COSMIC TRAGEDY
By THOMAS S. GARDINER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Comet March 41.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The big man with the iron grey hair stared morosely out the quartz window and across the roofs of Greater New York. Far down the canyon streets a few motor cars still ran and over the swinging aerial bridges scattered pedestrians carefully wended their way. Their grotesque figures with the heavy metal helmets that reminded the watching man of the half-mythical sea monsters of the past or divers that used to explore wrecks were far different from the jostling crowds that had crowded the ways only a few short days ago. But that was before the plague—the plague of the whispering death.
John Cortland, United Utilities Power magnate, sighed as he turned from the quiet streets below. Somberly he regarded a tiny light beam that came from the mirror of a galvanometer that trembled and danced continually. He mused over the events of the past few days and wondered at their meaning. Like a caged tiger he paced the metal lined room waiting for the word that would spell success or disaster. Five days before it had first appeared. A whispering, a singing and vibrating had manifested itself. It was not local but appeared simultaneously all over the earth. This whispering, as of elfish voices, was not annoying at first; but it changed and alternated from a shrill whine back to the eery murmuring that was first noticed. Young Cavendish at the Black Laboratories had first tracked down the cause of the strange sounds—as to its ultimate origin, that was still veiled in mystery.
At the end of the first day people had become nervous, at the end of the second many were on the point of breaking, and then mankind began to go insane. It was too much for their nervous systems and the vibration seemed to affect the inner ear. Suddenly a well ordered planet became a center of bedlam and chaos. Order could not be restored because there was no one to handle affairs. If Dr. Hankins had not discovered that iron would shield a wearer from the vibrations, mankind would have been doomed. As it was only a few of the earth's heavy population had been able to get the protecting helmets, and some had lived in metal lined rooms. This discovery of the shielding effect of iron led to the discovery that an electro-magnetic radiation between infra-red and the short radio waves was acting on the ozone molecules to set them into vibration. To cap it all the ionized Heavyside Layer that protected the earth from the ultra-violet rays from the sun was decomposing also. Thus to the plague of the Whispering Death was added the threat of sun burn—a horrible burn that killed the skin and ultimately the patient.
Savagely John Cortland kicked at his chair as he paced across the room. There was one slender hope, a tiny thread that might save them at last. Europe was prostrated, Asia in turmoil, and America in chaos. All depended on the theory that the origin of the destructive vibration that had set their ozone molecules into their dance of death had intelligence back of it. The source of the radiation could not be found at this time, but that was not needed. If they could use the incoming radiation field as a carrier and heterodyne on it a super-imposed vibration perhaps the source could be destroyed. Japan had furnished the formula for the opposing field, and United Utilities Power the energy. All the great power stations on the planet had been connected up into a unit, all the tremendous kilowatts of energy had been flowing for hours into those great reservoirs of bound energy, the artificial space field invented by Minski of Stalingrad; and the great glass globes at Schenectady had taken this power and had built up a voltage unthinkable. The earth was going to hurl the thunderbolts of Jove.