing it vigorously. When events in the super-cosmos happen to intrude upon an individual clot extraordinary results ensue; for example, angular momentum is not strictly conserved, and Hamilton's equations require modification, to mention only a few.
"Thus for a properly oriented observer the universe must at all times have a radius equal to tau times the velocity of light," said Friedmann, by way of conclusion. "Hence, if tau increases uniformly we must of necessity have the expanding universe as shown by the general recession of the extragalactic nebulae.
"But this increase in tau time is not really uniform but a statistical effect. Local fluctuations in the Xi space may attain such magnitude as to become distinctly perceptible in clot space. Evidence for the Xi effect in our vicinity is shown by the behavior of the Andromeda nebula, which instead of sharing in the general recession is approaching the Earth at three hundred kilometers per second. Again, certain anomalies in the motion of the inner planets, notably the secular variation in the node of Venus, clearly indicate encroachment of the Xi effect within the confines of our own solar system. Further anomalies of increasing magnitude may be anticipated."
With a curt nod he gathered together his papers and sat down abruptly, scarcely bothering to acknowledge the prolonged applause from the student section. The secretary of the Astronomy and Physics Club thanked Dr. Friedmann for his address which he was sure they had all enjoyed, and inquired if there were any questions. This announcement was followed by the customary minute of awkward silence. Finally the spell was broken by Fosberg, an authority on the theory of numbers and uncrowned king of the faculty's eccentric characters.
"As I get it, this postulated Xi ​effect started a shrinkage in our sector about ten-to-the-ninth years ago. Now then, I've just been doing some figuring on the back of this envelope and if I haven't made a mistake the present diameter of the solar system out to Pluto is 3.2 X 10$^8$ kilometers, or about two hundred million miles. Is that right?" Everyone looked expectantly at the speaker.
"I work entirely with the generalized formulae; never with numerical values," Friedmann replied with cold dignity. "However, I do not question the accuracy of Dr. Fosberg's arithmetic. Naturally the shrinkage would be quite imperceptible with ordinary measuring rods. It would be necessary to make some observation involving explicitly the velocity of light."
"I'm willing to grant you that," Fosberg returned, "but aren't you going to get into serious trouble with the law of gravitation due to all this shrinkage? Why, in a few more years the congestion in the solar system will be worse than the campus parking problem!" It was a remark that was always good for a laugh and one of the principal reasons he had asked the question in the first place.
"The gravitational difficulties that so worry Dr. Fosberg do not follow as a necessary consequence," said Friedmann, entirely unruffled. "As I have demonstrated, the laws of Newtonian mechanics may fail to hold even as a first approximation. At these extreme limits, however, the integration of the equations becomes quite insuperable by ordinary methods. One of my pupils at the University of Pennsylvania plans to explore these regions next year with the EDVAC."
Fosberg wagged his bald head. "Just the same all this crowding together still worries me," he declared. "And I don't 'like the idea of being reduced to the size of a microcosmic midget either."
Friedmann's shrug plainly indicated that it was a matter of complete indifference to him if Fosberg were reduced to the dimensions of a neutrino, and as there were no more questions, the meeting broke up. Stoddard, who had grown thoroughly bored with the whole proceedings, made a bolt for the door but Arnold was only a few lengths behind.
"Wasn't Friedmann good," he demanded. "Don't you think it's the most satisfying cosmological theory you ever heard?"
"No doubt about it," said Stoddard, continuing on down the hall. "You know, I was thinking," Arnold went on, falling into step beside him, "why couldn't we test the Xi effect ourselves?"
"Test it ourselves!"
"Why not? After all, it shouldn't be too difficult. As Friedmann said, we would only need to make some observation that depends explicitly on the velocity of light."
Stoddard snorted. "Bet he's never made a bona fide observation in his whole life."
They stopped on the steps outside Dickinson Hall before wending their separate ways homeward. The sun, ​had set and a slight breeze was beginning to stir the leaves of the giant oak tree at the entrance.
"Well, the next time you're in my office we'll have a long talk about it," said Stoddard, edging down the steps. "But right now I've got to get home for dinner."
"The observation would consist simply in determining whether some distant event occurred at the time predicted," Arnold mused. "Let's see, what would be the easiest thing to observe?"
At that instant his eye was attracted to a star faintly visible near the eastern horizon. "I've got it!" he cried. "We could observe an eclipse of one of Jupiter's satellites. If the solar system has really shrunk as much as the Xi effect predicts, it should occur way ahead of time."
"You mean do a kind of repeat on Roemer's work," said Stoddard, "only with a light time corresponding to the whole distance to Jupiter instead of the diameter of the Earth's orbit?"
"Exactly!"
Stoddard could feel the net closing around him. He knew that once his partner in crime became infatuated with an idea it was useless to try to discourage him. "Well, I guess we've looked for less hopeful things. Only I can't seem to remember what they were."
"Listen," said Arnold, his eyes shining, "is there a class at the ten-inch tonight?"
Stoddard considered, "This is Wednesday, isn't it? Nope, don't think there will be one."
"Then what's to stop us from making the observation right now— tonight?"
"Nothing, so far as I know, except maybe a nice thick fog." He heaved a sigh of resignation. "Come on, let's take a look at the Ephemeris. Maybe there aren't any eclipses tonight."
But the American Ephemeris said otherwise. An occultation of Jupiter I was scheduled for Thursday, October 5th, at four hours eight minutes and ten seconds of Greenwich Civil Time.
Arnold was delighted. "I'll meet you at the ten-inch at seven-fifteen tonight. O.K.?"
"O.K."
"We can stop in at my house for a drink afterward."
"We'll probably need one," was Stoddard's grim comment, "after we find out how much the universe has shrunk."
The lamp over the desk threw grotesque shadows around the circular room making the telescope and pier look like some giant insect flattened against the curving walls of the dome. At that moment, however, Stoddard was in no mood to appreciate the projective geometry of shadow pictures. Like all other manually operated observatory domes in the world, the one on the ten-inch at Western Tech opened only with the utmost reluctance. At length in response to an effort worthy of superman, Stoddard forced the ​shutter back revealing the constellation of Cygnus sprawling across the meridian. Breathing heavily, he turned the dome until Jupiter came into the center of the opening, a gleaming yellow stoplight among the faint stars of Aquarius. Then swinging the telescope around on the pier as if it were an antiaircraft gun, he sighted along the tube until the planet came darting into the field of view.
"How's the seeing?" asked Arnold, a formless black shape by the desk. He twisted the shade over the lamp until the light illuminated the chronometer and pad of paper at his elbow but left the end of the telescope in shadow.
Stoddard gave the focusing screw another touch. "Not so good," he muttered. Removing the eyepiece from the end of the telescope he substituted a longer one in its place from the box beside him. "There— that's better."
"How do the satellites look?"
"Well, just about the way the Ephemeris predicted. Callisto and Ganymede are over on the west. Europa's about a diameter of Jupiter to the east. Io doesn't seem to be anywhere around."
He lowered the seat on the observing platform a couple of notches thus enabling him to look into the telescope with less strain on his vertebrae. "Wait a minute— caught a glimpse of her at the limb just then." Arnold shot a glance at the chronometer. "Gosh, don't tell me it's going into occultation already!"
"Well, it sure looks like it."
"But it can't be that much ahead of time."
"Why not? That's what you were hoping for, wasn't it? Keep an eye on the chronometer, anyhow. I'll give you the time as close as I can in this bum seeing."
For several minutes the dome was silent except for the steady ticking of the chronometer and the low hum of traffic from Los Feliz Boulevard far below. Stoddard concentrated his every faculty on the tiny point of light projecting from the planet's disk. Sometimes he felt sure it must be gone only to have it flash into view again. He waited until it had remained out of sight for an unusually long interval. "All right, get ready," he warned. "Now!"
"Seven-thirty-three-zero-zero," said Arnold, writing down the numbers at the top of the record sheet. Stoddard rose painfully from his cramped position at the end of the telescope and began cautiously exercising one leg. His partner continued figuring busily for another five minutes. Presently he leaned back and began tapping the desk thoughtfully with the tip of his pencil.
"What's the answer?" said Stoddard, limping across the room.
"Well, according to these figures," Arnold replied, speaking with elaborate. casualness, "the occultation occurred just thirty-five minutes and ten seconds ahead of time."
For a moment neither spoke. Then Stoddard let out a belly laugh that shattered the peaceful calm that had hitherto enveloped Observatory Hill. ​"That puts Jupiter right in our backyard. It's 'so close the light gets here in nothing flat."
Arnold gazed up at the planet riding so serenely among the stars. There were Vega and Altair over in the west, with Cygnus flying close behind, and the great square of Pegasus wheeling upward in the north, precisely as he had seen them a thousand times before. Could it be possible that some catastrophe from Outside had warped their little corner of space until the giant Jupiter had been brought to what would once have been an arm's length, so close you might have reached out and seized it between your thumb and forefinger like a cherry? As a boy he had loved to read tales of time travel and flights to other planets, and the feeling that something transcendental was lurking around the corner had never entirely left him. In their seminars they talked of world lines and a space of n dimensions but did any of them really believe it? Now perhaps it was here at last. He shivered in the damp night air. The ocean breeze blowing in through the dome certainly felt real enough.
Mechanically he began helping Stoddard put the telescope to bed for the night, replacing the cap on the objective and swinging the telescope over the polar axis, where he clamped it in declination.
"What do you say we go down in the darkroom for a smoke?" said Stoddard, when everything was shipshape. "I'd like to take a look at those figures of yours myself."
The darkroom in the basement below was a welcome relief from the windy dome. Stoddard threw off his jacket, pulled a stool up to the bench that ran down one side of the room, and began stoking his pipe from a can of tobacco in one of the drawers. Not until this operation was completed to his entire satisfaction, and the bowl glowing brightly, did he turn his attention to Arnold's reduction. Then with exasperating deliberation he started checking off the figures, pausing occasionally between puffs to compare them with those in the Ephemeris. Arnold leaned against the wall watching him nervously.
"Well, I can't seem to find anything wrong," he admitted grudgingly, "but, of course, that doesn't mean it's right, either."
Taking careful aim, he blew a smoke ring at the girl on the calendar over the sink, watching it swirl around her plunging neckline with moody satisfaction. "A dozen times in my life I've got results almost as crazy as this one. Every time I couldn't help saying to myself, ‘Stoddard, maybe you've discovered something at last. Maybe you've stumbled onto something big.' So far I've never made a single scientific discovery.
"Now you take this observation tonight. Sure, it would be exciting to suppose the solar system has shrunk to the size of a dime, but first I want to be absolutely sure there ​isn't some perfectly natural commonplace explanation. It's a depressing fact that most of the exciting results a scientist gets can eventually be traced to errors of observation. Think of all the times Mira Ceti at maximum has been mistaken for a nova."
"Everybody knows that," Arnold objected. "But where's the chance for error in this observation? It's so simple."
"Maybe not so simple as you think. Remember the seeing was terrible. That time I gave you might have been off by a couple of minutes—maybe more."
"That still leaves thirty minutes to explain."
"All right. Now the question is how much faith can we put in the Ephemeris? It wouldn't surprise me if the predicted time itself was way off."
"As much as that?"
"Well, I know the predictions for Jupiter's four great satellites are based on Sampson's tables of 1910, and they certainly must require some kind of correction by this time. I don't know how often the Naval Observatory checks up on things like that. But until we do know—and have a lot more observations—we really don't know a thing."
"O.K., O.K.," said Arnold impatiently. "All the same, I still think it's a whale of an error."
"It's a king size one, I'll admit," said Stoddard, relighting his pipe. "And now there's something I wish you'd explain to me. After all that palaver this afternoon I still don't understand how this so-called Xi effect ties in with our infrared observations."
Arnold reached for the pencil and a pad of yellow scratch paper. "Assume that this line represents the boundary of our local universe or ‘clot'," he said, drawing an irregular closed figure with a dot near the center. "According to Friedmann, occasionally some disturbance in the outer super-cosmos or Xi space becomes sufficiently violent to affect a particular clot. Now there are several things that can happen as a result, but by far the most probable is that the clot will begin to shrink, very slowly at first and then more rapidly. But for a long time nobody would be aware of the shrinkage because everything within the clot shrinks in proportion, with one exception. That exception is the wave length of electromagnetic radiation.
"Suppose the boundary has shrunk until it has an average radius of a thousand kilometers." He drew a line from the central dot to a point on the boundary. "Obviously nothing can exist within the boundary bigger than the boundary itself. Therefore, this means that all electromagnetic radiation exceeding a thousand kilometers is eliminated. That accounts for the fadeout in radio transmission. As the boundary continues to shrink shorter wave lengths keep being cut out all the time."
"I think I'm beginning to get it," ​said Stoddard, studying the diagram. "We didn't get any transmission beyond twenty thousand angstroms because there wasn't any radiation to transmit."
"That's it! Our universe only had a diameter of twenty thousand angstroms. All radiation of longer wave length was cut out."
"About one ten-thousandth of an inch," said Stoddard, doing some fast mental arithmetic. He chuckled. "No wonder old Fosberg was worried!"
"You see the Xi effect does give a consistent explanation of all the phenomena," said Arnold triumphantly. "In any case, we can't be in doubt much longer."
"How's that?"
"Why because the universe will have shrunk so much the optical spectrum will be affected. The landscape will change color."
"Well, maybe you're right," Stoddard agreed reluctantly, "but so far everything looks just the same to me as it always has." Absently he began doodling a series of circles and squares across Arnold's diagram. "What I wish," he said with a yawn, "is that somebody would find a way to shorten the time from one pay day till the next."
Arnold waved his arms in a helpless gesture and walked to the other fend of the room. Stoddard sat motionless as if half asleep. Presently he took a brief case from one of the drawers and began exploring its contents. "Here're those snapshots we took at the zoo the other day," he said. "Haven't had time to develop 'em yet."
His partner eyed the rolls of film without interest. "My wife was asking about them at dinner. She wants to see that one where she's feeding the eagle."
"If you want to wait, I can develop 'em now."
Arnold glanced at his wrist watch. "Sure, go ahead. It's only eight-thirty."
Stoddard turned off the overhead light plunging the little room into total darkness. Arnold could hear him searching for the switch that operated the safelight, but when he snapped it on there was no result. He snapped it several times but still without result.
"Globe's probably burnt out," said Arnold.
Stoddard jerked the screen back revealing the light inside burning brightly. "Now what?" he muttered. They stood staring at the light in puzzled silence. Suddenly Arnold leaned forward, his face tense in the white glare from the lamp.
"Stoddard."
"Yeah?"
"Put the screen back over the lamp."
His partner hesitated then obediently shoved the screen back in place until not a chink of white light was visible. Gradually as their eyes gained sensitivity in the dark the oblong shape of the safety screen became faintly visible.
But the screen was no longer ruby red. It was a dull colorless gray.
No scientific theory ever became accepted as fact so quickly as Friedmann's theory of the Xi effect, but then no other theory before ever had such a convincing array of scientific evidence to support it. The change in the tint of the landscape that Arnold had foreseen eventually developed but for several weeks it was too slight to be readily obvious. The effect was the same as if everyone had gone color-blind to an effective wave length of about 6500A. It was disconcerting to find that your hedge of geraniums was black instead of scarlet, and the absence of stop-lights was nearly disastrous. Some women became violently hysterical when they first beheld the inky fluid oozing from their veins. But after the novelty had worn off the public soon lost interest. They had lived through the invasion from Mars, the flying saucers, and other scientific gags, and doubtless in time this, too, would pass. Besides, how could you expect people to work up any enthusiasm over something when they weren't even sure how to pronounce it?
But as orange and yellow followed red into the gray there came a change in the public attitude, a kind of half-credulous belief mingled with misgiving and dismay. Men still laughed, and joked about the Xi effect over their old-fashioneds at the country club, but just when everybody was ​feeling happy and secure again someone was sure to spoil it all. "You know this thing may turn out to be more serious than we think," he would say. "I've got a nephew teaches out at the university. Hasn't got a dime but smart as the devil. Well, he told me confidentially it's getting worse instead of better. No telling where it may end, in fact."
Rather curiously, women had much more awareness of the Xi effect than men, for it struck at their most vulnerable point—their appearance. Golden hair could turn gray in a matter of weeks. A complexion drained of its warm flesh tints looked dead. Cosmetics were of no avail against it. For of what use was lipstick if it only turned, the lips from gray to black? Or of rouge if it left only deeper shadows on the cheeks? The radiant beauty of a short time past anxiously examining her face in her mirror at night might see an old woman staring back at her out of the glass. Deaths from sleeping pills became a commonplace.
Not until late in November, however, did the situation reach such a critical stage that government officials felt compelled to recognize the Xi effect as a definite world menace. Previously its encroachment had been dismissed by the ingenious process of studiously minimizing its existence. It was frue that the papers printed the censored reports from scientific institutions but always under captions that were misleading and with the significant news buried near the bottom of the column. A few scientists who refused to be muzzled soon found themselves out of a job or called up before an investigating committee.
Eventually, however, the clamor became so loud that announcement was made of a series of mass meetings to be held across the country in which all the facts insofar as they were known would be discussed without reservation. The first in the series was scheduled for the Los Angeles Coliseum for Monday, November 27th, with the great Dr. Friedmann as the feature speaker of the evening. Public sentiment changed almost overnight. The personal appearance of Friedmann alone did much to restore confidnce. He was the fellow who had discovered this Xi effect, wasn't he? Well, then, he could probably control it, too. Man had never met a problem that man was unable to solve.
By the evening of the 27th public curiosity over what Friedmann would say had been excited to such a degree, that it was necessary to keep the man's whereabouts a profound secret to prevent him from being mobbed on sight. By five o'clock every street leading toward the coliseum was blocked solid with cars for miles around, and by seven o'clock more than a hundred thousand people had jammed themselves into the vast structure, while thousands more milled around the walls outside seeking entrance. Although the Los Angeles Police Department had every man available on duty in ​addition to two hundred special officers hired from outlying districts, they were able to maintain order only with considerable difficulty. An attitude of reckless abandon was manifest even among ordinarily well-behaved individuals. It was a holiday crowd without the holiday spirit.
"I'm not at all sure Friedmann is the best man to talk to these people tonight," said Arnold, standing up and gazing uneasily around him at the throngs still climbing up and down the aisles in search of seats. "They've come here confidently expecting to be told something that sounds nice and reassuring and instead Friedmann will simply hand them the hard cold facts. We scientists have known the truth for weeks and had a chance to become reconciled to it. But what about the average man whose cosmic outlook is limited to his job and the mortgage on his home out in Brentwood?"
"Be quite a blow to 'em probably," said Stoddard, biting into his hot dog. "Trouble with these theoretical fellows is they act as if the Xi effect had been invented for the sole purpose of letting them test out all their screwy ideas on nuclear structure."
Arnold sat down and began studying his program. "I see Atchison Kane is going to speak, too."
"Atchison Kane. Who's he?"
"Shakespearean actor," Arnold replied. Long ago he had become accustomed to his partner's splendid state of isolation from the world of the stage and screen. "Made a big hit in ‘Richard the Third' recently. I heard him at the Philharmonic last August."
"That so?" said Stoddard. For the tenth time he looked at the great clock over the archway at the east entrance. "What's holding up the procession, anyhow? They were supposed to kickoff half an hour ago."
Others besides Stoddard were getting impatient. So far the crowd had been fairly well-behaved but now it was growing decidedly restless. Someone yelled, "We want Friedmann!" and in an instant thousands of voices were repeating the words over and over in a kind of savage chant. When this failed to produce results, a mob of boys acting as if upon signal, leaped over the parapet onto the field toward the speakers' stand. Before the police could intervene they began tearing down the decorations and smashing the chairs and railing. The dozen or so officers in the vicinity were overwhelmed at first but reinforcements soon gained the upperhand. The crowd was delighted, following every incident of the struggle with fascinated attention. Several men were knocked down and trampled in the melee, or sent reeling from the battle bleeding from lacerations around the head. Suddenly a great shout went up. The speakers surrounded by a husky squad of police were spotted emerging from the south entrance. Interest in the fight evaporated immediately. The floodlights were dimmed ​and an expectant hush fell over the assemblage.
After the usual preliminaries, to which no one paid the slightest attention, the chairman of the National Scientific Security Council finally got around to introducing the main speaker.
"In the brief span that this committee has been in existence, citizens from all parts of the southland have been besieging us with questions concerning this effect which has been uppermost in the thoughts of each and everyone of us during these last troubled days. Unfortunately, no funds were appropriated for the purpose of answering these questions. And yet as representatives of the people we felt in all sincerity that they could not and must not be ignored."
The burst of applause at this point forced him to halt briefly until quiet reigned again and he was able to gather himself together for another effort.
"In view of this situation, my colleagues and I, after due deliberation, have asked our distinguished speaker if in lieu of a formal address he would consent to answer a set of representative questions selected by the committee. To this request I am happy to say that our speaker has most willingly and graciously given his consent.
"And now without further ado, it is my great pleasure and privilege this evening to present to you a man whom I am sure needs no introduction from me, that renowned scientist and scholar, Dr. Karl Gustav Friedmann."
From the uproarious applause that greeted Friedmann as he stepped to the front of the platform, it might have been supposed that he had discovered another Santa Claus instead of an effect that was relentlessly extinguishing the light of the world. He shook hands with the chairman, bowed a few degrees in the general direction of the crowd, and then stood quietly waiting for the tumult to subside. The chairman nervously riffled through the cards in his hand, selected one, and peered at it through his bifocals.
"Our first qustion is from a housewife in Long Beach," he announced. "She says, ‘My husband has lost his job as radio salesman on account of the Xi effect. How soon will it be over so he can go back to work again?'"
Friedmann's voice was as unemotional as if he were lecturing half a dozen sleepy students rather than a crowd of a hundred thousand that were hanging on his every word, "I think that question may be answered by reading a message from the National Bureau of Standards which was handed to me as I entered the coliseum here tonight. Here is the message: ‘Spectroscopic laboratory reports sudden marked acceleration Xi effect. Cutoff 5500 at 0000 GCT.' Now in plain language what does this mean? It means that at four o'clock this afternoon the extinction of radiation extended nearly to the ​green." He hesitated. "I regret to inform the lady that her husband will never be able to return to his work. Why? Because so little while is left to us that no time remains for either work or play."
An excited uneasy murmur swept around the coliseum that rose to a sharp peak then hastily died away as the chairman selected another card. "Our second question is from a man in Pomona who signs himself ‘Taxpayer'. His letter is too long to read in full so that I must confine myself to his inquiry at the end. ‘If scientists knew light was going to be extinguished, then why didn't they get busy and do something about it a long time ago? The government makes me pay taxes so scientists can sit in their laboratories and hatch these wild theories. But when danger comes along they're just as helpless as the rest of us.'"
The letter provoked a good deal of laughter mingled with a surprising amount of handclapping. The humor of the situation, however, was wholly lost on Friedmann. "What would Mr. Taxpayer have the scientists do?" he demanded in a voice that was openly contemptuous. "Does he think they deliberately create the lightning that destroys a tree? Or the earthquake that engulfs a city? Well, I can assure him that these are nothing compared to the force that threatens us now. But before he criticizes science let him first learn something about it—go back to grammar school or read some little children's book."
There was a timid scattering of applause that was soon drowned in a chorus of boos and catcalls from all sides. One could sense the rising tide of resentment and frustration underneath.
"What did I tell you?" Arnold shouted. "They aren't going to take it."
Stoddard hunched down farther in his seat. "If you ask me all hell's going to break loose here in another minute."
Two members of the committee could be seen apparently expostulating with Friedmann, who stood listening to them indifferently with folded arms. The chairman was doing his best to restore order but it was nearly a minute before he was able to proceed. "Quiet please. Quiet," he entreated. "We have many more questions on the program of vital interest which I am sure you are all anxious to hear. Now here is one from a schoolteacher in Lynwood which goes straight to the point. ‘Dear Dr. Friedmann, can you tell us what course of events we may expect from the Xi effect in the immediate future?'"
"There can be no doubt as to the course of events up to a certain point," Friedmann replied, speaking more slowly than usual and evidently weighing his words with care. "Beyond that point there is no knowledge, only speculation and conjecture.
"But in the immediate future the course of events is very clear. The ​extinction of radiation will continue at a rapidly increasing pace. Soon the world will be completely devoid of the quality of radiation that excites the sensation of visible light. As it disappears, the sensation will be similar to that of watching a scene in a play in which the lights are gradually dimmed until finally the stage and players are utterly blotted out."
There was so much noise now that Arnold was able to hear only with the greatest difficulty. Some people stood veiling and shaking their fists at Friedmann while others shouted for them to sit down and let him proceed.
"After the visible radiation there remains the spectrum of the X-radiation and gamma rays," Friedmann continued, apparently unmindful that he had lost his audience. "Especially significant will be the nature of the reaction upon cosmic rays, a subject upon which scientists have been wholly unable to agree. At present there is no hope of securing records of this vitally important phenomenon. Furthermore, there is no hope—"
A whiskey bottle crashed against the stand showering Friedmann with glass. Another followed and another until the air was filled with them. A dozen fights were in progress within the coliseum while without a mob was attempting to break through the gate at the east entrance. In the distance could be heard the rising wail of police sirens.
Suddenly the floodlights blinked, wavered uncertainly, then slowly faded out to a chorus of anguished wails and frantic howls for lights. Whether the fadeout was by accident or intent the result was the same. A terrified panic-stricken hush descended upon the multitude.
It was at that instant a new voice was heard in the darkness; a voice calm and powerful, yet withal tender and reassuring.
"The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want."
In the dim light men and women looked at each other fearful and bewildered, as if a miracle were about to happen.
Again the voice came crying in the darkness. "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters."
Arnold grabbed his partner by the shoulder. "It's Atchison Kane! If he can hold this crowd tonight, he's a wonder."
Men who were shouting and cursing a moment before now stood awed and irresolute. Here and there a few were beginning to kneel while others sobbed openly and unashamed.
"He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake."
Many were beginning to repeat the familiar words after him. Now the voice swelled to a mighty climax in its message of faith and hope,
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil—"
And then more softly,
"For Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me—"
​From directly behind Arnold there came a woman's shriek with piercing intensity. It was a shriek filled with despair. A shriek that meant something was terribly wrong. Others around her began shouting and screaming too, pointing toward the great archway at the east entrance.
The low fog that had hung over the city all evening had broken momentarily revealing the rising moon. But it was a moon that no one there had ever seen before, a moon out of a nightmare, swollen and elongated as if viewed through a cylindrical lens. But even more unnatural than its shape was its color—a deep transparent blue.
Arnold was so intent upon the moon that he scarcely noticed when the floodlights came on again. Gradually he became aware of some change in the aspect of the coliseum itself; there seemed to be a soft waviness spreading everywhere warping some portions of the scene but leaving others untouched, like gelatin melting and flowing down a photographic plate. His eyes were unable to bring the mass, of humanity banked against the opposite wall of the coliseum into sharp focus. The tiers of seats kept blurring and shimmering as if the light were coming from a great distance through layers of heated air.
With a sickening sensation he perceived that the distortion in spacetime was beginning to affect objects right around him. The faces were undergoing some subtle alteration, noticeable particularly in the irregular position of the mouth with respect to the nose and eyes together with an apparent thickening and bending of the jaw and forehead, such as he had once seen in patients whose bony structure had undergone prolonged softening from osteitis deformons.
The night was deepening rapidly now closing in like the folds of a vast purple curtain. Simultaneously people were gripped by that primitive wholly unreasoning fear that is felt at a total solar eclipse the instant before totality, when the shadow of the moon suddenly looms on the horizon advancing with terrifying speed. Men and women clung to each other or ran frantically this way and that as if by fleeing they could escape a fate from which no escape was possible.
Stoddard and Arnold sat huddled together watching the groping figures grow dimmer and dimmer until the last ray of light was extinguished in the dense impenetrable blackness. But hours later they knew from the sound of voices and the pressure of hands and bodies, that thousands were still crouching in their seats waiting hopefully for the light that had always returned.
Arnold dozing against Stoddard's shoulder found himself repeating a phrase from Friedmann's last remark: "There is no hope—There is no hope—"
THE END