Читать книгу Fool's Paradise - John Russell Fearn - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

That evening Drew found his concentration in his town apartment interrupted by the arrival of Ken West. The young engineer looked vaguely surprised as he followed Drew’s untidy figure into the small rear room he used as a private laboratory. A single globe depending from its flex cast a bright circle on the bench where the scientist had been working.

“I went to the Bland Edifice,” Ken explained, “but the watchman told me you’d left—for good.”

“Correct,” Drew agreed.

Ken sat down in sheer surprise. “You mean you quit?”

“Yes.” Drew returned to his stool and sat there like a gnome, his eternal pipe smouldering.

“But for why? You, of all people!”

“I left because of a woman—the biggest bungling female ever turned loose in a scientific organization. One of Bland’s spare tyres…,” and Drew added the details briefly.

“That girl must sure be laughing,” Ken muttered.

“Let her—whilst she may. Nobody will laugh much before long, Ken. As for that girl’s ‘victory’, I had either to tell Bland—who doesn’t know the first thing about science—that the world is doomed, and thereby set everybody by the ears; or I had to keep quiet. I decided to keep quiet, or at least until plans can be worked out to control the panic which is bound to follow. Thanks to that girl’s foolery, my proof of sunspot progress is destroyed. That will make it doubly hard for me to convince the authorities.”

“But surely other observatories took similar plates?”

“Routine plates, yes: I’ve checked up on that during today, but not enough to build up the visual story I had worked out. I had no copies because I saw no reason for them. A scatterbrained fool like that Morton woman never occurred to me.”

“It’s about the sunspot business that I came to see you. I still can’t properly believe what you told me last night.”

“Then it’s time you did,” the scientist replied. “Now I have quit Bland’s, I haven’t the apparatus for making studies of the solar disk, but Dick Hensley at Mount Wilson is a good friend of mine, and he’s giving me TV views and reports. The latest report shows the spots are still spreading, and a bolometer reading reveals a distinct drop in critical solar temperature. As temperature drops and spots enlarge, Earth’s magnetic field is correspondingly weakened. At the moment I am trying to calculate when we may expect real disaster.”

Ken glanced at the confusion of equations on the paper on the desk. Then he said, “They have been having electrical storms in Paris, where Thayleen is playing. She phoned me about them today. They seem to have frightened her, too. Queer how we miss them, only across the Channel.”

Drew shrugged. “Just chance. The storms follow electronic tracks, and where they might travel nobody can predict. If they happen to drift this way we’ll get a taste as well—but however violent the storms may be, they will be nothing compared to what will happen if the magnetic field gives way. In fact, Ken, I’d tell Thayleen to cancel her tour and leave Paris. Since it seems to be developing into a storm flashpoint, there’s no telling what may happen.”

“How am I to tell her that without giving the facts?”

“Think up an excuse. I’m just warning you: up to you how you work it out— Excuse me,” Drew broke off, as the visiphone shrilled for attention.

As Drew spoke a man’s face appeared on the tiny screen.

“Glad I caught you, Mr. Drew. I’m Douglas Billington of the Agricultural Board. I tried to contact you at—”

“What’s the trouble?” Drew interrupted.

“Hardly trouble. Rather joyous news as far as I am concerned, only I think an investigation should be made.”

“Of what?”

“The crops in Area 70—and other Areas as well—are unique! Cornstalks eight feet high, and barley bigger than that. It means a bumper harvest, but somehow it doesn’t seem reasonable that the recent sunshine has caused such a bounty. So before cutting begins, we’d like your opinion. Sometimes gargantuan growths are too rank for food.”

“Is there anything else unusual in the growth?” Drew asked, thinking.

“Matter of fact, yes. In that particular area the grass is waist-high and the trees are growing far faster than normal.”

“Area 70 is in Surrey, is it not?” Drew asked, and the image in the scanning screen nodded. “All right, I’ll be over immediately. You’d better have floodlights put up for me.”

He switched off and began tugging at his overall. Ken watched him hurriedly scramble into a coat.

“What’s so exciting?” Ken asked, having heard most of the conversation.

“This isn’t a bounty; it may be the beginning of the end,” Drew answered. “Care to come with me?”

“Nothing I’d like better.”

“Come on, then. My private helicar’s on the roof.”

Drew whirled out of the apartment and led the way to the roof. Ten minutes later the little helicar was following a V-string of lights below, and Drew looked into the distance where night-floods were beaming across the grain-growing land of Area 70. In another few minutes he had touched down and stepped out of the machine to find Douglas Billington and two of his Government colleagues waiting to greet him.

“Quick work,” Billington smiled, shaking hands. “These two gentlemen represent the Farmers’ Union.”

Drew nodded, shook hands, introduced Ken, and then said:

“Why did you pick on me for this job, Billington? Am I to work out of goodness of heart, or is it official?”

“Official. I reported the giant crops to the Government and they told me to get the best scientist to investigate. That meant you.”

“Thanks.” Drew gave his dry smile.

They began walking towards Billington’s car.

“I hear you’ve left Bland?” Billington asked, puzzled.

“Difference of opinion. I’m freelancing.”

More than this Drew would not say. He settled in the car, his small figure wedged between those of the bigger men, then the vehicle began its journey from the airfield countryside. The crisscrossing beams of the night-floods became visible again, causing millions of candle-power brilliance across fantastic acres of motionless corn and barley.

“I never saw anything like that!” Ken exclaimed blankly.

Drew said nothing. He clambered out of the car and jammed the pipe in his teeth. Then he wandered with the rest of the men along the vista that had been cleared straight through the ‘forest’ of corn.

To Ken, the sense of unreality deepened as the walk progressed. Two feet overhead the enormous ears of corn were standing motionless in the windless air, etched sharply white against the night sky by the brilliance of the floods. The stalks of the corn were quite three inches across and had the appearance of bamboo. From the base of the stems, tough, stringy roots, apparently finding the soil surface not deep enough, had sprouted and dug hungry tendrils into the dust.

“Well?” Billington asked, as Drew halted. “Queer, eh?”

Drew looked about him. “Where’s that waist-high grass you mentioned?”

“In the next Area—about a mile further on. I didn’t have it floodlit, though.”

“Doesn’t signify. I just want to look at it. Starlight should be sufficient.”

They went on again, their shoes cracking on the truncated stumps and roots where the egregious corn had been cut down. Ken, coming up in the rear, was suddenly reminded of the Biblical hordes passing through the divided Red Sea.… Then they struck the rise of the land and came on its summit, to look down upon a sea of grass cloaking the side of a valley.

Here the wind was fresher. The moon, too, was rising, adding its pale light to that of the stars. The top of the grass weaved and flowed and contracted in a host of patterns, swinging great troughs of shadow across the area, troughs which were followed by flowing tides of silver light where in some oddly luminescent way the grass reflected the glow of stars and moon.

For a long time the men were silent, listening to the fairy rustling of the wilderness, their eyes following its eternally changing outline.

“Either my eyes are wrong, or else this confounded grass is reflective. I never noticed it before, but then I’ve never seen it at night. Only in the day. It has a look of the sea about it—the way breakers glitter as they fall on the shore.”

“Radioactivity,” Drew said obscurely, brooding.

“Can’t be!” one of the officials protested. “Whoever heard of radioactivity in pastures like these? They’re purged free of all harmful ingredients.”

The scientist gave a taut grin in the moonlight, then looked down at his feet and stirred the parched dust with his shoe. The dust glittered momentarily like powdered diamonds,

“Give me an old envelope, somebody,” he requested, going down on one knee.

Ken found one in his wallet, and handed it over. Drew scraped some of the soil into it, taking care to use the edge of his shoe and not his bare hands. Then he stood up again.

“I haven’t made an analysis yet, of course,” he said, “but even without it I can tell you that this field of grass and all the corn and barley are fit for one thing—burning!”

Billington gasped. “But you can’t mean that! It’s the mightiest crop in history—and the way the drought is going, we’re going to need every scrap of staple food we can get!”

“You asked me for an opinion. I’m giving it. Use any of this giant stuff and pass it on for human or animal consumption, and you’ll commit mass slaughter!”

The officials looked at one another and Drew moved with sudden activity. He kept on moving until he reached the corn again. From it he took several ears, more soil specimens, and finally some samples of barley. By the time they had done this, they had returned to the start of the vista where stood the car.

“Where are the giant trees you mentioned?” Drew asked.

“Over here.” Billington motioned and led the way.

In a moment or two the party had reached a derelict structure that had once been a farmhouse. Now only three of its walls were standing. The fourth had obviously been smashed down quite recently by the outjutting branch of a mighty oak. Formerly the tree had been in the shadow behind the glare of floodlights, but now the men stood in the gloom, and looked at this colossal giant rearing to heaven with something of the fantastic proportions of Jack’s beanstalk.

“I’ve seen redwoods and sequoia in my time,” Billington said, “but never anything like this. What makes it queer is that six months ago it was only a small tree ten feet high. Oak is slow-growing as a rule, too.…”

He craned back his head and followed the dark, massive trunk as it soared upwards out of sight.

Drew moved position and went over to the tree, inspecting the tips of the lower branches. The others joined him and then slowly became aware of the incredible fact that the tree was growing as they watched it! The branches were swelling and fattening and, though it was well past the spring of the year, new leaves were gradually uncoiling and flowing into full life.

“If this gets any higher it will crash through being top-heavy,” Billington remarked. “There must be something queer about the soil around here.”

“And not only around here,” Drew remarked. “You mentioned other Areas had been affected in this fashion, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. But offhand I can’t remember which.”

“You’d better find them and tell those in charge to destroy the crops they contain. As for this soil, it’s rank poison.”

“Look,” Ken said, his voice anxious. “What happens if other areas get affected like this? Such as the gigantic fields of Canada, America, Russia, and others? What becomes of our staple food supply?”

“It disappears!” Drew was coldly matter-of-fact. “We’ll have to fall back on synthesis or something. I have got to find out what has gone wrong and try and think of a way to circumvent it in future. Just the same, gentlemen, without wishing to be too depressing, I don’t think there is a cure. To be honest, I think this trouble will increase ten-fold, hundred-fold, thousand-fold.…”

“But why?” Billington demanded blankly. “What’s gone wrong?”

“The trouble is K-40, a radioactive isotope of potassium. It was prevalent in the Carboniferous Period—hence the rank growths of that time; and it looks as though it is prevalent again. No more than I expected. It’s the direct outcome of cosmic ray activity.”

Drew was silent for a moment, knowing it was useless to explain scientific issues to hidebound officials.

“I’ll return home and analyse what I have here,” he said, turning away. “In the meanwhile, destroy everything as I told you. When I have the full analysis, I’ll report. After that it will be up to the Government—to every Government in the world, in fact.”

In his walk back to the car he paused and reflected.

“Come to think of it,” he said, “these samples may not be enough in themselves. I’d better get some more from other affected areas. If they match up in every case, then I know the answer is the right one—and I hope to God it isn’t!”

“You’d better fly back with me to my office in London,” Billington said. “I’ll have a man get your helicar back to you. In an hour or less I can get you all the details of the affected Areas, and then you can make your own arrangements.”

Drew gave his brief nod and resumed his walk to the car. Ken fell into step beside him.

“I’ll leave you in London, Anton,” he said. “I’ve a lot of work to do tomorrow so I can’t go around with you as much as I’d like to. Okay?”

“Of course—and don’t forget what I told you about Thayleen. I’m afraid there’s the devil of a lot of trouble brewing.”