“I see you are finally convinced,” resumed York. “Now tell me, does any danger threaten civilization?”
“Danger?” The president shook his head. “We don’t know what you mean!”
Relieved, but still mystified, York recounted briefly the episode in space.
The president shook his head sadly.
“So that was the ultimate fate of those two!” he murmured, and went on in explanation. “They were two flyers who told a wild story. They claimed they had been to Mount Olympus and had found the mythological gods of Greece, or at least three of them, called the Three Eternals. Furthermore, they were evil beings and planned destruction of civilisation, by causing some hare-brained geological upheaval.
“They were so insistent that we sent ships to Mount Olympus, but of course nothing was found there. They claimed to have been in a great marble building. Obviously insane, they were sent to an asylum. They escaped three months ago, and we heard no more of them till today, from you. Their mad flight to Alpha Centauri to search for worlds to migrate to, proves their insanity. They insisted the three evil gods would not rest till all mankind were annihilated!”
3
IT was a strange story the councillor in Sol City related, and later, when York recounted it to Vera, he was still thoughtful. “Hallucination, after all!” Vera said with a note of finality.
“But, Tony, you still look a little worried.”
“I am,” he admitted. “What do you say, Vera, that we take a trip around this Forty-first Century world, just to see that everything is all right?”
Vera nodded enthusiastically.
“Let’s! After a thousand years of absence, it will be intriguing to look over this old Earth of ours.”
In their space ship, upheld and motivated by the subtle warpings of gravitation, they soared over the world of mortal men.
Civilization had taken great strides forward, particularly in technology and industry. All the great cities of the Thirty-first Century had grown greater still. The somewhat makeshift space ship dromes of that earlier time in interplanetary expansion had been replaced by magnificent structures. With remarkable speed and efficiency, ships could be unloaded, restocked, refuelled and overhauled. Interplanetary trade flourished.
The population of this age had reached a new peak. No less than ten billion human beings scurried over Earth’s surface, and at least another billion were spread among the other planets.
The food problem had been solved by weather control, the manufacture of artificial staples from mineral matter, and the conversion of all desert lands into vast gardens. The great Sahara was no longer a desert, as York and his wife had known it. Irrigation through a tremendous canal from the Mediterranean had transformed it into one giant wheat field.
To supply his ever-growing demand for metals, mankind had finally tapped the vast ocean reservoir. Hundreds of electrical plants, on important coasts, powered by the eternal tides, extracted salt products. Ocean water poured in one end, to come out at the other almost chemically pure. Every element known, in varying amounts, then reposed in the caked residues in their plants. It was simply a matter of the application of Forty-first Century chemistry to separate these materials.
The wealth of products thus made available could not be measured in antiquated terms of dollars and cents. Of radium alone, least abundant of the ocean solutes, there was extracted a full ton each year. Gold, now a useful metal for its resistance to corrosion, coated everything metallic that people wore or used daily.
The high economic standard resulting from this material wealth had also allowed cultural expansion. Even the most backward of races and groups had access to literature, art, music and facilities for scientific research. Travel was within the means of most, and the preserved wilds of central South America, North America’s West, and parts of Asia and Africa were constantly frequented by tourists.
“And this is the civilization supposedly marked for destruction!” York mused. “Who would even contemplate such a thing? Who would have the power? I’m just about convinced, now, that those two poor devils were hopelessly insane.” He brightened. “Now we can take another trip around the world, and really enjoy it!”
It was while they were leisurely crossing the South Atlantic one day that York suddenly halted their slow passage and lowered the ship toward water. In the bright sunlight, the smoothly rolling waves made a fascinating picture. But York stared as though he had never seen such a sight before. Finally he took out a pair of binoculars and trained them below.
“That’s water, Tony!” laughed Vera. “Dihydrogen oxide—remember?”
“But you never saw water quite like that, before,” returned York seriously. “Look for yourself.”
After a moment, Vera looked up from the glasses. “Why, it looks as if countless little seeds are floating—”
“Those aren’t seeds, but bubbles!” interposed York. “MilIions upon millions of tiny bubbles coming up from the ocean floor. Let’s find out how far their range is.”
He was already at the controls, sending the ship parallel to the ocean level. A mile away he stopped, looked, nodded. “Still there!”
A mile further he went, again nodded. Next time he went five miles, then ten, a hundred, a thousand, and still found bubbles. His face grew solemn.
The next day he sent their ship scudding in straight lines north, and south, and east and west, and in six other radial directions over the South Atlantic. He stopped every hundred miles while Vera reported with the binoculars. They mapped the area infused with bubbles as roughly three thousand miles long and two thousand miles wide, set squarely between Central America and Africa. It included all the Sargasso Sea.
“What does it mean?” asked Vera when her patience at her husband’s moody silence had run out “Why should this vast area of ocean surface be filled with bubbles? Where do they come from?”
“They can only come from below, from—” York paused, snapped on his radio. “Anton York calling the central radio exchange,” he barked.
“Y-yes sir,” came a half-frightened voice a moment later, awed by the distinguished caller. “What is it, sir?”
“Connect me with your main oceanology station in the Atlantic, please.”
When the station at Cape Verde had answered and the director was called, York queried him.
“Yes,” came the reply, “we’ve noticed those bubbles all right. They’ve been coming up for the past ten years! Their origin is beyond our best guesses. We’ve sent diving bells down a mile, our limit, without any clue. The bubbles must come from below that.”
“One more question,” York said. “Have the coast lines of the Atlantic changed at all in those ten years?”
Suddenly a sharp note of worry sprang into the director’s voice.
“Yes! It’s a disturbing fact that the entire coast line of Western Europe is sinking at an unprecedented rate. Already, relatively, the water level has climbed a foot. Many coast lands will soon be threatened by inundation.
“The effect isn’t local, however. The coasts of America are lowering also. And in the Pacific, the same thing is happening. There, too, a vast area of bubbles exists. We scientists have taken up the problem seriously. We don’t know what this may lead to, if it keeps up, but we are making plans to dyke all sea coasts.”
“Thanks.” York snapped off the radio abruptly. He stared unseeingly out of a port.
“If this keeps up,” he murmured, “dykes won’t help a bit. Coasts sinking! Is it a natural event—or otherwise!”