On that same evening, Thursday, July 22d, two astronomers attached to
the Naval Observatory sat in the half darkness of the meridian-circle
room watching the firmament sweep slowly across the aperture of the
giant lens. The chamber was as quiet as the grave, the two men rarely
speaking as they noted their observations. Paris might be taken, Berlin
be razed, London put to the torch; a million human beings might be blown
into eternity, or the shrieks of mangled creatures lying in heaps before
pellet-strewn barbed-wire entanglements rend the summer night; great
battleships of the line might plunge to the bottom, carrying their crews
with them; and the dead of two continents rot unburied--yet unmoved the
stars would pursue their nightly march across the heavens, cruel day
would follow pitiless night, and the careless earth follow its
accustomed orbit as though the race were not writhing in its death
agony. Gazing into the infinity of space human existence seemed but the
scum upon a rainpool, human warfare but the frenzy of insectivora.
Unmindful of the starving hordes of Paris and Berlin, of plague-swept
Russia, or of the drowned thousands of the North Baltic Fleet, these two
men calmly studied the procession of the stars--the onward bore of the
universe through space, and the spectra of newborn or dying worlds.
It was a suffocatingly hot night and their foreheads reeked with sweat.
Dim shapes on the walls of the room indicated what by day was a tangle
of clockwork and recording instruments, connected by electricity with
various buttons and switches upon the table. The brother of the big
clock in the wireless operating room hung nearby, its face illuminated
by a tiny electric lamp, showing the hour to be eleven-fifty.
Occasionally the younger man made a remark in a low tone, and the elder
wrote something on a card.
"The 'seeing' is poor to-night," said Evarts, the younger man. "The
upper air is full of striae and, though it seems like a clear night,
everything looks dim--a volcanic haze probably. Perhaps the Aleutian
Islands are in eruption again."
"Very likely," answered Thornton, the elder astronomer. "The shocks this
afternoon would indicate something of the sort."
"Curious performance of the magnetic needle. They say it held due east
for several minutes," continued Evarts, hoping to engage his senior in
conversation--almost an impossibility, as he well knew.
Thornton did not reply. He was carefully observing the infinitesimal
approach of a certain star to the meridian line, marked by a thread
across the circle's aperture. When that point of light should cross the
thread it would be midnight, and July 22, 1916, would be gone forever.
Every midnight the indicating stars crossed the thread exactly on time,
each night a trifle earlier than the night before by a definite and
calculable amount, due to the march of the earth around the sun. So they
had crossed the lines in every observatory since clocks and telescopes
had been invented. Heretofore, no matter what cataclysm of nature had
occurred, the star had always crossed the line not a second too soon or
a second too late, but exactly on time. It was the one positively
predictable thing, foretellable for ten or for ten thousand years by a
simple mathematical calculation. It was surer than death or the tax-man.
It was absolute.
Thornton was a reserved man of few words--impersonal, methodical,
serious. He spent many nights there with Evarts, hardly exchanging a
phrase with him, and then only on some matter immediately concerned with
their work. Evarts could dimly see his long, grave profile bending over
his eyepiece, shrouded in the heavy shadows across the table. He felt a
great respect, even tenderness, for this taciturn, high-principled,
devoted scientist. He had never seen him excited, hardly ever aroused.
He was a man of figures, whose only passion seemed to be the "music of
the spheres."
A long silence followed, during which Thornton seemed to bend more
intently than ever over his eyepiece. The hand of the big clock slipped
gradually to midnight.
"There's something wrong with the clock," said Thornton suddenly, and
his voice sounded curiously dry, almost unnatural. "Telephone to the
equatorial room for the time."
Puzzled by Thornton's manner Evarts did as instructed.
"Forty seconds past midnight," came the reply from the equatorial
observer.
Evarts repeated the answer for Thornton's benefit, looking at their own
clock at the same time. It pointed to exactly forty seconds past the
hour. He heard Thornton suppress something like an oath.
"There's something the matter!" repeated Thornton dumbly. "Aeta isn't
within five minutes of crossing. Both clocks can't be wrong!"
He pressed a button that connected with the wireless room.
"What's the time?" he called sharply through the nickel-plated
speaking-tube.
"Forty-five seconds past the hour," came the answer. Then: "But I want
to see you, sir. There's something queer going on. May I come in?"
"Come!" almost shouted Thornton.
A moment later the flushed face of Williams, the night operator,
appeared in the doorway.
"Excuse me, sir," he stammered, "but something fierce must have
happened! I thought you ought to know. The Eiffel Tower has been trying
to talk to us for over two hours, but I can't get what he's saying."
"What's the matter--atmospherics?" snapped Evarts.
"No; the air _was_ full of them, sir--shrieking with them you might say;
but they've stopped now. The trouble has been that I've been jammed by
the Brussels station talking to the Belgian Congo--same wave length--and
I couldn't tune Brussels out. Every once in a while I'd get a word of
what Paris was saying, and it's always the same word--'_heure_.' But
just now Brussels stopped sending and I got the complete message of the
Eiffel Tower. They wanted to know our time by Greenwich. I gave it to
'em. Then Paris said to tell you to take your transit with great care
and send result to them immediately----"
The ordinarily calm Thornton gave a great suspiration and his face was
livid. "Aeta's just crossed--we're five minutes out! Evarts, am I crazy?
Am I talking straight?"
Evarts laid his hand on the other's arm.
"The earthquake's knocked out your transit," he suggested.
"And Paris--how about Paris?" asked Thornton. He wrote something down on
a card mechanically and started for the door. "Get me the Eiffel Tower!"
he ordered Williams.
The three men stood motionless, as the wireless man sent the Eiffel
Tower call hurtling across the Atlantic:
"ETA--ETA--ETA."
"All right," whispered Williams, "I've got 'em."
"Tell Paris that our clocks are all out five minutes according to the
meridian."
Williams worked the key rapidly, and then listened.
"The Eiffel Tower says that their chronometers also appear to be out by
the same time, and that Greenwich and Moscow both report the same thing.
Wait a minute! He says Moscow has wired that at eight o'clock last
evening a tremendous aurora of bright yellow light was seen to the
northwest, and that their spectroscopes showed the helium line only. He
wants to know if we have any explanation to offer----"
"Explanation!" gasped Evarts. "Tell Paris that we had earthquake shocks
here together with violent seismic movements, sudden rise in barometer,
followed by fall, statics, and erratic variation in the magnetic
needle."
"What does it all mean?" murmured Thornton, staring blankly at the
younger man.
The key rattled and the rotary spark whined into a shriek. Then silence.
"Paris says that the same manifestations have been observed in Russia,
Algeria, Italy, and London," called out Williams. "Ah! What's that?
Nauen's calling." Again he sent the blue flame crackling between the
coils. "Nauen reports an error of five minutes in their meridian
observations according to the official clocks. And hello! He says Berlin
has capitulated and that the Russians began marching through at
daylight--that is about two hours ago. He says he is about to turn the
station over to the Allied Commissioners, who will at once assume
charge."
Evarts whistled.
"How about it?" he asked of Thornton.
The latter shook his head gravely.
"It may be--explainable--or," he added hoarsely, "it may mean the end of
the world."
Williams sprang from his chair and confronted Thornton.
"What do you mean?" he almost shouted.
"Perhaps the universe is running down!" said Evarts soothingly. "At any
rate, keep it to yourself, old chap. If the jig is up there's no use
scaring people to death a month or so too soon!"
Thornton grasped an arm of each.
"Not a word of this to anybody!" he ground out through compressed lips.
"Absolute silence, or hell may break loose on earth!"