The Shadow Of The Terror

: The World Peril Of 1910

By a curious coincidence which, as events proved, was to have some

serious consequences, almost at the same moment that Commander Erskine

began to write his report on the strange vision which he and his

Lieutenant had seen, Gilbert Lennard came out of the Observatory which

Mr Ratliffe Parmenter had built on the south of the Whernside Hills in

Yorkshire.



Mr Ratliffe Parmenter had two ambitions in life, one
of which he had

fulfilled. This was to pile millions upon millions by any possible

means. As he used to say to his associates in his poorer days, "You've

got to get there somehow, so get there"--and he had "got there." It is

not necessary for the purpose of the present narrative to say how he did

it. He had done it, and that is why he bought the Hill of Whernside and

about a thousand acres around it and built an Observatory on the top

with which, to use his own words, he meant to lick Creation by seeing

further into Creation than anyone else had done, and that is just what

his great reflector had enabled his astronomer to do.



When he had locked the door Lennard looked up to the eastward where the

morning star hung flashing like a huge diamond in splendid solitude

against the brightening background of the sky. His face was the face of

a man who had seen something that he would not like to describe to any

other man. His features were hard set, and there were lines in his face

which time might have drawn twenty or thirty years later. His lips made

a straight line, and his eyes, although he had hardly slept three hours

a night for as many nights, had a look in them that was not to be

accounted for by ordinary insomnia.



His work was over for the night, and, if he chose, he could go down to

the house three-quarters of a mile away and sleep for the rest of the

day, or, at any rate, until lunch time; and yet he looked another long

look at the morning star, thrust his hands down into his trousers

pockets and turned up a side path that led through the heather, and

spent the rest of the morning walking and thinking--walking slowly, and

thinking very quickly.



When he came in to breakfast at nine the next morning, after he had had

a shave and a bath, Mr Parmenter said to him:



"Look here, young man, I'm old enough to be your father, and so you'll

excuse me putting it that way; if you're going along like this I reckon

I'll have to shut that Observatory down for the time being and take you

on a trip to the States to see how they're getting on with their

telescopes in the Alleghanies and the Rockies, and maybe down South too

in Peru, to that Harvard Observatory above Arequipa on the Misti, as a

sort of holiday. I asked you to come here to work, not to wear yourself

out. As I've told you before, we've got plenty of men in the States who

can sign their cheques for millions of dollars and can't eat a dinner,

to say nothing of a breakfast, and you're too young for that.



"What's the matter? More trouble about that new comet of yours. You've

been up all night looking at it, haven't you? Of course it's all right

that you got hold of it before anybody else, but all the same I don't

want you to be worrying yourself for nothing and get laid up before the

time comes to take the glory of the discovery."



While he was speaking the door of the breakfast-room opened and Auriole

came in. She looked with a just perceptible admiration at the man who,

as it seemed to her, was beginning to show a slight stoop in the broad

shoulders and a little falling forward of the head which she had first

seen driving through the water to her rescue in the Bay of Connemara.

Her eyelids lifted a shade as she looked at him, and she said with a

half smile:



"Good morning, Mr Lennard; I am afraid you've been sacrificing yourself

a little bit too much to science. You don't seem to have had a sleep for

the last two or three nights. You've been blinding your eyes over those

tangles of figures and equations, parallaxes and cube roots and that

sort of thing. I know something about them because I had some struggles

with them myself at Vassar."



"That's about it, Auriole," said her father. "Just what I've been

saying; and I hope our friend is not going on with this kind of business

too long. Now, really, Mr Lennard, you know you must not, and that's all

there is to it."



"Oh, no, I don't think you need be frightened of anything of that sort,"

said Lennard, who had considerably brightened up as Auriole entered the

room; "perhaps I may have been going a little too long without sleep;

but, you see, a man who has the great luck to discover a new comet is

something like one of the old navigators who discovered new islands and

continents. Of course you remember the story of Columbus. When he

thought he was going to find what is now the country which has had the

honour--"



"I know you're going to say something nice, Mr Lennard," interrupted

Auriole, "but breakfast is ready; here it comes. If you take my advice

you will have your coffee and something to eat and tell us the rest of

it while you're getting something that will do you good. What do you

think, Poppa?"



"Hard sense, Auriole, hard sense. Your mother used to talk just like

that, and I reckon you've got it from her. Well now, here's the food,

let's begin. I've got a hunger on me that I'd have wanted five dollars

to stop at the time when I couldn't buy a breakfast."



They sat down, Miss Auriole at the head of the table and her father and

Lennard facing each other, and for the next few minutes there was a

semi-silence which was very well employed in the commencement of one of

the most important functions of the human day.



When Mr Parmenter had got through his first cup of coffee, his two

poached eggs on toast, and was beginning on the fish, he looked across

the table and said:



"Well now, Mr Lennard, I guess you're feeling a bit better, as I do, and

so, maybe, you can tell us something new about comets."



"I certainly am feeling better," said Lennard with a glance at Auriole,

"but, you see, I've got into a state of mind which is not unlike the

physical state of the Red Indian who starves for a few days and then

takes his meals, I mean the arrears of meals, all at once. When I have

had a good long sleep, as I am going to have until to-night, I might--in

fact, I hope I shall be able to tell you something definite about the

question of the comet."



"What--the question?" echoed Mr Parmenter. "About the comet? I didn't

understand that there was any question. You have discovered it, haven't

you?"



"I have made a certain discovery, Mr Parmenter," said Lennard, with a

gravity which made Auriole raise her eyelids quickly, "but whether I

have found a comet so far unknown to astronomy or not, is quite another

matter. Thanks to that splendid instrument of yours, I have found a

something in a part of the heavens where no comet, not even a star, has

even been seen yet, and, speaking in all seriousness, I may say that

this discovery contradicts all calculations as to the orbits and

velocities of any known comet. That is what I have been thinking about

all night."



"What?" said Auriole, looking up again. "Really something quite

unknown?"



"Unknown except to the three people sitting at this table, unless

another miracle has happened--I mean such a one as happened in the case

of the discovery of Neptune which, as of course you know, Adams at

Cambridge and Le Verrier at Paris--"



"Yes, yes," said Auriole, "two men who didn't know each other; both

looked for something that couldn't be seen, and found it. If you've done

anything like that, Mr Lennard, I reckon Poppa will have good cause to

be proud of his reflector--"



"And of the man behind it," added her father. "A telescope's like a gun;

no use without a good man behind it. Well, if that's so, Mr Lennard,

this discovery of yours ought to shake the world up a bit."



"From what I have seen so far," replied Lennard, "I have not the

slightest doubt that it will."



"And when may I see this wonderful discovery of yours, Mr Lennard," said

Auriole, "this something which is going to be so important, this

something that no one else's eyes have seen except yours. Really, you

know, you've made me quite longing to get a sight of this stranger from

the outer wilderness of space."



"If the night is clear enough, I may hope to be able to introduce you to

the new celestial visitor about a quarter-past eleven to-night, or to be

quite accurate eleven hours, sixteen minutes and thirty-nine seconds

p.m."



"I think that's good enough, Auriole," said her father. "If the heavens

are only kind enough, we'll go up to the observatory and, as Mr Lennard

says, see something that no one else has ever seen."



"And then," laughed Auriole, "I suppose you will have achieved the

second ambition of your life. You have already piled up a bigger heap of

dollars than anybody else in the world, and by midnight you will have

seen farther into Creation than anybody else. But you will let me have

the first look, won't you?"



"Why, certainly," he replied. "As soon as Mr Lennard has got the

telescope fixed, you go first, and I reckon that won't take very long."



"No," replied Lennard, "I've worked out the position for to-night, and

it's only a matter of winding up the clockwork and setting the

telescope. And now," he continued, rising, "if you will allow me, I will

say--well, I was going to say good-night, but of course it's

good-morning--I'm going to bed."



"Will you come down to lunch, or shall I have some sent up to you?"

said Auriole.



"No, thanks. I don't think there will be any need to trouble you about

that. When I once get to sleep, I hope I shall forget all things

earthly, and heavenly too for the matter of that, until about six

o'clock, and if you will have me called then, I will be ready for

dinner."



"Certainly," replied Auriole, "and I hope you will sleep as well as you

deserve to do, after all these nights of watching."



He did sleep. He slept the sleep of a man physically and mentally tired,

in spite of the load of unspeakable anxiety which was weighing upon his

mind. For during his last night's work, he had learnt what no other man

in the world knew. He had learnt that, unless a miracle happened, or

some almost superhuman feat of ingenuity and daring was accomplished,

that day thirteen months hence would see the annihilation of every

living thing on earth, and the planet Terra converted into a dark and

lifeless orb, a wilderness drifting through space, the blackened and

desolated sepulchre of the countless millions of living beings which now

inhabited it.



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