When the Sun Jumped
"The captain wishes to see you, sir," the sailor said.
Craig snubbed the cigarette and rose to his feet. He had eaten and drank
sparingly, very sparingly indeed. They had tried to take him to the
hospital bay with the others, but he had gruffly refused. There was
nothing wrong with him that a little food and water wouldn't cure.
He followed the sailor to the captain's quarters. Unconsciously he noted
the condition of the ship. She was a battleship, the Idaho, one of the
new series. Craig guessed she was part of a task force scouting the
south Pacific. She was well kept and well manned, he saw. The men went
about their tasks with a dash that was heartwarming.
The captain was a tall man. He rose to his feet when Craig entered his
quarters, smiled, and held out his hand, "I'm Captain Higgins," he said.
Craig looked at him, blinked, then grinned. He took the out-stretched
hand.
"Hi, Stinky," he said. "It's good to see you again."
"Stinky!" Higgins choked. "Sir--"
"Don't get stuffy," Craig said, laughing.
Higgins stared at him. Little by little recognition began to dawn on the
captain's face. "Craig!" he whispered. "Winston Craig! This calls for a
drink."
"It does, indeed," Craig answered.
Captain Higgins provided the whiskey. It was Scotch. They drank it
straight.
"Where on earth have you been?" Higgins asked.
"Gold," Craig said. "Borneo." A frown crossed his face. "Our little
brown brothers came down from the north."
"I know," said Higgins grimly. "They came to Pearl Harbor too, the
little--. They ran you out of Borneo, eh?"
"I got out," Craig said.
"But this life-boat you were in? What happened?"
"Jap bombers happened. They caught the ship I was on. Luckily we managed
to get a few boats away--"
"I see. Where are the other boats?"
"Machine-gunned," Craig said. "A rain squall came along and hid us so
they didn't get around to working on the boat I was in." He shrugged.
"We were ten days in that boat. I was counting the jewels in the Pearly
Gates when your task force came along. But enough about me. What about
you?"
Higgins shrugged. "What you can see," he said.
Craig nodded. He could see plenty. The boy who had been known as
"Stinky" in their days at Annapolis was boss of a battle wagon.
"I heard you resigned your commission within a year after we had
finished at the Academy," Higgins said.
"Yes," Craig answered.
"Mind if I ask why?"
"Not at all. I just wanted some action and it didn't look as if I could
get it in the Navy. So--"
* * * * *
It was not so much what Craig said as what he left unsaid that was
important. He was a graduate of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. He and
Stinky Higgins had finished in the same class. Higgins had stayed with
the Navy. Craig had not been able to endure the inactivity of belonging
to a fighting organization when there was no fighting to be done. He was
born with the wanderlust, with itching feet, with the urge to see what
lay beyond the farthermost horizon.
"So you were prospecting for gold?" Captain Higgins asked.
"Yes."
"What are you going to do now, if I may ask?"
"Well," Craig said, "I was on my way back to the States, to join up
again, if they would take me."
Higgins grinned. "If they would take you? They will grab you with open
arms. They could use a million like you."
"Thanks," Craig said.
A knock sounded on the door.
"What is it?" Higgins said to the aide who entered.
"One of the men we picked up in the life-boat wants to see you, sir."
"What about?"
"He would not say, sir. He insists it is of the utmost importance. His
name is Michaelson, sir. Shall I show him to your quarters?"
"Very well. I'll see him immediately."
The aide saluted smartly and left.
"Who is this Michaelson?" Higgins said to Craig.
"I don't know," Craig shrugged. "Just one of the passengers in the
life-boat. We didn't ask each other for pedigrees. About all I can say
about him is that he is a queer duck." Craig explained how Michaelson
had been constantly studying the contents of the notebook he carried.
The captain frowned. "There is a Michaelson who is a world-famous
scientist," he said. "I don't suppose this could be he."
"Might be," Craig said. "This is the south seas. You never know who is
going to turn up down here or what is going to happen." Abruptly he
stopped speaking. A new sound was flooding through the ship.
It had been years since he had heard that sound yet he recognized it
instantly. The call to action stations! It could have only one meaning.
The Idaho was going into action. Something thrilled through Craig's
blood at the thought. He turned questioning eyes toward the captain.
Higgins was already on the phone.
"Flight of Jap bombers approaching," he said, flinging the phone back on
its hook. "Come on."
This was probably the first time in naval history that a bare-footed,
bare-headed man, whose sole articles of clothing consisted of a pair of
dirty duck trousers, joined the commanding officer of a battleship on
the captain's bridge. Captain Higgins didn't care what Craig was
wearing, and his officers, if they cared, were too polite to show it.
They didn't really care anyhow. They had other things on their minds.
Far off in the sky Craig could see what the officers had on their minds.
A series of tiny black dots. They were so far away they looked like
gnats. Jap bombers. Big fellows. Four-engined jobs.
The notes of the call to action stations were still screaming through
the ship. The Idaho, at the touch of the magic sound, was coming to
life. Thirty-five thousand tons of steel was going into action. Craig
could feel the pulsation as the engines kicked the screws over faster.
The ship surged ahead. Fifteen hundred men were leaping to their
stations. The guns in the big turrets were poking around, hoping that
somewhere off toward the horizon there was a target for them. The Idaho
was a new ship. She was lousy with anti-aircraft. The black muzzles of
multiple pom-poms were swinging around, poking toward the sky.
An officer was peering through a pair of glasses. "Seventeen of them,
sir," he said. "I can't be certain yet, but I think there is another
flight following the first."
* * * * *
The Idaho was part of a task force that included a carrier, cruisers,
and several destroyers. Craig could see the carrier off in the distance.
She had already swung around. Black gnats were racing along her deck and
leaping into the sky. Fighter planes going up. Cruisers and destroyers
were moving into pre-determined positions around the carrier and the
Idaho, to add the weight of their anti-aircraft barrage to the guns
carried by the big ships.
"Three minutes," somebody said in a calm voice. "They've started on
their run."
The anti-aircraft let go. Craig gasped and clamped his hands over his
ears. He had left the Navy before the advent of air warfare. He knew the
roar of the big guns in their turrets but this was his first experience
with the guns that fought the planes. The sound was utterly deafening.
If the fury of a hundred thunder-storms were concentrated into a single
area, the blasting tornado of sound would not be as great as the thunder
of the guns. The explosions beat against his skull, set his teeth
pounding together. He could feel the vibrations with his feet.
High in the sky overhead black dots blossomed like death flowers
blooming in the sky.
The bombers kept coming.
The anti-aircraft bursts moved into their path. Death reached up into
the sky, plucking with taloned fingers for the black vultures racing
with the wind. Reached and found their goal. One plane mushroomed
outward in a burst of smoke.
Craig knew it was a direct hit, apparently in the bomb bay, exploding
the bombs carried there. Fragments of the plane hung in the sky, falling
slowly downward.
Up above the anti-aircraft, midges were dancing in the sun--fighter
planes. They dived downward.
Abruptly a bomber fell out of formation, tried to right itself, failed.
A wing came off. Crazily the bomber began spinning.
Black smoke gouted from a third ship. It began losing altitude rapidly.
The others continued on their course.
Michaelson suddenly appeared on the bridge.
How he got there, Craig did not know, but he was there, jumping around
and waving his notebook in the air. Michaelson was shouting at the top
of his voice.
"--Danger!--Must get away from here--"
Craig caught the shouted words. The thundering roar of the anti-aircraft
barrage drowned out the rest.
No one paid any attention to Michaelson. They were watching the sky.
The planes had released their bombs.
For some reason they were not attacking their normal target, the
carrier. Perhaps a second flight was making a run over the carrier. The
first flight was bombing the battleship.
The Idaho was their target.
* * * * *
Craig could feel the great ship tremble as she tried to swerve to avoid
the bombs. A destroyer would have been able to spin in a circle but
35,000 tons of steel do not turn so easily.
The bombs were coming down. Craig could see them in the air, little
black dots growing constantly larger. Fighter planes were tearing great
holes in the formation of the bombers. Few of the Jap ships would ever
return to their base. But their job was already done.
The bombs hit.
They struck in an irregular pattern all around the ship. Four or five
were very near misses but there was not one direct hit. Great
waterspouts leaped from the surface of the sea. A sheet of flame seemed
to run around the horizon. It was a queer, dancing, intensely brilliant,
blue flame. It looked like the discharge from some huge electric arc.
Even above the roar of the barrage, Craig heard the tearing sound.
Somehow it reminded him of somebody tearing a piece of cloth. Only, to
make a sound as loud as this, it would have to be a huge piece of cloth
and the person tearing it would have to be a giant.
The blue light became more intense. It flared to a brilliance that was
intolerable.
At the same time, the sun jumped!
"I'm going nuts!" the fleeting thought was in Craig's mind. He wondered
if a bomb had struck the ship. Was this the nightmare that comes with
death? Had he died in the split fraction of a second and was his
disintegrating mind reporting the startling fact of death by telling him
that the sun was jumping?
The sun couldn't jump.
It _had_ jumped. It had been almost directly overhead. Now it was two
hours down the western sky.
Tons of water were cascading over the bow of the ship. Waves were
leaping over the deck. The Idaho seemed to have sunk several feet. Now
her buoyancy was asserting itself and she was trying to rise out of the
sea. She was fighting her way upward, rising against the weight of the
water.
A wind was blowing. There had been almost no wind but now a gale of
hurricane proportions was howling through the superstructure of the
ship.
A heavy sea was running. The sea had been glassy smooth. Now it was
covered with white caps.
The bombs had exploded, a blue light had flamed, a giant had ripped the
sky apart, a gale had leaped into existence, the sea had covered itself
with white capped waves, and the sun had jumped.
Craig looked at the sky, seeking the second flight of bombers. The air
was filled with scudding clouds. There were no bombers in sight.
The anti-aircraft batteries, with no target, suddenly stopped firing.
Except for the howl of the wind through the superstructure, the ship was
silent. The silence was so heavy it hurt the ears. The officers on the
bridge stood without moving, frozen statues. They seemed paralyzed.
The ship was running herself.
"W--what--what the hell became of those Jappos?" Craig heard a dazed
officer say.
"Yeah, what happened to those bombers?"
"Where did this wind come from?"
"There wasn't any wind a minute ago."
"Look at the sea. It's covered with white caps!"
"Something happened to the sun. I--I'm almost positive I saw it move."
Dazed, bewildered voices.
"What the devil became of the carrier?" That was the voice of Captain
Higgins.
"And the rest of the force, the cruisers and destroyers--what became of
them?"
Craig looked toward the spot where he had last seen the carrier. She had
been launching planes.
He did not believe his eyes.
The carrier was gone.
The cruisers and destroyers that had been cutting foaming circles around
the carrier and the battleship--were gone.
The surface of the sea was empty. There weren't even any puffs of
exploding shells in the sky.
* * * * *
The Idaho plunged forward through strange seas. From horizon to horizon
there was nothing to be seen. The task force to which the ship belonged
and the attacking Jap planes had both vanished. The group of officers
responsible for the ship were dazed. Then, little by little, their long
training asserted itself and they fought off the panic threatening them.
Captain Higgins ordered the ship slowed until she was barely moving.
This was to protect them from the possibility of hitting submerged reefs
or shoals. The first question was--what had happened? Captain Higgins
ordered radio silence broken. The ship carried powerful wireless
equipment, strong enough to reach to the mainland of America, and
farther.
The radio calls brought no response. The radio men reported all they
could get on their receivers was static. No commercial and no radio
signals were on the air. This was impossible.
In growing bewilderment, Captain Higgins ordered a plane catapulted into
the air, to search the surrounding sea. Meanwhile routine reports from
all parts of the ship showed that the Idaho had suffered no damage of
any kind from the bombing. She was in first-class shape. The only thing
wrong with her was the men who manned her. They were bewildered. Defeat
in battle they would have faced. They would not have flinched if the
ship had gone down before superior gun power. They would have fought her
fearlessly, dying, if need be, in the traditions of their service.
Craig was still on the bridge with Captain Higgins and the other
officers. Although he did not show it, he was scared. Right down to the
bottoms of his bare feet, he was scared. He watched the scouting plane
catapulted into the air, and the grim thought came into his mind that
Noah, sending forth the dove from the ark, must have been in a similar
position. Like Noah, Captain Higgins was sending forth a dove to search
the waste of waters.
Besides Craig, there was another civilian on the bridge, Michaelson.
Nobody was paying any attention to him. Normally, if he had intruded
without invitation to this sacred spot, he would have been bounced off
so fast it would have made his head swim. But the officers had other
things to think about besides a stray civilian who had popped out of
nowhere. Michaelson, after fluttering vainly from officer to officer and
getting no attention, turned at last to Craig. Michaelson was waving his
note book.
* * * * *
"These men will pay no attention to me," Michaelson complained, nodding
toward the officers.
"They got troubles," Craig said. "They've run into a problem that is
driving them nuts."
"But I could help them solve their problem!" Michaelson said, irritation
in his voice.
"Aw, beat it--Huh? What did you say?" Craig demanded.
"I can tell them what happened, if they will only listen. I was trying
to warn them, before it happened, but I was unable to reach the bridge
in time."
"You--_you know what happened_?" Craig choked.
"Certainly!" Michaelson said emphatically.
Craig stared at the little man. Michaelson did not look like he had much
on the ball but he spoke excellent English, and even if he was a queer
duck, he seemed to be intelligent. Craig remembered that Michaelson had
been trying to reach the bridge just before the bombers struck, also
that the man had been trying to get in touch with the captain just
before the warning sounded that the bombers were approaching. Craig
turned to the officers.
"Captain Higgins," he said.
"Don't bother me now, Craig," the captain snapped.
"There's a man here who wants to talk to you," Craig said.
"I have no time--" For the first time, the captain saw Michaelson. "Who
the devil are you?" he snapped. "What are you doing on my bridge?"
"He's the man who wants to talk to you," Craig explained. "His name is
Michaelson."
Michaelson smiled shyly. "You may have heard of me," he said.
"Are you Michaelson the scientist, the man who is called the second
Einstein?" Higgins demanded.
Michaelson blushed. "I am a scientist," he said. "As for being a second
Einstein, no. There is only one Einstein. There can be only one. But it
may be that I can help you with your problem."
Craig saw the attitude of the officers change. They had heard of
Michaelson. It was a great name. Until then they had not known that he
was on their bridge. They became respectful.
"If you can help us, shoot," Higgins said bluntly.
"I will try," the scientist said. He pursed his lips and looked
thoughtful. "If you are familiar with geology you unquestionably know
something about 'faults'. 'Faults' are unstable areas on the surface of
the earth, places where, due to joints or cracks in the underlying
strata of rocks, slippage is likely to take place. There is, for
instance, the great San Andreas Rift, in California, which is a
'fault'."
"Sorry, Mr. Michaelson," Higgins interrupted. "If you've got something
to say, say it, but don't start giving us a lecture on geology."
"In explaining the unknown, it is best to start with what is known," the
scientist answered. "Earth faults are known. When I talk about them, you
will understand me. However, there is another kind of fault that is as
yet unknown, or known only to a few scientists who suspected its
existence--" He paused. "I am referring to the space-time fault."
* * * * *
The faces of the officers registered nothing. Craig frowned, but
listened with quickened interest. A space-time fault! What was
Michaelson talking about?
"You will not find a space-time fault mentioned in any scientific
treatise," Michaelson continued. "There is no literature on the subject,
as yet. Certain erratic phenomena, of which the apparent slowing of the
speed of light in certain earth areas was the most important, led a few
scientists to speculate on the existence of some strange condition of
space and time that would account for the observed phenomena. The speed
of light is regarded as being constant, yet in certain places on earth,
for no apparent reason, light seemed to move slower than it did
elsewhere. What was the reason for this strange slow-down? Investigation
revealed the existence of what I have called a space-time fault."
"Please, Mr. Michaelson," Captain Higgins spoke. "We are not scientists.
With all respect to your ability, I must request you to come directly to
the point."
"Very well," the scientist said. "We have fallen into a space-time
fault. I have been conducting certain researches in and near this area
in an effort to locate the boundaries of what I had hoped would be
called--since I discovered it--the Michaelson Fault. Under ordinary
circumstances the ship would, in all probability, have passed directly
through the fault, though I suspect, from certain data of ships that
have disappeared mysteriously, that _all_ ships have not always passed
through the fault. In our case, the explosion of the bombs was
sufficient to cause a momentary dislodgment of the space-time balance in
this area, with the result that we were precipitated through the fault."
He paused and looked expectantly at his audience. It was his impression
that he had made a complete explanation of what had happened. He
expected the officers to understand. They didn't understand.
Craig, watching in silence, caught a vague glimpse of what the scientist
was saying. He felt a cold chill run up and down his spine. If he
understood Michaelson correctly--
"We were precipitated through the fault?" a lieutenant spoke. "I don't
follow. What do you mean, sir?"
"Mean?" Michaelson answered. "I mean we passed through the fault."
"But what does that mean?"
"That we have passed through time!"
Craig was aware of a mounting tension when he heard the words. Then he
had understood Michaelson correctly! He had been afraid of that. He saw
from the faces of the officers that they either did not comprehend what
the scientist had said, or comprehending, were refusing to believe.
"Passed through time!" somebody said. "But that is ridiculous."
Michaelson shrugged. "You are thinking with your emotions," he said.
"You are thinking wishfully. You hope we have not passed through time.
Therefore you say it is not true."
"But," Captain Higgins spoke, "if we have passed through time, how far
have we gone, and in what direction?"
"How far I cannot say," Michaelson answered. "There is little question
of the direction: We have gone back. A space-time fault can only slip
back. It cannot slip forward, or I cannot conceive of it slipping
forward. As to the distance we have gone, in space, a few feet. In time,
the distance may be a hundred thousand years. It may be a million years,
or ten million." He tapped his notebook. "I have much data here, but not
enough data to determine how far we have gone."
* * * * *
Craig was cold, colder than he had ever been in all his life. They had
passed through time! Desperately he wanted to doubt that the scientist
knew what he was talking about. His eyes sought the reassurance of the
battleship. Surely such a mass of steel could not pass through time!
But--the sun had jumped, a hurricane of wind had roared out of nowhere
and was still roaring through the rigging of the ship. The calm sea had
become storm-tossed. And--the radio was silent.
Was Michaelson right? Or was he a madman? Craig could not grasp
completely the reasoning of the scientist. A space-time fault sounded
impossible. But there was no question about the existence of earth
faults. Craig had seen a few of those areas where the foundations of the
earth had crumpled. If the inconceivable pressures of the planet could
crush miles of rock like he could crush a playing card in his hands, why
could not the more tenuous fabric of space-time be crushed also?
The faces of the officers reflected doubt. Craig saw them steal uneasy
glances at each other, saw them glance at the bulk of the battleship for
reassurance. The ship was their world.
Out of the corner of his eyes Craig saw something coming across the sea.
At the same time, in the forepeak, a lookout sang out.
"I'm afraid," Craig said, pointing, "that now there is no doubt that Mr.
Michaelson is right. Look there."
Sailing down the wind was a gigantic bird-lizard. With great fanged beak
out-stretched, it was flapping through the air on leathery wings. It was
a creature out of the dawn of time.
It proved, by its mere existence, that Michaelson was right.
The Idaho, and all her crew, had passed through a space-time fault into
an antediluvian world!