The Giant Stumbles Read online

  was, but somehow, this day—the odd atmosphere which she could not explain—made her uneasy even over small normal things.

  She felt irritated when she realized it. She knew that whenever everything seemed slightly wrong, slightly off beat, even slightly ominous, it was nothing more than nerves, an unrecognized indigestion. Nigel often said so.

  “The world’s all right if your tummy’s all right,” he said.

  She shook a clean sheet out of its folds to put on Leila bed.

  Again a faint upstart of uneasiness came into her. Leila was a very successful young lady. She was European representative of the American magazine Wednesday, and she bought Nigel’s articles for fantastic sums. Of course Nigel was a very popular writer, and his prices were just and his business with Leila was shrewd and clear-cut business; but Leila, off duty, had a rather clear pash on Nigel and he was far from averse to her beauty and charm.

  Normally Hal felt an iron edge inside her when they got together, though her smile was bright and quite genuine, as it would be when she felt sure of her ability fight and win. But today, instead of the fire of the coming challenge brightening her spirit, she felt dull and uneasy

  She made the bed and stood there, staring at the blaze of flowers she had put on the table. She shook her head.

  “I must get out of this mood,” she said.

  When she finished the rooms she went back into t kitchen. Nigel was standing by the window, supervise the youngsters’ tea and exchanging chatter.

  Yet when he laughed she saw his eyes heavy and dull.

  “The weather,” she thought. “Too much heat. The storm didn’t clear the air. That’s all it is.”

  It was absurd trying to believe a thing like that. She loved heat and the sun like a cat would. She could never have enough of it.

  “Can we see television till bedtime. Mummy?” John id, wriggling off his seat.

  “All right. Off you go,” she said.

  Harry and John ran away leaving the table stacked, she began to clear it away.

  “Better let Harry pop down on his bike and get Mrs. Barnes to come in for this evening,” Nigel said.

  “I will when the programme’s over,” she said. “It’s the cowboy one they like.”

  She carried things to the sink.

  “Nigel, why did you say the man wouldn’t come for e barge?” she said.

  He looked startled.

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. And you said it in such a funny way. As if you knew he wouldn’t come.” She looked at him.

  He was staring into nothing.

  ‘Yes, I did say that. I remember,” he said.

  “Why? Has the man backed out? I mean—how could you know?”

  “I know nothing about him,” he said.

  “Then why did you say such a funny thing?”

  He looked at her, and there was a sadness in his is.

  “I’m waiting,” he said. “I’m waiting for one sign, and if it comes, something’s going to happen ……” He stopped altogether.

  “What? You frighten me, Nigel. You sound so odd.” He went to her and gripped her by the shoulders. “Darling,” he said, “supposing that we lost everything ; we had. Supposing that ….”

  They came in suddenly, like an explosion of laughter, colour and brown limbs. The girl first, blonde hair like straw against the tan of her sunburned skin, wearing ar outside shirt and shorts and little white beach shoes. Joe came after, laughing, face red with embarrassment.

  “Mummy—Dad!” he said. “This is Amanda. You must meet Amanda. She’s dying to meet you!”

  Nigel and Hal shook hands with Amanda. Amanda die not seem at all shy of this first meeting. Hal felt a sudden little pang of jealousy.

  “We… ” began Joe, and choked. “We want to get married.”

  Amanda smiled, and looked questioningly from one to the other of the parents. In her cold blue eyes there was a light which seemed to say she did not care what they said, but her glance lingered on the father.

  “Darling,” said Hal, smiling bravely. “But what . surprise.”

  Good heavens! she thought. This is the last straw. Why is everything dreadful suddenly happening to us?

  Her mind had been wiped clean by this disaster.

  “How charming,” said Nigel. “Do—sit down—or should we go into another room? The kitchen is hardly the place for—celebrations. Come into the lounge, my dear …”

  He took Amanda’s bare arm and led her. The shoe was a superficial one to him. Nothing could wipe his mini clean of the blackness that was already there.

  III

  Harriet felt the dread, the inescapable unreality of a nightmare. The room, the girl, her son, her husband a moved about in fantasy, turning slowly in a garish coloured world cut off from her, like exotic fish in a bowl, yet somehow exuding a menace that she could feel.

  She seemed to keep hearing her husband saying those queer, terrifying words. “Supposing that we lost everything we had?”

  Here she was losing things, one by one, like the face of a cliff crumbling away, a little at first; just dust particles, then bigger pieces, great masses, then the final toppling avalanche.

  Joe ! What on earth did he mean? How had this happened? Who was the girl? Where had she come from? Why should she take him like this? How could things suddenly come about when no one ever thought of them - or saw anything happen?

  The question gathered speed and pitch in her mind, She felt suddenly that she must scream and go on screaming until the tension inside her slackened off from exhaustion.

  Suppose we lost everything. Suppose we lost everything. First Joe, then Nigel. Then Harry, then John then the house and everything would be swallowed up in the sea—but it wouldn’t matter then. It wouldn’t matter at all.

  She swallowed her drink and somehow Nigel was close by and he refilled her glass.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, very softly.

  The tension went like elastic unwinding, and she wanted to cry for sheer gratitude and love for Nigel. She wallowed the second drink and felt calmer.

  “Heavens!” she thought. “What a state I’m gettin in!”

  Amanda was gay and Joe seemed almost stupefied with happiness at what looked like a triumph as unexpected to him as to his parents.

  He was on the point of taking her home when the arrogant blowing of car horns heralded the arrival of Leila. She always blew L in morse.

  “Heavens! She’s here already,” Hal said. ‘You carry on, Nigel dear. I must see Mrs. Barnes. Good-bye, Amanda.”

  She went out and the young pair left, laughingly confident in their future.

  Nigel glanced in the decorative mirror on the wall, then put his fingers through his hair, as if appearance no longer mattered.

  Leila came in at the french windows from the beach. She wore a brilliant red silk kimono which made her dark hair look jet.

  “The Eastern look, dearest,” she laughed. “As opposed to your Westward-backward-through-the-hedge- look. How are you, Nigel?”

  “Vague,” he said, offering a cigarette box. “We’ve just heard Joe’s got engaged.”

  “Joey? But he’s only a baby !” she said.

  “He’s eighteen. It’s a bit of a staggerer. I’ve been trying to remember if I ever did the same thing.” He gave her a drink without asking; one he knew she liked.

  “Surely that wasn’t the urgent call?” she said.

  He looked at her, almost with suspicion.

  “Far from it,” he said.

  “What is it? Something new and world-beating?”

  “World-beating all right,” he said, looking away from her. “I’ve got Rex Hason coming down, and a man called Benstead. He’s a mathematician. He does a lot of my calculations for me. Checks, you know.”

  “Figures make me shudder,” she admitted, sitting or the arm of the sofa. “Well? What’s it about?”

  for me, I’m on duty.” She laughed. “I’m horribly commercial.”

 
; A buzzer went softly in the distance. Nigel muttered an apology and went out to answer. She got up and walked to the windows. The beach had cleared of holiday-makers. The sands were yellow and smooth, the sea rippling on the shelving edge of the beach. The sky still had a brassy tint from the fury of the sun but in the east the cooled shadow of night was starting to creep.

  Rex Hason came into the room alone.

  “Hallo, Leila. Nigel told me you’d be here.”

  They talked for a moment, then he said:

  “What’s the conference about?”

  “I don’t know. If I were to guess, I’d say Ni’s on to something that’s worrying him stiff.”

  “Must be something to worry Nigel,” Rex said, and grinned as he looked out of the open windows. “Still, there are worse places to spend a night. Far, far worse.” He took a cigarette from the table box.

  In the curving corridor outside the room, Nigel stood with Benstead, a very tall, thin man with little hair and gold-rimmed spectacles who carried a small case.

  “I have the figures you wanted, Mr. Rhodes,” he said. “They were extremely complicated. I used the electronic computer.”

  “They are check figures,” Nigel said. “I want to make sure there is no mistake.”

  “No possibility,” said Benstead, shaking his head.

  “We shall know at some time this evening,” Nigel said.

  Benstead gave him a strange, sideways look.

  “It’s very hot,” he said, as if thinking it best to change the subject. “The train was crowded. They always seen to be crowded in a heatwave.”

  “It isn’t one of Nigel’s tricks?” said Rex, looking round with a faint grin. “I mean we’re not standing on a hot carpet or something ?”

  “Nigel might do anything,” Leila said. “It’s just the way he’s stage-managing this affair. Gives you the feeling that there’s something ominous in the air.”

  Nigel came in.

  “Hal won’t be a minute. She’s putting the youngsters to bed,” he said. “Sorry to keep you hanging about. Things are a bit haywire. May I have those figures, Benstead ?” The tall man opened his case and took out a number of sheets. Nigel spread them on a table and frowned over them for a moment or more, but that was all.

  Benstead noticed he did not compare them with any of his own.

  Hal came in. She looked artificially bright, and Nigel glanced up at her anxiously. Hal was stricken with Joe’s news, which he knew too well she did not like. In fact she hated it, and vaguely he understood why.

  “Last night,” Nigel said suddenly, “there was a storm. It came from nowhere and disappeared. It was not tracked by any weather station. It did not follow any met. chart. It just appeared, and went again.”

  His listeners relaxed, watching him. They knew this was It, but they seemed puzzled about his casual, almost offhand manner. He started to pace, but stared about him, into the air, at the windows, just as if no one was in the room with him.

  “Where the idea came from, I don’t know,” he went on. “But it suddenly occurred to me that there was some particular meaning in this storm.

  “It was because of that idea I began to work out certain figures. As you know, I have the assistance of observatories and scientific establishments all over the world.

  They give every assistance, especially where they belie man may be on to something new.”

  Hal suddenly found herself jerked from thinking of Joe to the fantastic cost of the phone bill after a night ringing up all round the world.

  “I don’t propose to go into my calculations here,” Nigel said. “They are available when you want them. I am not going into scientific details. They are ready, too. I am just going to tell you what is going to happen.

  “You won’t believe it. Probably then you will want the figures to try and find the error. But there isn’t one.

  “The position is, quite simply, this: the sum total of all nuclear fission has created a charge within the earth’s composition, in just the same way as electricity can be charged in a storage battery. It has so far not been detected, until the storm last night. After that storm, and when I had arrived at certain figures, I calculated that similar outbreaks must have happened in other places during last night.

  “By telephoning I found that this was the case, and that my calculations had shown the times and the positions of these storms.

  “In no case was the storm of normal origin.

  “My calculations show that, slightly over twenty four hours from the first storms, another series will begin. I have the times accurately worked out. Within a very short time you will find that I am right.”

  He stopped and poured himself a long splash of soda his back to the audience.

  “You mean there will be an outbreak every twenty four hours ?” Leila said.

  He turned back.

  “Yes. The timing of the outbreaks coincides with the earth’s revolution, and the spin rate, as you know is roughly twenty-four hours—to the schoolboy, roughly a thousand miles an hour.”

  “I never can believe that,” Leila said, to nobody in particular.

  “Frankly, I’d never worked it out,” Rex said. “It is surprising when you think of it.”

  “These storms are part of a chain reaction,” Nigel said. “They may increase in severity; they may not. They may merely go on, breaking out at these regular intervals for five revolutions, when the chain reaction will be completed.

  “The crisis of that reaction will cause the spin rate of the earth to decrease momentarily.”

  “Thank goodness!” Leila said. “I was starting to feel giddy.” She felt uneasy, frightened by the manner of the man.

  There was a pause. Benstead stared at Nigel and wiped his sweating face with his handkerchief.

  “I must be dim,” Rex Hason said, shaking his head. “I don’t quite get it ”

  Hal sat staring at the creeping shadow of the still night coining over the calm sea, and thinking of Joe, but trying hard to understand what Nigel said.

  “It is generally thought,” Nigel said, “that gravity is controlled by the spin rate.”

  He turned and sloshed whisky into his soda.

  “The—er—gravitational pull ” said Benstead, swallowing with embarrassment, “—would become less—or fail, I suppose, according to the length of the—er— pause.”

  “According to the period of deceleration,” said Nigel.

  Hal stared, her attention caught.

  “Do you mean everything would fly off the earth?” she said.

  “According to the period of the pause,” Nigel answered. If it is a fraction of a second, buildings will lift, and /hen the rate goes back to normal, will settle again. But he effect will be to crumble them to bricks. People will suddenly be thrown upwards, the height again depending .n the period, and”—he shrugged—“will fall again. The seas will rise and may again consume much of the land hey lost a million years ago. The turbulence of the air nil be such as to become a wrecking force perhaps as strong as the sea; a whirlwind magnified a hundred times. Those are the simple—the obvious things we know must happen.”

  Hal sat there, watching him and shaking her head very slightly, refusing to believe. Benstead wiped his face again.

  “But you mean this might be the end of the world!” Leila protested.

  “The end of the world of man, which is the only one that counts—to us,” Nigel said.

  Rex got up from his chair.

  “There must be a mistake,” he said. “It couldn’t work out so accurately.”

  “Ask Benstead,” said Nigel. “Now he knows what the figures mean he can corroborate what I say.”

  Benstead swallowed, looked with humble apology at Rex and nodded.

  “Yes, it’s—right,” he said.

  “The end of the world in five days!” Leila said, almost angrily. “But it’s madness!”

  “Indeed it’s madness,” said Nigel. “But it isn’t the earth that’s doing it.”
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  “A chain reaction from the cumulative effect of nuclear fission?” Rex said, as if trying to get it right.

  “Yes. I have the dates and amounts of every experiment, every test carried out since the original experiments at Cambridge, years ago. These details are simpler to obtain than is generally supposed, especially now that the outbreaks will themselves prove the sum.”

  Rex was determined to get it clear.

  “The earth has become charged with electricity? Overcharged, in fact?”

  “That’s a simple way to put it,” Nigel said. “But it isn’t electricity quite as you understand it, though its effect will be on the earth’s magnetic field. It is that which will cause the momentary instability.”

  Hal reached out and switched on a standard lamp. Rex went to the windows and stared out.

  “When is this storm due?”

  Nigel looked at his watch.

  “In two minutes and forty seconds,” he said.

  “The sky’s as clear as a mirror,” Rex said.

  Leila got up and went there to look out.

  “Yes, it is,” she said. “The figures must be wrong.” Benstead shook his head strenuously. Hal got up and went to the table where Nigel was standing. He took her hand and squeezed it and then she went with him to the window.

  The veranda roof hid the sky above the house, but Rex went out and looked up.

  “There isn’t a cloud within a hundred miles,” he said.

  The stars gleamed and winked in the deepening velvet of the night. The sea lay like a shimmering mirror. The air was still and hot.

  The gathering of the shadow over the dome of the sky was so gradual that no one noticed it. It need have been no more than the deepening of the night, for the stars could still be seen.

  “Forty seconds to go, you say,” Rex said. “And there’s no cloud.”

  Nigel said nothing.

  In thirty-eight seconds the sky was seared with the firsy flash of the lightning, and Rex staggered back into the room blinded by the shock of it.