Читать книгу We Who Survived - Sterling Noel - Страница 8

BILL WERNECKE arrived at 10:30 A.M. in a new Caravell, and Gabe and I went out to look at it. The groundheaters had been turned on and the snow was melted to the jet-shield, but on the sides of the walk it was now about ten inches deep. It wasn’t snowing very hard—just steady. The Caravell was the traditional Ring design but powered with a single new Victarium burner mounted in the central nascelle. Wernecke fired up the burner and we took a fast five-minute hop over Missouri Center. You couldn’t see a thing above 500 feet except the white snowflakes reflected in our lights.

On the way back Gabe asked him, “What do the equations show, Bill?”

“It works out to seventy-two years generally, but it depends upon which constants you use,” he replied.

“We’ll have to get you more figures,” said Gabe. “I expected we’d be up in the hundreds.”

“It doesn’t work out that way,” said Bill. “On the other problem, the answer is negative. The temperatures will flatten out from thirty-seven degrees above zero to eighty below from pole to pole.”

Gabe shook his head, perplexed. “A swing of one hundred degrees is twice as much as I looked for. I’ll have to collect more data on that, Bill.”

“That’s the way it adds up, right out of the Morley Computer. . . . I tried another equation on the Tin Brain, Gabe, and I think you’ll be interested in the answer. I put together all of the data on both problems, arranging it in the alpha-beta cycle, and made zeta the various constants you gave me for the cosmic cloud extent. The answers all came out within thirty days. What they amount to is this: It will take eleven months, more or less, before the leveling-off period, assuming we have reached the average concentration area of the cloud. In other words, eleven months from today the temperatures will vary from a maximum of thirty-seven degrees Fahrenheit to a minimum of eighty below.”

“If the rest of the data is correct,” said Gabe morosely. “Let me see what further figures I can gather at Hood in the next few days. I’ll call you no later than Tuesday night.”

We landed back at the jetshield and went into the house for two hours of Bridge. Gabe was his usual nervous self, and his mind was less on the game than I had ever seen him.

After the last rubber (of Bridge) I asked the plain question:

“What is all of this about, Gabe? What is it that is going to last seventy-two years? And when will the temperatures from pole to pole go below freezing?”

He faced me, his hands on the back of Elaine’s chair.

“It’s the cosmic dust cloud,” he said. “What it amounts to is that we may be entering a new Ice Age. We don’t know yet—we haven’t completed measuring the extent of the cloud, but it would appear at this stage that the very least we can expect in extent is seventy-two years. In other words, it will take us at least that long to pass through it. But we have another week of observations at least before we can begin to be certain, however, so I would advise the cautious view at this time.”

“The cautious view!” said Elaine with scorn. “We’ll sit here and freeze to death while you observe!”

“You won’t freeze to death this coming week. I promise you that, my pet.”

“Would you mind telling me,” I said, “what a cosmic dust cloud has to do with a frozen world?”

“Cause and effect,” he said. “The debris brings on the ice. This was a theory first hatched some three hundred and fifty years ago and long since discarded by our more erudite scientists. It was known in the Dark Centuries as the Greenhouse Theory and it was offered to explain the four Ice Ages which the world passed through eons ago.

“The greenhouse effect is simply that our atmosphere, and principally the water vapor in it at twenty thousand feet or so, act like the roof of a greenhouse and keep in all the heat, from the sun and from infra-red radiations, so that the temperature of Earth remains relatively constant. Thus, the only way the constancy of Earth’s temperature could be disturbed would be for the character of our atmospheric roof to be altered.

“What would alter it? Meteors would. If they were present in large enough concentration they would cause the water vapor in the upper atmosphere to condense and fall as rain or snow. As a matter of fact, there is observational support for this, because every year on January twelfth and thirteenth there is a tendency for exceptionally heavy precipitation, and, as every missile or rocket pilot knows, the earth passes through a heavy concentration of meteors on these days.

“Well, what we think is happening right now is that Earth has reached an area of great debris concentration consisting of meteors, meteorites, and gas, left in space by an exploded nova.

“There is much evidence that this high-level condensation process has already started—that it might have begun even a hundred years ago, and that it has been increasing at a more or less steady rate ever since. I can find no indication that this precipitation will not be continuous, outside of a few hours of recess beginning Friday afternoon.

“Meanwhile, the only safe assumption is that the precipitation will continue for at least seventy-two years. As the water vapor of the upper air decreases and finally vanishes altogether, the Earth will lose its heat. We are trying to find out how cold it will get. Perhaps Bill Wernecke’s first figures will prove correct—that the temperatures will vary from thirty-seven degrees above to eighty below. I hope so. In that event, we will know that existence will not be impossible. The other very hopeful indication is that we may attain this temperature area in eleven months. In that case, our problem will be only to devise ways of existing during the first period of abysmal cold and violent storms which are about to descend upon us, then to get to the warm belt of thirty-seven-degree temperatures. That, of course, probably will be at the Equator, if there is no disturbance of Earth’s axial balance.

“We will need a great many more observations at Hood before we can be certain of this, however.”

“I’m going to Hood with you,” Elaine told him. “I refuse to stay here alone and face the panic when the people find out about this.”

“They won’t find out,” said Gabe. “Gamberelli and his Government will make certain of that.”