The Big Eye (32 page)

 

 

The instincts of men ran pretty deep, and they were very tenacious, the
pessimists said. In time they would again rise and assert themselves.
And one day, they even predicted, men would contrive to go to war again.

 

 

But somehow the people did not listen to the pessimists.

 

 

They had seen the miracle, and they remembered, and they were grateful.

 

 

And they started up the machinery again and went right on living in the
same old new world they had fashioned, after the Big Eye had first been
seen at Palomar.

 

 

 

 

16.

 

 

It was October of 1963, and David sat in the Old Man's study at Palomar.

 

 

Three months before, California Tech had reopened the Observatory. They
began negotiations for a new director and in the interim offered David
the post of chief research astronomer until the permanent appointment
was made.

 

 

David had accepted the offer and moved back to Palomar with his family.

 

 

Now he turned to the task of sifting through Dr. Dawson's voluminous
papers and personal memoranda.

 

 

David had spent a few hours each day opening the bulky manila envelopes
in the files, sifting out the notes and correspondence, and segregating
material for the observatory library.

 

 

He went through folder after folder, reading, fascinated. The
correspondence was, in effect, a biography of the Old Man's life. His
student life at Harvard, then as a young professor, his career on the
Astrophysical Journal, his invasion of the National Academy of Science
when still a young man, a brilliant child in a learned and aged society.

 

 

There was much of his trips abroad and his awe at viewing Galileo's
telescope in the museum at Florence. He had written in a letter to his
wife how he had wanted to look through Galileo's little telescope, and
the authorities had flatly refused him the privilege. Then an Italian
astronomer, Abetti, had interceded and persuaded the museum people to
go along. An so the Old Man had carried the telescope, like a priceless
diamond, to the Arcetri Observatory. And there he had fixed it to the
equatorial mount.

 

 

"I waited for the night to come, Emily," wrote the Old Man. "It seemed
years -- centuries -- before the sun went down. But then at last the
stars came out one by one. If I ever lived for any moment, my dear,
this was the moment. I cannot describe my sensations when I grasped the
same tube that Galileo had grasped. My hands rested where his hands had
rested -- my eye was against his eyepiece, where his eye had been. And
then I saw what he had seen -- three hundred years ago.

 

 

"There it was, Emily, high in the south, the same Jupiter the old master
had seen on that first voyage of man through the void of astronomical
space. And the four moons, a string of bright diamonds, hugging the mother
planet close, just as Galileo had seen them. Clear -- and wondrous -- and
beautiful -- and mystic. I have seen Jupiter a hundred times, Emily
darling, through every kind of telescope, but just then I felt the same
awe that Galileo must have felt. I felt that I had seen Jupiter for the
first time. I felt uplifted and humble at the same time, and I think I
even wept."

 

 

There was more. The Old Man's battle with industrial tycoons and wealthy
patrons of the sciences to put up money for Palomar. The skeptics,
the critics, the men who said the 200-inch reflector couldn't be done
and called it a crazy dream. The faith that turned the dream into the
biggest telescope in the world. The heart-breaking technical problems -- the
eternal grinding of the great lens, interrupted by the war in the forties;
the problems of the mount and the supports.

 

 

And finally the dedication in 1948.

 

 

As David took up the last big folder, marked
Current
, a slip of paper
fell from it and dropped on the floor of the office.

 

 

He leaned over, picked it up, and was about to insert it back into the
folder. But something about it caught his eye. It was a piece of scrap
paper, and on it were rough drawings and notations.

 

 

Probably something the Old Man forgot to throw away, thought David. It
didn't seem to belong with these letters, these documents.

 

 

Then he stared at it, and his mouth dropped open and the room began to
spin around.

 

 

He read it again and again.

 

 

The discovery began like a whisper, then swelled up and burgeoned out
through his brain and mushroomed through his nerve centers and grew and
grew, louder and louder, until it was like the beat of a hammer inside
his skull, until he trembled uncontrollably.

 

 

After a long time, in the haze of his reeling mind, he thought of Dr.
Ellender. Ellender, his old professor, Ellender at the Harvard Observatory,
he would know!

 

 

Ellender had been one of the astronomers the Old Man had called in on that
fateful conference before they had announced the coming of the Big Eye.

 

 

Ellender would know the truth.

 

 

He stuffed the scrap of paper into his pocket, got Carol on the phone.

 

 

"Pack my bag, Carol," he said. "I've got to take a pleme to Boston
right away!"

 

 

Dr. Ellender looked at the scrap of paper on his desk for a long time.

 

 

It was a diagram in pencil of the Big Eye -- of Planet
Y
--
and the earth.

 

 

And underneath the Old Man had written in crooked lines, almost as though
he had been doodling:

 

Planet Y and earth. Closest Christmas, 1962.
Cosmic clash close -- close, but not quite.
Lie -- hoax -- hoax -- will it work? Must work -- world at stake --
must work -- must. . . .

 

Ellender sank heavily back in his chair.

 

 

"Then you know, David," he said finally. "Then you know."

 

 

David nodded.

 

 

"Where did you find this piece of paper?"

 

 

"In a file of Dr. Dawson's correspondence, sir. It must have been put
there by mistake."

 

 

"Yes," said Ellender slowly. "We were sure we destroyed all data. In fact,
we burned all our notations and diagrams -- the true ones -- that night."

 

 

There was silence for a while. Ellender's gray eyes searched David's,
his eyes probing deep. He saw the demand in the younger man's eyes,
the burning desire to know.

 

 

"Sit down, David," he said finally.

 

 

Ellender lit a cigar very deliberately, waved out the match, and dropped
it in an ash tray. Then he leaned back in his chair, fingering the piece
of paper on his desk, as though searching for a way to begin.

 

 

"I'll have to tell you, David," he said. "I'll have to tell you the whole
story now. You know something now, but not enough. In this case -- a little
knowledge is a dangerous thing." Ellender paused a moment. "Later on,
when I've finished, you'll know why."

 

 

"Yes?"

 

 

"Back in the beginning, back in November of 1960, I received a phone
call at the observatory at Harvard. It was Dr. Dawson calling from
Palomar. He told me of his new discovery and asked me to come to Palomar
at once. Naturally, this was sensational news. I dropped everything else
and took the first plane out that I could get."

 

 

"Then you didn't know about the path of Planet
Y
when he phoned.
Dr. Ellender?"

 

 

"No. Not then. It was only when we gathered at the conference that
night that Dr. Dawson broke the news. It was then we learned that
Planet
Y
would just miss crashing into the earth on its heavenly
journey. Dr. Dawson insisted on our checking his calculations to make
sure that he was right, that it would miss."

 

 

Dr. Ellender fell silent for a moment. Then he put down his cigar and
said quietly:

 

 

"It was then, David, that Dr. Dawson asked for our collaboration in a
gigantic hoax."

 

 

David leaned forward, his eyes riveted on Ellender's immobile face.

 

 

"You mean, to misinform the world -- to tell people that Planet
Y
and the earth would meet?"

 

 

"Yes. I'll never forget Dr. Dawson then, David, as he stood up and began
to speak. His eyes blazed, and there was the look in them -- well, of a
prophet. He told us that this was our chance, the only chance to save
the world from destroying itself. It was a heaven-made opportunity,
he said, to save men from their own folly, from blowing themselves up
with atomic bombs." Ellender's face was rapt. "We listened. We sat there
without stirring, and listened. Dr. Dawson went on. He pointed out that
this, this objective, was worth everything, the complete sacrifice of
our scientific integrity, everything. Our duty now was not to truth,
but to humanity. We who sat there, we astronomers, knowing what we knew,
had the power to save the world. It meant that we had to lie to the world
and deceive it. It meant that we had to enter into a great conspiracy."

 

 

"I see."

 

 

"Of course the proposal stunned us. In effect, we were being asked to
participate in a great and colossal lie. But then Dr. Dawson pointed out
that we, as scientists, could not afford to let things slip out of our
hands this time. We could not afford to make the same mistake as the
nuclear scientists who had failed to weigh the social consequences of
their discovery and had given the atom over into irresponsible hands. War
was imminent. The first bombs might drop at any moment. We had to act
fast. And we did."

 

 

Now, out of the mist of David's memory, came something Dr. Dawson had
said to Professor Kellar that night at the Big House. Now it was clear,
now it added up. He heard the voice of the Old Man again:

 

 

"Professor Kellar, I am an astronomer. My worlds are universes. I use
giant telescopes to study them. Should I then condescend to turn to
a microscope and study the microbes on my own pitiful planet? The
answer is yes. And again, yes. Perhaps I am lacking in nobility, in
the pure scientist's approach that the truth is the thing, and damn the
consequences. But I believe our first responsibility is to the people
with whom we live."

 

 

David heard Ellender as he went on:

 

 

"And so we released the joint announcement that there would be a cosmic
clash on Christmas Day of 1962 the date when the two planets would be
nearest each other. We knew the consequences of such an announcement
would be staggering, its effect shattering. We knew that there would
be suicides, that few if any children would be bom. But on the scales,
the cost in human life was trivial compared to that of an atomic war."

 

 

David stirred. "How did you know some research astronomer -- some man
who wasn't present there that night -- would not rise to dispute your
calculations on the basis of his own?"

 

 

"We took a chance on that, David," answered Ellender. "And it was a
desperate gamble. But the margin of difference was so small -- almost
infinitesimal -- that even a crack research astronomer might have doubted
his own figures. And we counted on Dr. Dawson's prestige and our own to
add weight to our conclusion. As it turned out, we were lucky."

 

 

"And so you kept the secret within the group? You didn't extend the
conspiracy to anyone else?"

 

 

"No. We entered a solemn pact, David, that we would tell no one, not
even those close to us, not even our immediate colleagues, not even our
own wives. That is why Dr. Dawson did not tell his wife of the lie we had
created, and that is why he did not tell you. We knew that if the truth of
our hoax ever got beyond our own small circle it would somehow leak out
and spread, and that would be the end. A secret like this, we reasoned,
was too big, too important, to hide for very long. Its possession,
under the pressure of the Big Eye, under the stresses and strains it
would bring about, would be almost unbearable. Only we would know it,
we decided that night, only we jvould live with it. And when we died,
it would die with us."

 

 

Now David remembered the Old Man on the night Emily Dawson had died.
Dr. Dawson knew, and he might have saved his wife by assuring her that
there was a future to fight for, and live for, but he had kept silent.
He had kept silent and watched her die, and it had been too much for
him. And so he had gone to the top of the telescope to die. But even
when his mind had gone, he had kept the secret and died with it.

 

 

Dr. Ellender was watching David steadily. Finally he rose and began to
pace the floor.

 

 

"Well, David, now you know. Now -- you know everything. You discovered
our hoax by accident, and now you are one of us."

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

"Now," continued Ellender, "we have seen an exciting new world come to
pass in the last two years. Now that the Big Eye is passing away, almost
every second woman on the street is bearing a child; a new generation will
be born. Our hope is that as the elders die out the old concepts of greed
and power will die with them, while they are still imder the influence
of the miracle. Then the new generation, trained in the concepts of this
new world, and never knowing any other, will take it on from there."