The Man Who Rocked the Earth

  III

  On that same evening, Thursday, July 22d, two astronomers attached tothe Naval Observatory sat in the half darkness of the meridian-circleroom watching the firmament sweep slowly across the aperture of thegiant lens. The chamber was as quiet as the grave, the two men rarelyspeaking as they noted their observations. Paris might be taken, Berlinbe razed, London put to the torch; a million human beings might be blowninto eternity, or the shrieks of mangled creatures lying in heaps beforepellet-strewn barbed-wire entanglements rend the summer night; greatbattleships of the line might plunge to the bottom, carrying their crewswith them; and the dead of two continents rot unburied--yet unmoved thestars would pursue their nightly march across the heavens, cruel daywould follow pitiless night, and the careless earth follow itsaccustomed orbit as though the race were not writhing in its deathagony. Gazing into the infinity of space human existence seemed but thescum upon a rainpool, human warfare but the frenzy of insectivora.Unmindful of the starving hordes of Paris and Berlin, of plague-sweptRussia, or of the drowned thousands of the North Baltic Fleet, these twomen calmly studied the procession of the stars--the onward bore of theuniverse through space, and the spectra of newborn or dying worlds.

  It was a suffocatingly hot night and their foreheads reeked with sweat.Dim shapes on the walls of the room indicated what by day was a tangleof clockwork and recording instruments, connected by electricity withvarious buttons and switches upon the table. The brother of the bigclock in the wireless operating room hung nearby, its face illuminatedby a tiny electric lamp, showing the hour to be eleven-fifty.Occasionally the younger man made a remark in a low tone, and the elderwrote something on a card.

  "The 'seeing' is poor to-night," said Evarts, the younger man. "Theupper air is full of striae and, though it seems like a clear night,everything looks dim--a volcanic haze probably. Perhaps the AleutianIslands are in eruption again."

  "Very likely," answered Thornton, the elder astronomer. "The shocks thisafternoon would indicate something of the sort."

  "Curious performance of the magnetic needle. They say it held due eastfor several minutes," continued Evarts, hoping to engage his senior inconversation--almost an impossibility, as he well knew.

  Thornton did not reply. He was carefully observing the infinitesimalapproach of a certain star to the meridian line, marked by a threadacross the circle's aperture. When that point of light should cross thethread it would be midnight, and July 22, 1916, would be gone forever.Every midnight the indicating stars crossed the thread exactly on time,each night a trifle earlier than the night before by a definite andcalculable amount, due to the march of the earth around the sun. So theyhad crossed the lines in every observatory since clocks and telescopeshad been invented. Heretofore, no matter what cataclysm of nature hadoccurred, the star had always crossed the line not a second too soon ora second too late, but exactly on time. It was the one positivelypredictable thing, foretellable for ten or for ten thousand years by asimple mathematical calculation. It was surer than death or the tax-man.It was absolute.

  Thornton was a reserved man of few words--impersonal, methodical,serious. He spent many nights there with Evarts, hardly exchanging aphrase with him, and then only on some matter immediately concerned withtheir work. Evarts could dimly see his long, grave profile bending overhis eyepiece, shrouded in the heavy shadows across the table. He felt agreat respect, even tenderness, for this taciturn, high-principled,devoted scientist. He had never seen him excited, hardly ever aroused.He was a man of figures, whose only passion seemed to be the "music ofthe spheres."

  A long silence followed, during which Thornton seemed to bend moreintently than ever over his eyepiece. The hand of the big clock slippedgradually to midnight.

  "There's something wrong with the clock," said Thornton suddenly, andhis voice sounded curiously dry, almost unnatural. "Telephone to theequatorial room for the time."

  Puzzled by Thornton's manner Evarts did as instructed.

  "Forty seconds past midnight," came the reply from the equatorialobserver.

  Evarts repeated the answer for Thornton's benefit, looking at their ownclock at the same time. It pointed to exactly forty seconds past thehour. He heard Thornton suppress something like an oath.

  "There's something the matter!" repeated Thornton dumbly. "Aeta isn'twithin five minutes of crossing. Both clocks can't be wrong!"

  He pressed a button that connected with the wireless room.

  "What's the time?" he called sharply through the nickel-platedspeaking-tube.

  "Forty-five seconds past the hour," came the answer. Then: "But I wantto see you, sir. There's something queer going on. May I come in?"

  "Come!" almost shouted Thornton.

  A moment later the flushed face of Williams, the night operator,appeared in the doorway.

  "Excuse me, sir," he stammered, "but something fierce must havehappened! I thought you ought to know. The Eiffel Tower has been tryingto talk to us for over two hours, but I can't get what he's saying."

  "What's the matter--atmospherics?" snapped Evarts.

  "No; the air _was_ full of them, sir--shrieking with them you might say;but they've stopped now. The trouble has been that I've been jammed bythe Brussels station talking to the Belgian Congo--same wave length--andI couldn't tune Brussels out. Every once in a while I'd get a word ofwhat Paris was saying, and it's always the same word--'_heure_.' Butjust now Brussels stopped sending and I got the complete message of theEiffel Tower. They wanted to know our time by Greenwich. I gave it to'em. Then Paris said to tell you to take your transit with great careand send result to them immediately----"

  The ordinarily calm Thornton gave a great suspiration and his face waslivid. "Aeta's just crossed--we're five minutes out! Evarts, am I crazy?Am I talking straight?"

  Evarts laid his hand on the other's arm.

  "The earthquake's knocked out your transit," he suggested.

  "And Paris--how about Paris?" asked Thornton. He wrote something down ona card mechanically and started for the door. "Get me the Eiffel Tower!"he ordered Williams.

  The three men stood motionless, as the wireless man sent the EiffelTower call hurtling across the Atlantic:

  "ETA--ETA--ETA."

  "All right," whispered Williams, "I've got 'em."

  "Tell Paris that our clocks are all out five minutes according to themeridian."

  Williams worked the key rapidly, and then listened.

  "The Eiffel Tower says that their chronometers also appear to be out bythe same time, and that Greenwich and Moscow both report the same thing.Wait a minute! He says Moscow has wired that at eight o'clock lastevening a tremendous aurora of bright yellow light was seen to thenorthwest, and that their spectroscopes showed the helium line only. Hewants to know if we have any explanation to offer----"

  "Explanation!" gasped Evarts. "Tell Paris that we had earthquake shockshere together with violent seismic movements, sudden rise in barometer,followed by fall, statics, and erratic variation in the magneticneedle."

  "What does it all mean?" murmured Thornton, staring blankly at theyounger man.

  The key rattled and the rotary spark whined into a shriek. Then silence.

  "Paris says that the same manifestations have been observed in Russia,Algeria, Italy, and London," called out Williams. "Ah! What's that?Nauen's calling." Again he sent the blue flame crackling between thecoils. "Nauen reports an error of five minutes in their meridianobservations according to the official clocks. And hello! He says Berlinhas capitulated and that the Russians began marching through atdaylight--that is about two hours ago. He says he is about to turn thestation over to the Allied Commissioners, who will at once assumecharge."

  Evarts whistled.

  "How about it?" he asked of Thornton.

  The latter shook his head gravely.

  "It may be--explainable--or," he added hoarsely, "it may mean the end ofthe world."

  Williams sprang from his chair and confronted Thornton.

  "What do you mean?" h
e almost shouted.

  "Perhaps the universe is running down!" said Evarts soothingly. "At anyrate, keep it to yourself, old chap. If the jig is up there's no usescaring people to death a month or so too soon!"

  Thornton grasped an arm of each.

  "Not a word of this to anybody!" he ground out through compressed lips."Absolute silence, or hell may break loose on earth!"