This Way to the End Times: Classic Tales of the Apocalypse

  “Hello,” I grunted.

  “Is that you, Latham?” It was Smedley calling, the young man who had recently been appointed instructor in astronomy.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ve been trying everywhere to find you,” he complained. “You weren’t at your apartment or the Observatory.”

  “Maybe that was because I was asleep here at the office”

  “What was that?”

  “I said maybe it was because I was asleep here at the office!”

  “Oh!” he exclaimed. He sounded slightly startled. “Then you didn’t hear the ten o’clock news broadcast over KQX?”

  “No, I didn’t hear it.”

  “It was mostly about you,” he chuckled. “I’ve heard some awful stuff over the radio but this takes the prize. Can’t imagine how they could have gotten hold of such a story. Something about the sun turning into a fast nova.”

  “Possibly they got it because I gave it to them.”

  “You what!”

  “Listen, Smedley: if I was quoted to the effect that the world is coming to an end then I was quoted correctly. That’s exactly what I said and that’s exactly what I meant.”

  “You aren’t serious?”

  “I was never more serious in my life.”

  He hesitated. “All right, Dr. Latham. I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” and he hung up.

  I have just figured up that there are less than forty-seven hours left now.

  FRIDAY MORNING, JANUARY 28

  CATHERINE SNODGRASS, PRESIDENT BIXBY’S SECRETARY and one of the minor fuehrers at Western Tech, called me early this morning as I was finishing a pot of coffee and reading Of Human Bondage. As usual, she was very definite and positive.

  “President Bixby has arranged an appointment for you at ten o’clock,” she informed me. “If you will stop at my desk, I will see that you are admitted without delay.”

  “Sorry,” I said, “but I can’t make it at ten.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  People seemed to have trouble in understanding me lately. “I said I can’t be there at ten. Tell Bixby I’ll be there at eleven instead.”

  “The president is very anxious to see you. I would suggest that you come at ten,” she said quietly.

  “Sorry. Can’t come till eleven.”

  There was a long silence pregnant with meaning. “Very well, Dr. Latham, I will tell him. Thank you.”

  There was no reason why I couldn’t come at one time as well as another, except that I was seized with a perverse desire to frustrate the local hierarchy. I poured myself a fourth cup of coffee and went back to reading Of Human Bondage, a novel I had been trying to finish for five years.

  I had reached the part where Mildred is being particularly spiteful and was so absorbed that eleven o’clock came before I knew it. Previously I would have been sitting on the edge of a chair in the reception room ten minutes before time, but now I sauntered slowly over to the Administration Building.

  BIXBY WAS TALKING INTO A dictaphone when I came in. He is a large powerfully built man, with strong prominent features, and a crisp white mustache. Hair graying slightly at the temples. Most common remark heard about him is that he looks more like an international banker than a professor. It has been said that to be a successful college president, a man must have the digestion of a billy goat, the hide of a rhinoceros, and the money-getting powers of a secretary of the treasury. There could be no denying that as head of Western Tech, Bixby was an outstanding success.

  He lost no time getting down to business.

  “I believe I can say without fear or hesitation that no one has more vigorously championed the cause of academic freedom than myself. A scientist to be great must be free, at liberty to carry the bright torch of knowledge wherever nature beckons. These are truths upon which I am sure we are all agreed.”

  I nodded assent.

  “At the same time,” he said, clearing his throat, “we should be circumspect. In our relations with the man in the street, we must neither depict science as magic nor scientists as magicians, making stupendous discoveries. Otherwise the results of our labors are liable to serious misinterpretation by the ignorant and superstitious.”

  He frowned at me through his rimless glasses. “Dr. Latham, I feel very strongly that your message should have been submitted to the faculty committee on announcements before sending to Harvard.”

  He paused, evidently expecting me to say something in my defense at this point, but as I could think of no suitable rejoinder, remained silent.

  “Now, Latham,” Bixby continued, not unkindly, “I am familiar with your long and distinguished career here at Tech. Personally, I do not doubt for an instant that you had not the slightest intention of deliberately seeking sensational publicity. Unfortunately, the harm is done; the die is cast. The institution will be harshly criticized and justly so. Why, several big endowments I had been counting on may be held up if this thing gets out of control.”

  He got up and began pacing back and forth across the office. Suddenly he turned and confronted me.

  “You spend a lot of time at the Observatory, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I replied, “my teaching duties have been very light in recent years.”

  “Often up there for days and weeks at a time?”

  “That’s true,” I admitted.

  “Just as I thought,” he said. “You know, the man most likely to get his feet off the ground is the man who works alone. We need the contact of others to keep us on the straight path. Even the very best go off the deep end occasionally. If I remember correctly, Kepler was something of a mystic. Herschel thought the sun was inhabited. Sir Isaac Newton had a theory about light particles having fits.” He stopped uncertainly.

  I finished it for him. “And Philip Latham, associate professor of astronomy, thinks the world is coming to an end. It does sound kind of crazy, doesn’t it?”

  He looked down at me and smiled. “Yes, Latham, to put it bluntly, it does sound kind of crazy. Glad you see it that way.”

  He reached across the desk for pencil and paper. “Here. Suppose you write out something for the papers. No elaborate explanation, you understand; just anything to satisfy the reporters and calm down the people. Something about how new observations have caused you to revise your statement of yesterday, the sun is O.K., and looks good for another million years yet.”

  He went around to the opposite side of the desk and began arranging some papers together and laying them in metal containers. “While you’re doing that I’ll have Kit—Miss Snodgrass—call the press and issue a statement. Kill this thing right away.”

  I shook my head. “I am not aware of any new observational evidence,” I said. “My statement of yesterday still stands.”

  “What’s that?” Bixby said absently, continuing to arrange the papers. “I said I have no intention of retracting my statement.”

  Bixby stopped suddenly as if unable to believe his ears. Then he walked slowly around the side of the desk, looming larger and larger, until he towered above me so high I felt like an ant. For an instant I thought he intended bodily violence. But when he spoke it was in a low tone, choosing his words very slowly and carefully.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you yet. Neither the board of trustees nor the regents know anything about it. Nobody knows about it but myself.” His voice sank nearly to a whisper. “There’s a good chance of getting three million dollars out of Irwin Mills, the publisher, for a new observatory. Wants to establish it as a memorial to his son who died in the war.” He leaned forward impressively. ‘’How would you like to be the director of that new observatory?”

  “It’s a dream I’ve had for fifteen years.”

  Bixby slammed his fist into the palm of his hand. “Exactly!” he said. “We’ve been needing a new telescope around here for a long time. Present equipment in pretty bad shape. But here’s the point: we won’t get a nickel out of Mills if this wild story builds up. He’ll t
hink we’re a bunch of screwballs and pull out on us. We can’t always get things just the way we want them. A man’s got to be reasonable—practical.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to be—practical,” I told him, “although not that it makes much difference any more.”

  I decided I might as well give it to him straight.

  “You see it’s really true, this wild story about the world coming to an end. As kids we read stories about the end of the world and all the different ways it could happen. But they were just words on a piece of paper born out of somebody’s imagination. This is the real thing. Of course, you can’t believe it. I can’t actually believe it myself. We’re all too engrossed in our own affairs, too colossally conceited, to believe that anything from outside could conceivably destroy the little world we have created for our special enjoyment and torment.

  “That’s the way it is,” I said. “I’m afraid nothing we can do is likely to change the situation.”

  Bixby had remained impassive while I was speaking. Now he walked slowly to his desk and sat down.

  “Then you refuse to co-operate.” He said it more to himself than to me.

  I shrugged. “Put it that way if you like.”

  “This can ruin us. Ruin me and the whole institution.” He was studying me curiously, as if he had never really seen me before, and had just become aware of my existence.

  “You’re mad,” he said dully.

  I left him sitting there hunched over the top of his desk. For the first time I noticed how old and gray he looked.

  AT THE OFFICE I FOUND the postman had left a stack of letters for me. As I seldom receive mail, except copies of the Scientific Monthly and the Astrophysical Journal, I opened the envelopes with considerable interest. They were people who had heard about me over the radio, and felt impelled to take their pen in hand immediately.

  Some of the letters were hardly more than scrawls written on the back of old grocery bills and wrapping paper. Others were neatly typed on fine stationery with impressive letterheads, such as Institute of Psychoelectrical Research, or Bureau of Cosmic Power and Light. Several writers inclosed pamphlets expounding their views in detail. Through them all ran the same theme. I have discovered the secret of the universe. I have refuted Newton’s law of gravitation. I have found the law that explains the secret of the moon, sun, and stars. Three correspondents attacked me violently for trying to anticipate their own predictions of the end of the world.

  I wondered why victims of paranoia with delusions of grandeur so often find in astronomy the outlet which their minds are seeking? Every professional astronomer receives such letters. I know a director of a large observatory who has been getting letters from an inmate of an asylum for years. It is useless to attempt to point out the fallacies in their highly systematized delusions. That is the worst trouble with these people, I reflected. They are the last ones to see anything strange in their actions.

  Tossing the letters aside I reviewed the events of the morning. I admit I could not suppress a feeling of elation at my triumph over Bixby. Once I would have been utterly crushed by his tirade. Now it left me quite unmoved. What a surprise was in store for him tomorrow! I started to laugh out loud, then checked myself barely in time.

  A psychiatrist had once told me that only the insane laugh out loud—alone.

  MIDNIGHT

  BY EVENING MY SENSE OF elation had fled leaving in its wake a sense of deep depression. At the same time I was filled with a strange uneasiness which made my apartment seem intolerable. Ordinarily I avoid people, having a dread of crowds that amounts almost to a phobia. But tonight the thought of human companionship was very welcome. I decided to get the car out and drive down to Hollywood.

  I found a place to park on Hollywood and Vine near the El Capitan Theater. Stopping at the newsstand on the corner I bought a morning edition of the Chronicle, which I thought should have my story by this time. Sure enough, there it was on the front page of the second edition. OLD SOL SET FOR BLOWUP! the caption read. Underneath was the subhead, WORLD’S END DUE SATURDAY, says Dr. Latham of W.I.T.

  Naturally I had assumed that nothing could compete with the end of the world for news interest. Yet I found my story was overshadowed by an account of a shooting that had occurred on the Sunset strip, which occupied practically all the rest of the page. Worse still, my photograph was displayed next to the principal in the shooting, a blond young woman in a playsuit. Anyone casually glancing at the paper would have gotten the impression that I was also concerned in the affair.

  It seemed to me that all the stories I had ever read about the end of the world had been so different from the way this was turning out. In the stories there had always been wild tumult as the final hour drew near, half the people indulging in a frenzied orgy of pleasure while the other half offered up fervent prayers for deliverance. My prediction of the end of the world had now been broadcast over the radio dozens of times and widely publicized in the papers. Yet the only signs of tumult I could see were at the Chinese Theater up the street, where a premiere was trying to get under way.

  Suppose, I said to myself, that I were to seize that young man there by the arm and try to explain to him I believed the end of the world was near. What evidence could I produce to prove my assertion?

  I could tell him of observations made with my own eyes.

  He would say I was lying; refuse to believe me.

  I could show him Marley’s notes.

  They would be meaningless to him. A mere jumble of words and symbols scrawled in an old account book.

  Finally, I could produce actual photographs of the spectrum lines.

  Nothing but chance agglomerations of silver grains on a gelatin emulsion.

  He would brush me impatiently aside, dismiss my story as fantastic, the product of too much port wine and brandy. Suppose I drank myself into unconsciousness tonight. Would I awaken tomorrow to find the same old GO star shining as usual, radiating energy at the rate of 1.94 calories per square centimeter per minute?

  Driving up the winding road to the Observatory late that evening I determined upon my course of action next day. Writing it down here will serve to fix it in my mind.

  The time of outburst based upon Marley’s formula is 16:12 Pacific Standard Time, which is about an hour and a half before sunset at this time of year. If the cloud of gas expands at the average rate of six hundred miles per second, it will not reach the Earth’s orbit for nearly two days. The intense heat pouring from the sun, however, as a result of the explosion will travel with the speed of light and probably render the daylight side of Earth scorching hot within a very few minutes. At any rate, after I detect the first signs of disruption in the monochromator there should be sufficient time for me to inclose this diary in a heat-resistant box and store it at the bottom of the suntower two hundred feet below ground.

  Is it insane to hope that this diary will by some miracle be spared? Only too well I realize the futility of taking any precautions against a wall of flame that will turn the solid earth into incandescence. But in those last minutes it will at least be something to do, a definite plan to put into execution.

  N DAY

  08:00: THE SOLAR ROTATION HAS carried the large northern spotgroup out of sight around the limb. The other spot has settled down to a stable beta-p group. Once again the face of the sun is normal.

  I have just completed the routine program of solar observations that I have carried out continuously since 1906. First two direct photographs of the sun. Then a photograph in hydrogen light, a photograph in calcium, and a series on the prominence projecting around the limb. The plates have been developed and are fixing in the darkroom.

  08:30: Observed a tornado prominence of moderate height at position angle 117°. Spiral structure well defined. Usual wisp of smoke issuing from top. No certain indication of radial motion or change in P.A.

  13:l7: The seeing has been dropping rapidly during the last hour, probably due to a wind that has sprung up from the
west. The seeing was about 6 at noon but now is barely 2.

  14:00: The image is blurred and lacking in detail. Sun has probably gone behind a veil of cirrus haze. Hope it doesn’t get so thick I will have to close up.

  16:12: The zero hour! And still the sun looks just as I have seen it thousands of times before—a cherry-red disk with a few dark prominences streaked across it.

  17:00: Five o’clock P.M. on the Pacific coast. The image is very bad. Can’t focus within three inches. Tower shaking in rising wind. Nothing unusual to report.

  17:28: The sun will be below the horizon very soon now. I wonder if Marley’s form—

  Here it comes! The sun is swelling up like a toy red balloon. But so slowly! I never supposed it would be so slow. Like a slow-motion picture of the sun blowing up.

  I am glad. I was never so glad of anything before.

  Writing these last lines I thought of Bixby and Smedley and all the rest. Trying to picture their faces made me laugh. I laughed long and loud till my sides ached, and the sound echoed back and forth between the empty walls of the sun tower.

  GUYAL OF SFERE

  — JACK VANCE —

  EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

  WITHIN THE GENRE OF END-OF-THE-WORLD stories there can hardly be much greater contrast than that between Philip Latham’s “N Day” and Jack Vance’s “Guyal of Sfere.” The Latham story is the work of a scientist who lived in the world of spectral lines and logarithms. The Vance, which first appeared in 1950 as the sixth and last of the story cycle that bears the collective title of The Dying Earth, is one of the most memorable early stories of a grand master of science fiction whose elegant prose, poetic and visionary, blazed a unique trail for more than fifty years. The Dying Earth was the first published book of the California-born Vance, and it made an immediate and lasting mark. He went on in the succeeding decades to produce an unforgettable oeuvre of novels and stories, of which the best known are The Dragon Masters, The Last Castle, To Live Forever, and the five Demon Princes novels.

  There are no spectral lines and logarithms in any of the Dying Earth stories. Vance gives us, instead, a magical portrait of our world far remote from us in time, depicted for us with the clarity of a dream as it comes gradually to the end of its days.