“MAN—A GREAT LITTLE BUG”
And what of Charley Huyck? It was his anticipation, and his training
which leaves us here to tell the story. Were it not for the strange
manner of his rearing, and the keen faith and appreciation of Dr.
Robold there would be to-day no tale to tell. The little incident of
the burning glass had grown. If there is no such thing as Fate there
is at least something that comes very close to being Destiny.
On this night we find Charley at the observatory in Arizona. He is a
grown man and a great one, and though mature not so very far drawn
from the lad we met on the street selling papers. Tall, slender, very
slightly stooped and with the same idealistic, dreaming eyes of the
poet. Surely no one at first glance would have taken him for a
scientist. Which he was and was not.
Indeed, there is something vastly different about the science of
Charley Huyck. Science to be sure, but not prosaic. He was the first
and perhaps the last of the school of Dr. Robold, a peculiar
combination of poetry and fact, a man of vision, of vast, far-seeing
faith and idealism linked and based on the coldest and sternest truths
of materialism. A peculiar tenet of the theory of Robold: “True
science to be itself should be half poetry.” Which any of us who have
read or been at school know it is not. It is a peculiar theory and
though rather wild still with some points in favor.
We all of us know our schoolmasters; especially those of science and
what they stand for. Facts, facts, nothing but facts; no dreams or
romance. Looking back we can grant them just about the emotions of
cucumbers. We remember their cold, hard features, the prodding after
fact, the accumulation of data. Surely there is no poetry in them.
Yet we must not deny that they have been by far the most potent of all
men in the progress of civilization. Not even Robold would deny it.
The point is this:
The doctor maintained that from the beginning the progress of material
civilization had been along three distinct channels; science,
invention, and administration. It was simply his theory that the first
two should be one; that the scientist deal not alone with dry fact but
with invention, and that the inventor, unless he is a scientist, has
mastered but half his trade. “The really great scientist should be a
visionary,” said Robold, “and an inventor is merely a poet, with
tools.”
Which is where we get Charley Huyck. He was a visionary, a scientist,
a poet with tools, the protege of Dr. Robold. He dreamed things that
no scientist had thought of. And we are thankful for his dreaming.
The one great friend of Huyck was Professor Williams, a man from
Charley’s home city, who had known him even back in the days of
selling papers. They had been cronies in boyhood, in their teens, and
again at College. In after years, when Huyck had become the visionary,
the mysterious Man of the Mountain, and Williams a great professor of
astronomy, the friendship was as strong as ever.
But there was a difference between them. Williams was exact to
acuteness, with not a whit of vision beyond pure science. He had been
reared in the old stone-cold theory of exactness; he lived in figures.
He could not understand Huyck or his reasoning. Perfectly willing to
follow as far as facts permitted he refused to step off into
speculation.
Which was the point between them. Charley Huyck had vision; although
exact as any man, he had ever one part of his mind soaring out into
speculation. What is, and what might be, and the gulf between. To
bridge the gulf was the life work of Charley Huyck.
In the snug little office in Arizona we find them; Charley with his
feet poised on the desk and Williams precise and punctilious, true to
his training, defending the exactness of his philosophy. It was the
cool of the evening; the sun was just mellowing the heat of the
desert. Through the open door and windows a cool wind was blowing.
Charley was smoking; the same old pipe had been the bane of Williams’s
life at college.
“Then we know?” he was asking.
“Yes,” spoke the professor, “what we know, Charley, we know; though of
course it is not much. It is very hard, nay impossible, to deny
figures. We have not only the proofs of geology but of astronomical
calculation, we have facts and figures plus our sidereal relations all
about us.
“The world must come to an end. It is a hard thing to say it, but it
is a fact of science. Slowly, inevitably, ruthlessly, the end will
come. A mere question of arithmetic.”
Huyck nodded. It was his special function in life to differ with his
former roommate. He had come down from his own mountain in Colorado
just for the delight of difference.
“I see. Your old calculations of tidal retardation. Or if that doesn’t
work the loss of oxygen and the water.”
“Either one or the other; a matter of figures; the earth is being
drawn every day by the sun: its rotation is slowing up; when the time
comes it will act to the sun in exactly the same manner as the moon
acts to the earth to-day.”
“I understand. It will be a case of eternal night for one side of the
earth, and eternal day for the other. A case of burn up or freeze up.”
“Exactly. Of if it doesn’t reach to that, the water gas will gradually
lose out into sidereal space and we will go to desert. Merely a
question of the old dynamical theory of gases; of the molecules to be
in motion, to be forever colliding and shooting out into variance.
“Each minute, each hour, each day we are losing part of our
atmospheric envelope. In course of time it will all be gone; when it
is we shall be all desert. For instance, take a look outside. This is
Arizona. Once it was the bottom of a deep blue sea. Why deny when we
can already behold the beginning.”
The other laughed.
“Pretty good mathematics at that, professor. Only—”
“Only?”
“That it is merely mathematics.”
“Merely mathematics?” The professor frowned slightly. “Mathematics do
not lie, Charlie, you cannot get away from them. What sort of fanciful
argument are you bringing up now?”
“Simply this,” returned the other, “that you depend too much on
figures. They are material and in the nature of things can only be
employed in a calculation of what may happen in the future. You must
have premises to stand on, facts. Your figures are rigid: they have no
elasticity; unless your foundations are permanent and faultless your
deductions will lead you only into error.”
“Granted; just the point: we know where we stand. Wherein are we in
error?”
It was the old point of difference. Huyck was ever crashing down the
idols of pure materialism. Williams was of the world-wide school.
“You are in error, my dear professor, in a very little thing and a
very large one.”
“What is that?”
“Man.”
“Man?”
“Yes. He’s a great little bug. You have left him out of your
calculation—which he will upset.”
The professor smiled indulgently. “I’ll allow; he is at least a
conceited bug; but you surely cannot grant him much when pitted
against the Universe.”
“No? Did it ever occur to you. Professor, what the Universe is? The
stars for instance? Space, the immeasurable distance of Infinity. Have
you never dreamed?”
Williams could not quite grasp him. Huyck had a habit that had grown
out of childhood. Always he would allow his opponent to commit
himself. The professor did not answer. But the other spoke.
“Ether. You know it. Whether mind or granite. For instance, your
desert.” He placed his finger to his forehead. “Your mind, my
mind—localized ether.”
“What are you driving at?”
“Merely this. Your universe has intelligence. It has mind as well as
matter. The little knot called the earth is becoming conscious. Your
deductions are incompetent unless they embrace mind as well as matter,
and they cannot do it. Your mathematics are worthless.”
The professor bit his lip.
“Always fanciful.” he commented, “and visionary. Your argument is
beautiful, Charley, and hopeful. I would that it were true. But all
things must mature. Even an earth must die.”
“Not our earth. You look into the past, professor, for your proof, and
I look into the future. Give a planet long enough time in maturing and
it will develop life; give it still longer and it will produce
intelligence. Our own earth is just coming into consciousness; it has
thirty million years, at least, to run.”
“You mean?”
“This. That man is a great little bug. Mind: the intelligence of the
earth.”
This of course is a bit dry. The conversation of such men very often
is to those who do not care to follow them. But it is very pertinent
to what came after. We know now, everyone knows, that Charley Huyck
was right. Even Professor Williams admits it. Our earth is conscious.
In less than twenty-four hours it had to employ its consciousness to
save itself from destruction.
A bell rang. It was the private wire that connected the office with
the residence. The professor picked up the receiver. “Just a minute.
Yes? All right.” Then to his companion: “I must go over to the house,
Charley. We have plenty of time. Then we can go up to the
observatory.”
Which shows how little we know about ourselves. Poor Professor
Williams! Little did he think that those casual words were the last he
would ever speak to Charley Huyck.
The whole world seething! The beginning of the end! Charley Huyck in
the vortex. The next few hours were to be the most strenuous of the
planet’s history.