Life as we would know it would cease. The most incredible changes would occur. It would be…the end of the world.”
“Not very cheering,” Ken muttered, “but I don’t see the connection between the magnetic field and sunspots, though. How do they affect each other?”
“The atomic storms of the sun—sunspots—are responsible for its own magnetic field,” Drew answered. “The stronger the solar field becomes, the weaker becomes the Earth’s. That is elementary law. Hence, a vast number of sunspots will enormously increase the sun’s potential, and correspondingly lower Earth’s field. We may survive this hundred-year-cycle of spots with nothing worse than violent magnetic storms, which are bound to develop before long; or we may have something much worse to contend with if the spots continue to increase.”
Ken got to his feet.
“How long have you known of this possibility?” he asked.
“Does it signify?”
“Of course it does! Isn’t it time the authorities were told about it?”
“No use,” Drew answered, shrugging. “Even most of the astronomers think I’m a scaremonger, so you can imagine the reaction of the Government!”
“I can’t see why reputable astronomers refuse to listen to you.”
“I’ll tell you why.” Drew’s face became grim. “They just haven’t the imagination to hurdle the gap between the obvious and the possible. Astronomy, to them, is just routine. They fail to realise that these sunspots, unchecked, might cause catastrophe. In any case, if the Governments of the world were told, think of the panic! The population of Earth would look like an overturned anthill.”
“I suppose,” Ken said, after a troubled interval, “it is rather foolish to plan for the future? As things are?”
“I suppose it is,” Drew agreed, musing.
Silence.
“Well, I don’t believe it!” Ken declared at last. “It isn’t that I doubt you: it’s just that I can’t credit the human race being blotted out. Look at the things we have achieved. Destruction would just knock the bottom out of all reason for living!”
“I take a dim view of humanity myself,” Drew sighed. “Here we are in the twenty-first century, still so absorbed in thinking up ways of killing each other we still haven’t mastered some of the more virulent diseases, or how to properly feed everyone on the planet. To my mind, humanity deserves to be blotted out.”
“Anton—do you think I should tell Thayleen of your theory?”
“Why worry the poor girl?” Drew gave a shrug. “If she thinks the world is coming to an end, her musical gifts may go to pot. Why bother upsetting her? She’ll know soon enough when the news can’t be suppressed anymore.”
Ken gave an uneasy smile. “I came here to tell you I expect to be a father, and you hand me the end of the world! We certainly cover the ground, don’t we?”
“Yes. Like you, there is much I wanted to do.”
“Wanted?” Ken repeated. “That sounds as though you regard the end as inevitable, and not just a possibility.”
“I have been trying to let you down lightly,” Drew admitted quietly. “Perhaps that wasn’t very sensible, since you are anything but a weakling. Beyond a shadow of doubt, Ken, the end of the world is coming, because it is scientifically impossible to escape it.”
“But you hinted at a doubt—!”
“I’d have let you go away thinking that, only my past tense a moment ago tripped me up. Listen, Ken, the naked facts are these: sunspots are constantly increasing, and we are only at the start of a hundred-year-cycle in which is incorporated the normal eleven-year cycle. The spots cannot possibly get less for the next hundred years! A century, man! Whether they will destroy the sun as they progress, I don’t know, though I imagine his collapse into a white dwarf is possible; but long before that happens, this world of ours will have become the target for the full blast of cosmic rays, and we ourselves will only be memories.”
“It sounds defeatist,” Ken said. “There are plenty of brilliant scientists in the world, you amongst them. Knowing what is coming, can’t something be done to avert it?”
“As far as I can see, no—though some worthwhile notions might emerge when all the scientists of the world get together to fight the problem. It seems to me that we are unprotected against naked cosmic power, and no science of our devising can master it. All we can do is try and protect ourselves, hang on to a battered shell of the world in the hope that we may survive.”
Ken was silent. For a long time he looked at the bench without seeing it.
“I shall not tell Thayleen,” he said at last.
“I shouldn’t. Let her enjoy what’s left of her life.”
“But not to be able to plan for the future! To know that one cannot see beyond a few months—! I just can’t grasp it!”
“It takes time,” Drew admitted. “But there it is.”
Ken did not afterwards remember shaking hands or saying goodbye. He came out into the calm summer evening and contemplated it. Deep down, he wondered if for once in his brilliant career Anton Drew had not made a mistake.
CHAPTER TWO
It was about the time that Ken left the Bland Edifice that Mortimer Bland himself was enjoying an agreeable evening amidst the soft lights and sweet music of the Heart Throb Café. It was situated in the centre of London’s sprawling huddle of buildings—exclusively extravagant, hiding many a dubious tête-à-tête, its staff trained unswervingly to admit the fact that the customer is always right.
Mortimer Bland, one of the city’s wealthiest industrialists, was a frequent visitor. So was Milly Morton, the unusually lovely blonde who invariably accompanied him. What Bland liked about Milly, apart from her curves, was the fact that his money could not only buy for her whatever she wished, but could also buy from her whatever he wished. Which to his commercial mind seemed a fair exchange.
They sat now in an alcove, their table hidden—as were the other tables—from the rest of the café. The champagne was just right; so was the meal. Mortimer Bland was glowing like a well-fed bulldog and not looking unlike one, either. Money, hearty eating, and lack of exercise had given him a beefy face and bulgy grey eyes, but it had not yet greyed the black hair swept back from his forehead.
At sixty he was as strong as an ox, and proud of it. Milly was quite thirty-five years younger, but this fact did not bother her in the least when weighed against the advantages of being one of Bland’s most favoured girlfriends.
“I think,” Milly said, as she set down her champagne glass, “that I’m going to ask you to do me a favour, Mort.”
Bland grinned and revealed yellow teeth. “How much?”
Milly laughed, and it made her more beautiful. Bland liked her even white teeth, and the way in which the concealed lighting caught the waves in her honey-coloured hair.
“It isn’t money,” Milly said. “I want a job.”
“What!” Bland stared at her. “You, a musical comedy star, wanting a job?”
“My contract’s run out, and nobody wants to renew it. I’m one of those girls who spend as they go and now I— Well, I have to stay alive, haven’t I?”
Bland set his jaw. “Nobody can kick you around like that, Milly! I’ll get you into a new production if I have to buy up a chain of theatres to do it—”
“But I’m getting tired of the stage,” Milly interrupted. “And it’s time I planned for the future.”
“In what way?”
“I suppose we could get married, couldn’t we?