Chapter V: The Etheric Storm

The next thing I knew, Sam was shaking my shoulder. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, a bit dazed at first, and uncertain whether I could credit what I remembered to be a vivid nightmare. But when I looked at the utter fatigue and the intense anxiety on the old scientist's face, I knew that it was not a dream.

"I've got it adjusted now," he said. "Suppose you go outside and watch. We need to know exactly what happens. And it may fail."

As I got up awkwardly, stretching my tired limbs, he climbed on his stool before the complex array of instruments on the wall, and began to manipulate the switches and dials.

"I have just to pick up their vibrations and synchronize mine with them," he said in a voice dull with fatigue. "In five minutes we will know. With these instruments I can pick up and analyze any disturbance in the ether, whether it be Hertzian or wireless wave two miles long, or any of the shorter waves that extend down to heat or infra-red, through the visible and ultra-violet spectrums, and even below, to the Cosmic Rays. I can pick up vibrations that other scientists have merely reasoned ought to exist! I will analyze the force that is being used, and then put my vibrations against it. I hope to set up an effective interference, temporarily, at least."

In two minutes I was standing out of doors, with a rug about my shoulders, in a blackness that was almost palpable. The bitter wind still blew a little, but the rain had stopped. The ground was frozen, and a light fall of snow crunched underfoot. Drawing the rug close about me, I groped my shivering way to the front of the yard, thinking of the misery and death that the cold must already have brought to earth, realizing, for the first time, how dependent human welfare is on the whims of nature.

For a few minutes I waited in the frozen darkness, and nothing happened. Then began a fantastic thing, a veritable storm in the ether!

A faint living light of violet--blessed dawn of reborn day!--came in the south; thin misty streamers of violet flame flashed through the unutterable midnight of the heavens! Violet fire flickered and burned in a pale and nebulous aurora that ran with lightning speed to the four corners of the heavens! It danced, it wavered, it marched in gleaming pointed lances of pulsing flame!

And then the violet became a ubiquitous lucent background for a weirdly glorious and terrible play of bright, coruscating tongues of polychromatic fire! Suddenly a great blade of vivid, flaming green cut through the glowing violet, flashed across the sky in amazing splendor, and burst into a hundred blazing globes of brilliant emerald, that rolled down misty tracks of flame to the horizon!

A flickering, many-tongued sheet of amber was born in the east, spread over the violet haze throughout the heavens, and died into a pale saffron sheet that slowly changed and warmed to a rich glow of rosy mist. And from it grew a flickering wall of serpent tongues of orange, and scarlet, and blue, that danced and spread, and wove themselves into a curious crown of throbbing flame at the zenith.

All that wild and astounding storm of flame was as still as the grave. The chill wind had died. The air was keen and quiet. The snow-covered earth lay vast about me, queerly lit by the changing colors in the sky. Even the sea was silent, but living in the wonder of reflected light. All the world was quiet--as if the sun had been utterly gone, and it had been frozen indeed!

Brighter scarlet and green and purple lights burst up about the horizon in great fountains of wonderful fire, and poured through the sky in cyclonic whirls of burning splendor! It was like some vast pyrotechnic display; but the fire filled the heavens, and shone with incredibly splendid, living radiance, of every color in the spectrum--the pure and dripping essence of molten light!

Thin, feathery tongues of soft prismatic colors, great bars of intense and vivid fire, huge and rippling sheets of blinding brilliance, vast globes and vague shapes of bright and mist-edged flame, all interwoven in a Titanic storm of throbbing, flashing, iridescent light--a whirlwind of coruscating flame, splendid as a cascade of rubies and diamonds sweeping down in a sunlit stream of molten gold! A pulsing mist of woven flaming rainbows!

And suddenly there came a spot of pure, supernal blue at the zenith! Wonderful sight! It spread in a growing circle of blessed light! In a moment the last faint tinge of crimson fire was fading on the northern horizon! The skies were blue again!

The sun was far past the meridian! It had been hidden thirty hours! Its clear warm rays poured over the snow-clad landscape, sparkling in white brilliance on the frost and dancing on the silent sea. It was wonderful to see the world again in daylight, to feel the genial warmth of the restored sun!

Sam had won! He had torn down the curtains in the ether, and lit the sun again!

I went back in the house and found him slumped down in a chair fast asleep, with the vestiges of a happy smile left on his face. I had not realized the strain he had been under. He had been driving himself for thirty hours like a high-speed machine. The intensity of the effort had exhausted him utterly. He did not wake up while I was putting him to bed.

In an hour the radio had come to life. The ether was buzzing like an angry beehive with reports of the catastrophe, and with mad speculations as to its cause. The red gloom, followed by the absolute darkness, had fallen simultaneously upon the entire earth. All lines of power and communication had been put out of order, as in a severe magnetic storm, and utter panic had gripped the world. Every man had fancied himself to be among the few survivors of an unthinkable catastrophe.

A blanket of cold had fallen upon all the earth. In many sections there had been torrential rains as the clouds condensed, and there was considerable loss of life due to flood. In certain sections there had been terrible blizzards, and thousands had been frozen to death. Vast damage had been done to young crops, and there was a threat of famine. But, in most places, enough radiation to cause freezing weather had been prevented by the dense clouds.

Varied and fantastic theories were advanced as to the cause of the unique phenomenon. The most popular explanation was that the solar system had passed through a small, dense nebula, the particles and condensing gases of which had intercepted solar radiation.

Sam's brief statement, advanced a few days later, that he had found the disturbance to be due to a strange force acting to erect an etheric screen or shell about the earth, through which vibration could not pass, received scant attention despite his scientific reputation; and his warning that it might return again at any time, and forever, passed unheeded. He made no mention of what he had done to save the earth.