CHAPTER IV
“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.