And while the astronomers thus pondered and disputed over the thing, it had begun to arouse repercussions of interest in the non-scientific public also. More and more inquiries concerning it were coming to us at the Intelligence Bureau in those first few days, those inquiries becoming so numerous as to cause us to switch the news on the thing from the scientific-news wave to the general-news wave, which reached every communication-plate in the world. It was, no doubt, out of sheer lack of other topics of interest that the world turned thus toward this astronomical sensation. For sensations of any kind were rare now in this peaceful world of ours. The last mighty air war of 1972, which had ended in the total abolition of all national boundaries and the establishment of the World Government with its headquarters in the new world-capital of New York, had brought peace to the world, but it had also brought some measure of monotony. So that even such a slight break in the order of things as this increase in the sun's rate of spin, was rather welcomed by the peoples of the world.
And now, the thing had passed from the realm of the merely surprising to that of the astounding. For upon the fifth and sixth days had come reports from Dr. Marlin and from the heads of the other observatories of the world that the strange phenomenon was still continuing, that the sun's rotatory speed was still increasing. In each of those two days, it was stated, it had decreased its period of rotation by another 4 hours, the same daily decrease noted previously. And the exactness of this decrease daily, the smoothness of this strange acceleration of the sun's spin, proved that the acceleration could not have been caused by interior disturbances, as had at first been surmised. A great interior disturbance of the sun might indeed cause it to spin suddenly faster, but no such disturbance could be imagined as causing an exact and equal increase in its speed of spin with each succeeding day. What, then, could be the cause? Could it be that in some strange way the universe was suddenly running down?
But while Dr. Marlin and his fellow-astronomers discussed this matter of the phenomenon's cause, it was its effects that had begun to claim the attention of the world at large. For that increase of the sun's speed was already making itself felt upon Earth. Even the great storms in the sun's mass, those storms that we call sun-spots, indeed, make themselves felt upon Earth by the intense electrical and magnetic currents of force which they throw forth, causing on Earth electrical storms and auroras and strange weather-changes. And now all the usual phenomena were occurring, but enhanced in intensity. On the third day of the thing, the 6th of May, there occurred over the mid-Atlantic an electrical storm of such terrific power as to all but sweep from the air the great air-liners caught in it, the Constantinople-New York liner and a grain-ship bound from Odessa to Baltimore having been forced down almost to the sea's surface by the terrific air-currents. Great auroras were reported farther south than ever before, and over all our Earth changes in temperature were quick and sudden. And among the other new phenomena called into being, apparently by the sun's increased spin, were the new vibrations discovered at that time by Dr. Robert Whitely, a prominent physicist and a colleague of Dr. Marlin's at North American University.
Dr. Whitely's report, though rather obscured in interest by the central fact of the sun's increased speed of spin, was yet interesting enough to physical students, for in it he claimed to have discovered the existence of a new and unknown vibratory force, emanating apparently from the disturbed sun. This was, he claimed, a vibration whose frequency lay in the octaves between light and Hertzian or radio vibrations, an unexplored territory in the domain of etheric vibrations. Dr. Whitely himself had for some time been endeavoring to push his researches into that particular territory, but though he had striven with many methods, he had been able to produce or find no etheric vibrations of that frequency until the strange increase of the sun's rotatory speed had begun. Then, he stated, his instruments had recorded new vibrations somewhere out in space toward the sun, whose frequency lay between the light and Hertzian frequencies, and which seemed a force-vibration of some sort, weak reflections from it only being recorded by his instruments. It seemed possible, he stated, that this strange new force-vibration was being generated somewhere inside the disturbed sun itself, and he was studying it further to determine the truth of this theory.
This discovery of Dr. Whitely's, however, interesting though it was, seemed to be but a side-issue of the real problem, the acceleration of the sun's rotation. After the sixth day, there were no further reports from Dr. Marlin and his fellow-astronomers. During all the seventh and eighth and ninth days there came no word to the Intelligence Bureau regarding it, from any of the astronomers who had formerly reported to us on it. And though we got into touch with Dr. Marlin and the others by communication-plate, none of them in those three days would make any statement whatever on the thing, saying only that it was being carefully studied by them and that a statement would be issued soon. It was evident from this universal sudden silence on their part that the astronomers of the world's observatories were acting in conjunction, but why they should want to withhold from an interested world the news on this strange acceleration of the sun's spin, we could not understand. The great electrical storms and temperature-changes that had prevailed over Earth continued, and we were anxious to know how much longer we might expect them to continue.
"One would think that Dr. Marlin and the other astronomers had some great secret they were keeping from us," I remarked to Markham, the Intelligence Chief, and he shook his head.
"Secret or not, Hunt, they're doing us out of the first unusual news-subject we've had for a year," he said. "Why don't they give us whatever they've learned about this change in the sun's rate of spin?"
It was a question repeated by more than one in those days, for the great public having become interested in the matter was irritated by this silence on the part of Dr. Marlin and his fellow-scientists. Whatever they had learned or guessed as to the thing's cause, why did they not give their information to the Intelligence Bureau for distribution to the world? It was hinted freely that the whole matter was a hoax devised by Dr. Marlin, which had duped the astronomical world for the time being, and which they were reluctant to acknowledge. It was suggested also that the World President or the World Congress should take action to make the astronomers give out their usual reports. The public was quickly working itself into a state of indignation over the matter, when there suddenly burst upon it that doom-laden and terrible statement by Dr. Marlin, which was to loose an unprecedented terror upon the peoples of Earth.