* * * * *
Night fell on Cetopolis, and with it came some slight alleviation ofthe dreadfulness that had begun that afternoon. The air was furnacelikein heat and dryness. There was the smell of smoke everywhere. The starswere faint and red and ominous, seen through the smoke that overlayeverything. So far, to be sure, breathing was possible. It was evenpossible to be comfortable in an air-conditioned room. But this wasonly the beginning.
Lon and Cathy sat together on the porch of his house, after sundown.The other colonists had gone away to their own homes. When the crackof doom has visibly begun, men do queer things. In Cetopolis someundoubtedly got drunk, or tried to. But there were farmers who wouldspend this last night looking at their drooping crops, trying topersuade themselves that if Cetis Gamma only went back to normal beforesunrise, the crops might yet be saved. But none of them expected it.
Off to the south there was an angry reddish glare in the sky. That wasvegetation on the desert there, burning. It grew thick as jungle in therainy season, and dried out to pure dessication in dry weather. It hadcaught fire of itself from the sun's glare in late afternoon. Greatclouds of acrid smoke rose from it to the stars.
Beyond the horizon to the west there was destruction.
Lon and Cathy sat close together. She hadn't even asked to be takenback to Cetopolis, as convention would have required. The sunwas growing hotter still while it sank below the horizon. It wasexpanding in fits and starts as new writhing spouts of stuff from itsinterior burst the bonds of gravity. Blazing magma flung upward in anunthinkable eruption. The sun had been three times normal size when itset.
Lon was no astronomer, but plainly the end of life on the inner planetsof Cetis Gamma was at hand.
Cetis Gamma might, he considered, be in the process of becoming anova. Certainly beyond the horizon there was even more terrible heatthan had struck the human colony before sundown. Even if the sundid not explode, even if it was only as fiercely blazing as at itssetting, they would die within hours after sunrise. If it increased inbrightness, by daybreak its first rays would be death itself. When dawncame, the very first direct beams would set the shiver trees alight onthe hilltops, and as it rose the fires would go down into the valleys.This house would smoke and writhe and melt; the air would become flame,and the planet's surface would glow red-hot as it turned into thesunshine.
* * * * *
”It's going to be--all right, Lon,” Cathy said unconvincedly. ”It'sjust something happening that'll be over in a little while. But--incase it isn't--we might as well be together. Don't you think so?”
Lon put his arm comfortingly around her. He felt a very strong impulseto lie. He could pretend to vast wisdom and tell her the sun's behaviorwas this or that, and never lasted more than a few hours, but she'dknow he lied. They could spend their last hours trying to deceive eachother out of pure affection. But they'd know it was deceit.
”D-don't you think so?” insisted Cathy faintly.
He said gently, ”No, Cathy, and neither do you. This is the finish. Itwould've been a lot nicer to go on living, the two of us. We'd have hadlong, long years to be together. We'd have had kids, and they'd havegrown up, and we'd have had--a lot of things. But now I'm afraid wewon't.”
He tried to smile at her, but it hurt. He thought passionately thathe would gladly submit himself to be burned in the slowest and mostexcruciating manner if only she could be saved from it. But he couldn'tdo anything.
Cathy gulped. ”I-I'm afraid so, too, Lon,” she said in a small voice.”But it's nice we met each other, anyhow. Now we know we love eachother. I don't like the idea of dying, but I'm glad we knew we lovedeach other before it happened.”
Lon's hands clenched fiercely. Then the rage went away. He said almosthumorously, ”Carson--he's back in Cetopolis. I wonder how he feels. Hehas no better chance than anybody else. Maybe he's sent off spacegrams,but no ship could possibly get here in time.”
Cathy shivered a little. ”Let's not think about him. Just about us. Wehaven't much time.”
And just then, very strangely, an idea came to Lon Simpson. He tensed.
After a moment, he said in a very queer voice, ”This isn't a nova. It'sa flare-up. The sun isn't exploding. It's just too hot, too big for thetemperature inside it, and it's a closed system. So radiation pressurehas been building up. Now it's got to be released. So it will spoutgeysers of its own substance. They'll go out over hundreds of thousandsof miles. But in a couple of weeks it will be back--nearly--to normal.”
He suddenly knew that. He knew why it was so. He could have explainedit completely and precisely. But he didn't know how he knew. The itemsthat added together were themselves so self evident that he didn't evenwonder how he knew them. They _had_ to be so!
* * * * *
Cathy said muffledly, her face against his shoulder, ”But we won't bealive in a couple of weeks, Lon. We can't live long past daybreak.”
He did not answer. There were more ideas coming into his mind. Hedidn't know where they came from. But again they were such selfevident, unquestionable facts that he did not wonder about them. Hesimply paid tense, desperately concentrated attention as they formedthemselves.
”We--may live,” he said shakily. ”There's an ionosphere up at thetop of the atmosphere here, just like there is on Earth. It's madeby the sunlight ionizing the thin air. The--stronger sunlight willmultiply the ionization. There'll be an--actually conducting layer ofair.... Yes.... The air will become a conductor, up there.” He wet hislips. ”If I make a--gadget to--short-circuit that conducting layer tothe ground here.... When radiation photons penetrate a transparentconductor--but there aren't any transparent conductors--the photonswill--follow the three-finger rule....
”They'll move at right angles to their former course--”
He swallowed. Then he got up very quietly. He put her aside. He wentto his tool shed. He climbed to the roof of the barn now filled with_thanar_ leaves. He swung his axe.
The barn was roofed with aluminum over malleable plastic. The usefulproperty of malleable plastic is that it does not yield to steadypressure, but does yield to shock. It will stay in shape indefinitelyunder a load, but one can tap it easily into any form one desires.
Lon swung his axe, head down. Presently he asked Cathy to climb up aladder and hold a lantern for him. He didn't need light for the roughwork--the burning desert vegetation gave enough for that. But when onewants to make a parabolic reflector by tapping with an axe, one needslight for the finer part of the job.
* * * * *
In Cetopolis, Carson agitatedly put his records on tape and sent it alloff by spacegram. He'd previously reported on Lon Simpson, but now heknew that he was going to die. And he followed his instinct to transmitall his quite useless records, in order that his superiors mightrealize he had been an admirable employee. It did not occur to him thathis superiors might be trying frantically to break his sending beam todemand that he find out how Lon Simpson made his power gadget and howhe converted vegetation, before it was too late. They didn't succeed inbreaking his beam, because Carson kept it busy.
He was true to type.
Elsewhere, other men were true to type, too. The human population ofCetis Gamma Two was very small. There were less than five thousandpeople on the planet--all within a hundred miles of Cetopolis, and allnow on the night side. The rest of the planet's land masses scorchedand shriveled and burst into flame where the sun struck them. The fewsmall oceans heated and their surfaces even boiled. But nobody saw it.The local fauna and flora died over the space of continents.
But in the human settlement area, people acted according totheir individual natures. Some few ran amok and tried to destroyeverything--including themselves--before the blazing sun could returnto do it. More sat in stunned silence, waiting for doom. A few dugdesperately, trying to excavate caves or pits in which they or theirwives or children could be safe....
But Lon pounded at his barn roof. He made a roughly parabolic mirrorso
me three yards across. He stripped off aluminum siding and made aconnection with the ground. He poured water around that connection. Hebuilt a crude multiply twisted device of copper wire and put it in thefocus of the parabolic mirror.
He looked up at the sky. The stars seemed dimmer. He took the copperthing away, and they brightened a little. He carefully adjusted ituntil the stars were at their dimmest.
He descended to the ground again. He felt an odd incredulity about whathe'd done. He didn't doubt that it would work. He was simply unable tounderstand how he'd thought of it.
* * * * *
”There, darling! Your pets are quite safe!” Rhadampsicus said pleasedly.
Nodalictha scanned the second planet. It was apparently coated with ametallic covering. But it was not quite like metal. It was misty, likean unsubstantial barrier to light--and to Nodalictha's penetratingthoughts.
”I had your male pet,” Rhadampsicus explained tenderly, ”set up a powerbeam link to the ionosphere. With several times the usual degree ofionization--because of the flaring sun--the grounded ionosphere becamea _Rhinthak_ screen about the planet. The more active the sun, themore dense the screen. They'll have light to see by when their side ofthe planet is toward the sun, but no harmful radiation can get down tothem. And the screen will fade away as the sun goes back to its normalstate.”
Nodalictha rejoiced. Then she was a little distressed.
”But now I can't watch them!” she pouted. Rhadampsicus watched hergravely. She said ruefully, ”I see, Rhadampsicus. You've spoiled me!But if I can't watch them for the time being, I won't have anything tooccupy me. Darling Rhadampsicus, you must talk to me sometimes!”
He talked to her absorbedly. He seemed to think, however, thatdiscussion of the local solar phenomena was conversation. Withfeminine guile, she pretended to be satisfied, but presently she wentback to her housekeeping. She began to dream of their life when theyhad returned home, and of the residence they would inhabit there.Presently she was planning the parties she would give as a youngmatron, with canap?s of krypton snow and zenon ice, with sprinklings oflovely red nickel bromide crystals for a garnish--
* * * * *
The sun rose again, and they lived. It was as if the sky were coveredwith a thick cloud bank which absorbed the monstrous radiation of a sunnow four times its previous diameter and madly changing shape like amonstrous ameba of flame.
In time the sun set. It rose again. It set. And Cetis Gamma Tworemained a living planet instead of being a scorched cinder.
When four days had gone by and nobody died, the colonists decided thatthey might actually keep on living. They had at first no especiallylogical foundation for their belief.
But Cathy boasted. And she boasted in Cetopolis. Since they were goingto keep on living, the conventions required that she return to theplanet's one human settlement and her duties as a beamphone operator.It wasn't proper for her to stay unchaperoned so long as she and Lonweren't married yet.
She had no difficulty with Carson. He didn't refer to her desertion.Carson had his own troubles. Now that he had decided that he wouldlive, his problems multiplied. The colonists' barns were filled tocapacity with _thanar_ leaves which would pay off their debts to theCompany. He began to worry about that.
Lost without the constant directives from the Company, he had histechnicians step up the power in the settlement transmitter. Heknew that the screen Lon had put up would stop ordinary spacegramtransmission. Even with a tight beam, he could broadcast and receiveonly at night, when the screen was thinnest. Even so, he had to searchout holes in the screen.
The system didn't work perfectly--it wasn't two-way at all, until theCompany stepped up the power in its own transmitter--but spacegramsstarted to get through again.
Carson smiled in relief. He began to regain some of his old arrogantlybored manner. Now that the Company's guiding hand was once more withhim, nothing seemed as bad as it had been. He was able to report thatsomething had happened to save the colony from extinction, and thatLon Simpson had probably done it.
In return, he got a spacegram demanding full particulars, and preciseinformation on the devices he had reported Lon Simpson to have made.
Humbly, Carson obeyed his corporation.