_XVII_
THE SLOWING ROTATION
It might have been a million years later, that I perceived, beyondpossibility of doubt, that the fiery sheet that lit the world, wasindeed darkening.
Another vast space went by, and the whole enormous flame had sunk to adeep, copper color. Gradually, it darkened, from copper to copper-red,and from this, at times, to a deep, heavy, purplish tint, with, in it, astrange loom of blood.
Although the light was decreasing, I could perceive no diminishment inthe apparent speed of the sun. It still spread itself in that dazzlingveil of speed.
The world, so much of it as I could see, had assumed a dreadful shadeof gloom, as though, in very deed, the last day of the worldsapproached.
The sun was dying; of that there could be little doubt; and still theearth whirled onward, through space and all the aeons. At this time, Iremember, an extraordinary sense of bewilderment took me. I foundmyself, later, wandering, mentally, amid an odd chaos of fragmentarymodern theories and the old Biblical story of the world's ending.
Then, for the first time, there flashed across me, the memory that thesun, with its system of planets, was, and had been, traveling throughspace at an incredible speed. Abruptly, the question rose--_Where?_ Fora very great time, I pondered this matter; but, finally, with a certainsense of the futility of my puzzlings, I let my thoughts wander to otherthings. I grew to wondering, how much longer the house would stand.Also, I queried, to myself, whether I should be doomed to stay,bodiless, upon the earth, through the dark-time that I knew was coming.From these thoughts, I fell again to speculations upon the possibledirection of the sun's journey through space.... And so another greatwhile passed.
Gradually, as time fled, I began to feel the chill of a great winter.Then, I remembered that, with the sun dying, the cold must be,necessarily, extraordinarily intense. Slowly, slowly, as the aeonsslipped into eternity, the earth sank into a heavier and redder gloom.The dull flame in the firmament took on a deeper tint, very somberand turbid.
Then, at last, it was borne upon me that there was a change. The fiery,gloomy curtain of flame that hung quaking overhead, and down away intothe Southern sky, began to thin and contract; and, in it, as one seesthe fast vibrations of a jarred harp-string, I saw once more thesun-stream quivering, giddily, North and South.
Slowly, the likeness to a sheet of fire, disappeared, and I saw,plainly, the slowing beat of the sun-stream. Yet, even then, the speedof its swing was inconceivably swift. And all the time, the brightnessof the fiery arc grew ever duller. Underneath, the world loomeddimly--an indistinct, ghostly region.
Overhead, the river of flame swayed slower, and even slower; until, atlast, it swung to the North and South in great, ponderous beats, thatlasted through seconds. A long space went by, and now each sway of thegreat belt lasted nigh a minute; so that, after a great while, I ceasedto distinguish it as a visible movement; and the streaming fire ran in asteady river of dull flame, across the deadly-looking sky.
An indefinite period passed, and it seemed that the arc of fire becameless sharply defined. It appeared to me to grow more attenuated, and Ithought blackish streaks showed, occasionally. Presently, as I watched,the smooth onward-flow ceased; and I was able to perceive that therecame a momentary, but regular, darkening of the world. This grew until,once more, night descended, in short, but periodic, intervals upon thewearying earth.
Longer and longer became the nights, and the days equaled them; sothat, at last, the day and the night grew to the duration of seconds inlength, and the sun showed, once more, like an almost invisible,coppery-red colored ball, within the glowing mistiness of its flight.Corresponding to the dark lines, showing at times in its trail, therewere now distinctly to be seen on the half-visible sun itself, great,dark belts.
Year after year flashed into the past, and the days and nights spreadinto minutes. The sun had ceased to have the appearance of a tail; andnow rose and set--a tremendous globe of a glowing copper-bronze hue; inparts ringed with blood-red bands; in others, with the dusky ones, thatI have already mentioned. These circles--both red and black--were ofvarying thicknesses. For a time, I was at a loss to account for theirpresence. Then it occurred to me, that it was scarcely likely that thesun would cool evenly all over; and that these markings were due,probably, to differences in temperature of the various areas; the redrepresenting those parts where the heat was still fervent, and the blackthose portions which were already comparatively cool.
It struck me, as a peculiar thing, that the sun should cool in evenlydefined rings; until I remembered that, possibly, they were but isolatedpatches, to which the enormous rotatory speed of the sun had imparted abelt-like appearance. The sun, itself, was very much greater than the sunI had known in the old-world days; and, from this, I argued that it wasconsiderably nearer.
At nights, the moon[6] still showed; but small and remote; and thelight she reflected was so dull and weak that she seemed little morethan the small, dim ghost of the olden moon, that I had known.
Gradually, the days and nights lengthened out, until they equaled aspace somewhat less than one of the old-earth hours; the sun rising andsetting like a great, ruddy bronze disk, crossed with ink-black bars.About this time, I found myself, able once more, to see the gardens,with clearness. For the world had now grown very still, and changeless.Yet, I am not correct in saying, 'gardens'; for there were nogardens--nothing that I knew or recognized. In place thereof, I lookedout upon a vast plain, stretching away into distance. A little to myleft, there was a low range of hills. Everywhere, there was a uniform,white covering of snow, in places rising into hummocks and ridges.
It was only now, that I recognized how really great had been thesnowfall. In places it was vastly deep, as was witnessed by a great,upleaping, wave-shaped hill, away to my right; though it is notimpossible, that this was due, in part, to some rise in the surface ofthe ground. Strangely enough, the range of low hills to myleft--already mentioned--was not entirely covered with the universalsnow; instead, I could see their bare, dark sides showing in severalplaces. And everywhere and always there reigned an incredibledeath-silence and desolation. The immutable, awful quiet of adying world.
All this time, the days and nights were lengthening, perceptibly.Already, each day occupied, maybe, some two hours from dawn to dusk. Atnight, I had been surprised to find that there were very few starsoverhead, and these small, though of an extraordinary brightness; whichI attributed to the peculiar, but clear, blackness of the nighttime.
Away to the North, I could discern a nebulous sort of mistiness; notunlike, in appearance, a small portion of the Milky Way. It might havebeen an extremely remote star-cluster; or--the thought came to mesuddenly--perhaps it was the sidereal universe that I had known, and nowleft far behind, forever--a small, dimly glowing mist of stars, far inthe depths of space.
Still, the days and nights lengthened, slowly. Each time, the sun roseduller than it had set. And the dark belts increased in breadth.
About this time, there happened a fresh thing. The sun, earth, and skywere suddenly darkened, and, apparently, blotted out for a brief space.I had a sense, a certain awareness (I could learn little by sight), thatthe earth was enduring a very great fall of snow. Then, in an instant,the veil that had obscured everything, vanished, and I looked out, oncemore. A marvelous sight met my gaze. The hollow in which this house,with its gardens, stands, was brimmed with snow.[7] It lipped over thesill of my window. Everywhere, it lay, a great level stretch of white,which caught and reflected, gloomily, the somber coppery glows of thedying sun. The world had become a shadowless plain, from horizonto horizon.
I glanced up at the sun. It shone with an extraordinary, dullclearness. I saw it, now, as one who, until then, had seen it, onlythrough a partially obscuring medium. All about it, the sky had becomeblack, with a clear, deep blackness, frightful in its nearness, and itsunmeasured deep, and its utter unfriendliness. For a great time, Ilooked into it, newly, and shaken and fearful. It was so near. Had Ib
een a child, I might have expressed some of my sensation and distress,by saying that the sky had lost its roof.
Later, I turned, and peered about me, into the room. Everywhere, it wascovered with a thin shroud of the all-pervading white. I could see itbut dimly, by reason of the somber light that now lit the world. Itappeared to cling to the ruined walls; and the thick, soft dust of theyears, that covered the floor knee-deep, was nowhere visible. The snowmust have blown in through the open framework of the windows. Yet, in noplace had it drifted; but lay everywhere about the great, old room,smooth and level. Moreover, there had been no wind these many thousandyears. But there was the snow,[8] as I have told.
And all the earth was silent. And there was a cold, such as no livingman can ever have known.
The earth was now illuminated, by day, with a most doleful light,beyond my power to describe. It seemed as though I looked at the greatplain, through the medium of a bronze-tinted sea.
It was evident that the earth's rotatory movement was departing,steadily.
The end came, all at once. The night had been the longest yet; andwhen the dying sun showed, at last, above the world's edge, I had grownso wearied of the dark, that I greeted it as a friend. It rose steadily,until about twenty degrees above the horizon. Then, it stopped suddenly,and, after a strange retrograde movement, hung motionless--a greatshield in the sky[9]. Only the circular rim of the sun showedbright--only this, and one thin streak of light near the equator.
Gradually, even this thread of light died out; and now, all that wasleft of our great and glorious sun, was a vast dead disk, rimmed with athin circle of bronze-red light.