The Poison Belt | Page 4

letter on `Scientific Possibeelities' in to-day's
Times?"
"No."
McArdle dived down and picked a copy from the floor.
"Read it aloud," said he, indicating a column with his finger. "I'd be
glad to hear it again, for I am not sure now that I have the man's
meaning clear in my head."
This was the letter which I read to the news editor of the Gazette:--
"SCIENTIFIC POSSIBILITIES"
"Sir,--I have read with amusement, not wholly unmixed with some less
complimentary emotion, the complacent and wholly fatuous letter of
James Wilson MacPhail which has lately appeared in your columns
upon the subject of the blurring of Fraunhofer's lines in the spectra both

of the planets and of the fixed stars. He dismisses the matter as of no
significance. To a wider intelligence it may well seem of very great
possible importance--so great as to involve the ultimate welfare of
every man, woman, and child upon this planet. I can hardly hope, by
the use of scientific language, to convey any sense of my meaning to
those ineffectual people who gather their ideas from the columns of a
daily newspaper. I will endeavour, therefore, to condescend to their
limitation and to indicate the situation by the use of a homely analogy
which will be within the limits of the intelligence of your readers."
"Man, he's a wonder--a living wonder!" said McArdle, shaking his head
reflectively. "He'd put up the feathers of a sucking-dove and set up a
riot in a Quakers' meeting. No wonder he has made London too hot for
him. It's a peety, Mr. Malone, for it's a grand brain! We'll let's have the
analogy."
"We will suppose," I read, "that a small bundle of connected corks was
launched in a sluggish current upon a voyage across the Atlantic. The
corks drift slowly on from day to day with the same conditions all
round them. If the corks were sentient we could imagine that they
would consider these conditions to be permanent and assured. But we,
with our superior knowledge, know that many things might happen to
surprise the corks. They might possibly float up against a ship, or a
sleeping whale, or become entangled in seaweed. In any case, their
voyage would probably end by their being thrown up on the rocky
coast of Labrador. But what could they know of all this while they
drifted so gently day by day in what they thought was a limitless and
homogeneous ocean?
Your readers will possibly comprehend that the Atlantic, in this parable,
stands for the mighty ocean of ether through which we drift and that the
bunch of corks represents the little and obscure planetary system to
which we belong. A third-rate sun, with its rag tag and bobtail of
insignificant satellites, we float under the same daily conditions
towards some unknown end, some squalid catastrophe which will
overwhelm us at the ultimate confines of space, where we are swept
over an etheric Niagara or dashed upon some unthinkable Labrador. I

see no room here for the shallow and ignorant optimism of your
correspondent, Mr. James Wilson MacPhail, but many reasons why we
should watch with a very close and interested attention every indication
of change in those cosmic surroundings upon which our own ultimate
fate may depend."
"Man, he'd have made a grand meenister," said McArdle. "It just booms
like an organ. Let's get doun to what it is that's troubling him."
The general blurring and shifting of Fraunhofer's lines of the spectrum
point, in my opinion, to a widespread cosmic change of a subtle and
singular character. Light from a planet is the reflected light of the sun.
Light from a star is a self-produced light. But the spectra both from
planets and stars have, in this instance, all undergone the same change.
Is it, then, a change in those planets and stars? To me such an idea is
inconceivable. What common change could simultaneously come upon
them all? Is it a change in our own atmosphere? It is possible, but in the
highest degree improbable, since we see no signs of it around us, and
chemical analysis has failed to reveal it. What, then, is the third
possibility? That it may be a change in the conducting medium, in that
infinitely fine ether which extends from star to star and pervades the
whole universe. Deep in that ocean we are floating upon a slow current.
Might that current not drift us into belts of ether which are novel and
have properties of which we have never conceived? There is a change
somewhere. This cosmic disturbance of the spectrum proves it. It may
be a good change. It may be an evil one. It may be a neutral one. We do
not know. Shallow observers may treat the matter