The Man Who Saved the Earth
by Austin Hall
[Illustration: Not a sound; the whole works a complicated mass covering
a hundred acres, driving with a silence that was magic. Not a whir nor
friction. Like a living composite body pulsing and breathing the strange
and mysterious force that had been evolved from Huyck’s theory of
kinetics. The four great steel conduits running from the globes down the
side of the mountain. In the center at a point midway between the globes,
a massive steel needle hung on a pivot and pointed directly at the sun.]
We read of the days when the powers of radium were yet
unknown. It is told us that burns were produced by
incautiously carrying a tube of radium salts in the
pocket. And here in this story we are told of a different
power, opalescence, due to another element. It can destroy
mountains, excavate cavities of immeasurable depths and
kill human beings and animals in multitude. The story
opens with a poor little boy experimenting with a burning
glass. Then he becomes the hero of the story—he studies
and eventually finds himself able to destroy the earth. He
exceeds Archimedes in his power. And he suddenly finds
that he has unlocked a power that threatens this very
destruction. And the story depicts his horror at the
Frankenstein which he had unloosed, and tells of his wild
efforts to save humanity, and of the loss of the cosmic
discoveries of the little newsboy grown up to be a great
scientist.
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNING
Even the beginning. From the start the whole thing has the precision
of machine work. Fate and its working—and the wonderful Providence
which watches over Man and his future. The whole thing unerring: the
incident, the work, the calamity, and the martyr. In the retrospect of
disaster we may all of us grow strong in wisdom. Let us go into
history.
A hot July day. A sun of scant pity, and a staggering street; panting
thousands dragging along, hatless; fans and parasols; the sultry
vengeance of a real day of summer. A day of bursting tires; hot
pavements, and wrecked endeavor, heartaches for the seashore, for
leafy bowers beside rippling water, a day of broken hopes and listless
ambition.
Perhaps Fate chose the day because of its heat and because of its
natural benefit on fecundity. We have no way of knowing. But we do
know this: the date, the time, the meeting; the boy with the burning
glass and the old doctor. So commonplace, so trivial and hidden in
obscurity! Who would have guessed it? Yet it is—after the creation—one
of the most important dates in the world’s history.
This is saying a whole lot. Let us go into it and see what it amounts
to. Let us trace the thing out in history, weigh it up and balance it
with sequence.
Of Charley Huyck we know nothing up to this day. It is a thing which,
for some reason, he has always kept hidden. Recent investigation as to
his previous life and antecedents have availed us nothing. Perhaps he
could have told us; but as he has gone down as the world’s great
martyr, there is no hope of gaining from his lips what we would so
like to know.
After all, it does not matter. We have the day—the incident, and its
purport, and its climax of sequence to the day of the great disaster.
Also we have the blasted mountains and the lake of blue water which
will ever live with his memory. His greatness is not of warfare, nor
personal ambition; but of all mankind. The wreaths that we bestow upon
him have no doubtful color. The man who saved the earth!
From such a beginning, Charley Huyck, lean and frail of body, with,
even then, the wistfulness of the idealist, and the eyes of a poet.
Charley Huyck, the boy, crossing the hot pavement with his pack of
papers; the much treasured piece of glass in his pocket, and the sun
which only he should master burning down upon him. A moment out of the
ages; the turning of a straw destined to out-balance all the previous
accumulation of man’s history.
The sun was hot and burning, and the child—he could not have been more
than ten—cast a glance over his shoulder. It was in the way of
calculation. In the heyday of childhood he was not dragged down by the
heat and weather: he had the enthusiasm of his half-score of years and
the joy of the plaything. We will not presume to call it the spirit of
the scientist, though it was, perhaps, the spark of latent
investigation that was destined to lead so far.
A moment picked out of destiny! A boy and a plaything. Uncounted
millions of boys have played with glass and the sun rays. Who cannot
remember the little, round-burning dot in the palm of the hand and the
subsequent exclamation? Charley Huyck had found a new toy, it was a
simple thing and as old as glass. Fate will ever be so in her working.
And the doctor? Why should he have been waiting? If it was not
destiny, it was at least an accumulation of moment. In the heavy
eye-glasses, the square, close-cut beard; and his uncompromising
fact-seeking expression. Those who knew Dr. Robold are strong in the
affirmation that he was the antithesis of all emotion. He was the
sternest product of science: unbending, hardened by experiment, and
caustic in his condemnation of the frailness of human nature.
It had been his one function to topple over the castles of the
foolish; with his hard-seeing wisdom he had spotted sophistry where we
thought it not. Even into the castles of science he had gone like a
juggernaut. It is hard to have one’s theories derided—yea, even for a
scientist—and to be called a fool! Dr. Robold knew no middle
language;he was not relished by science.
His memory, as we have it, is that of an eccentric. A man of slight
compassion, abrupt of manner and with no tact in speaking. Genius is
often so; it is a strange fact that many of the greatest of men have
been denied by their fellows. A great man and laughter. He was not
accepted.
None of us know to-day what it cost Dr. Robold. He was not the man to
tell us. Perhaps Charley Huyck might; but his lips are sealed forever.
We only know that he retired to the mountain, and of the subsequent
flood of benefits that rained upon mankind. And we still denied him.
The great cynic on the mountain. Of the secrets of the place we know
little. He was not the man to accept the investigator; he despised the
curious. He had been laughed at—let be—he would work alone on the
great moment of the future.
In the light of the past we may well bend knee to the doctor and his
protégé, Charley Huyck. Two men and destiny! What would we be without
them? One shudders to think.
A little thing, and yet one of the greatest moments in the world’s
history. It must have been Fate. Why was it that this stern man, who
hated all emotion, should so have unbended at this moment? That we
cannot answer. But we can conjecture. Mayhap it is this: We were all
wrong; we accepted the man’s exterior and profession as the fact of
his marrow.
No man can lose all emotion. The doctor, was, after all, even as
ourselves—he was human. Whatever may be said, we have the certainty of
that moment—and of Charley Huyck.
The sun’s rays were hot; they were burning; the pavements were
intolerable; the baked air in the canyoned street was dancing like
that of an oven; a day of dog-days. The boy crossing the street; his
arms full of papers, and the glass bulging in his little hip-pocket.
At the curb he stopped. With such a sun it was impossible to long
forget his plaything. He drew it carefully out of his pocket, lay down
a paper and began distancing his glass for the focus. He did not
notice the man beside him. Why should he? The round dot, the brownish
smoke, the red spark and the flash of flame! He stamped upon it. A
moment out of boyhood; an experimental miracle as old as the age of
glass, and just as delightful. The boy had spoiled the name of a great
Governor of a great State; but the paper was still salable. He had had
his moment. Mark that moment.
A hand touched his shoulder. The lad leaped up. “Yessir. _Star_ or
_Bulletin_?”
“I’ll take one of each,” said the man. “There now. I was just watching
you. Do you know what you were doing?”
“Yessir. Burning paper. Startin’ fire. That’s the way the Indians did
it.”
The man smiled at the perversion of fact. There is not such a distance
between sticks and glass in the age of childhood.
“I know,” he said—“the Indians. But do you know how it was done; the
why—why the paper began to blaze?”
“Yessir.”
“All right, explain.”
The boy looked up at him. He was a city boy and used to the streets.
Here was some old high-brow challenging his wisdom. Of course he knew.
“It’s the sun.”
“There,” laughed the man. “Of course. You said you knew, but you
don’t. Why doesn’t the sun, without the glass, burn the paper? Tell me
that.”
The boy was still looking up at him; he saw that the man was not like
the others on the street. It may be that the strange intimacy kindled
into being at that moment. Certainly it was a strange unbending for
the doctor.
“It would if it was hot enough or you could get enough of it
together.”
“Ah! Then that is what the glass is for, is it?”
“Yessir.”
“Concentration?”
“Con— I don’t know, sir. But it’s the sun. She’s sure some hot. I know
a lot about the sun, sir. I’ve studied it with the glass. The glass
picks up all the rays and puts them in one hole and that’s what burns
the paper.
“It’s lots of fun. I’d like to have a bigger one; but it’s all I’ve
got. Why, do you know, if I had a glass big enough and a place to
stand, I’d burn up the earth?”
The old man laughed. “Why, Archimedes! I thought you were dead.”
“My name ain’t Archimedes. It’s Charley Huyck.”
Again the old man laughed.
“Oh, is it? Well, that’s a good name, too. And if you keep on you’ll
make it famous as the name of the other.” Wherein he was foretelling
history. “Where do you live?”
The boy was still looking. Ordinarily he would not have told, but he
motioned back with his thumb.
“I don’t live; I room over on Brennan Street.”
“Oh, I see. You room. Where’s your mother?”
“Search me; I never saw her.”
“I see; and your father?”
“How do I know. He went floating when I was four years old.”
“Floating?”
“Yessir—to sea.”
“So your mother’s gone and your father’s floating. Archimedes is
adrift. You go to school?”
“Yessir”
“What reader?”
“No reader. Sixth grade.”
“I see. What school?”
“School Twenty-six. Say, it’s hot. I can’t stand here all day. I’ve
got to sell my papers.”
The man pulled out a purse.
“I’ll take the lot,” he said. Then kindly: “My boy, I would like to
have you go with me.”
It was a strange moment. A little thing with the fates looking on.
When destiny plays she picks strange moments. This was one. Charley
Huyck went with Dr. Robold.