Zach Hughes: Pressure Man

“Well, it wasn’t really a miracle,” Dom said. “It came at the right time, and that made it seem miraculous. The materials were there. We merely had the hardware to go get them and put them to use. The most puzzling part of it, to most people, is actually the simplest. That part of the miracle is repeated over and over, every day, somewhere on Earth. When the air is overcharged with vapor, the vapor condenses and falls as precipitation. If you overcharge an atmosphere with the proper amounts and the proper compounds of carbon and hydrogen, then the predpation will be in the form of carbon-hydrogen compounds, or carbohydrates.”

“Or manna from heaven,” Marrow said.

“The ancient Jews called it that,” Dom said. “The Talmud said bread rained from heaven. In Icelandic legend, people ate the morning dew; Buddhists called it heavenly oil, perfume, and ointment. It came in a time of troubles, and was called a miracle, just as it comes to us in a time of trouble. The only difference is that instead of a god or goddess bringing it to us, we went out and got it.”

“Yes, thanks to the foresight of that great man, J.J. Barnes,” Marrow said, smiling directly into the camera.

“Thanks to Immanuel Velikovsky,” Dom said. “Who is long dead.”

“Ah, yes,” Marrow said.

“That’s why the third ship is to be named the Velikovsky.” Dom said.

Much later, Dom lay in a hammock watching the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico. It was a lovely evening. He felt good. The warm softness of a summer evening caressed his skin. An empty drink glass was in his hand, and he was trying to work up enough energy to go inside and fill it when Doris came out.

“Hey, admiral,” she called. “Your interview is on.”

He ambled in. He saw himself standing beside John Marrow. He grunted and went to mix a drink, but he was human so he came back to see himself as others saw him. However, he couldn’t keep his eyes on his own face, because Doris was standing behind him, looking quite nice…

“You look good in living color,” he said.

“You look sleepy.”

“I was.”

“There are nuts and there are nuts,” Dom was saying. “Velikovsky was a nut who lived and wrote in the middle part of the twentieth century. Briefly, he evolved a theory, by bringing together information from hundreds of ancient writings—”

“Material which was highly suspect,” Marrow put in.

“Suspect only because of the limitations of early writing,” Dom said. “Take the Bible, for example. It was written in Hebrew. Hebrew is a primitive and very inexact language. In Hebrew, as in most ancient languages, one word can mean several things. Thus, depending on the translator, you can read just about anything you want to read into the Bible or any other writings from the early times. Shortly after Velikovsky’s time, for example, a German used the same sources to prove to a lot of people that Earth had been visited by spacers from another planet. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Velikovsky had a slight advantage with thinking people, because he proved to be right in a couple of predictions. He predicted the higher-than-estimated surface temperature on Venus.”

“Doesn’t that higher surface temperature on Venus play a vital part in Velikovsky’s theory?”

“Velikovsky said that Venus was thrown out of the planet Jupiter into an erratic orbit which brought her into near collision with both Mars and the Earth,” Dom said.

“At the time of the Exodus, and again in the time of Joshua, in the Bible,” Marrow said.

“But the Velikovsky theory didn’t account for all known phenomena,” Dom said, “so it was treated as a rather scary and very harebrained idea. It was largely forgotten.”

“But not by J.J. Barnes,” Marrow said.

“Yes,” Dom said, “Velikovsky’s theory was that the carbonigenous clouds torn out of Jupiter by the planet Venus made carbohydrates fall onto Earth during the moments of near collision. One nut remembered another nut and we went off to Jupiter and found it to be, truly, a land of milk and honey.”

“At this moment,” Marrow said, “a cargo of carbonigenous cloud from Jupiter is being pumped into a vast cloud chamber on the moon. There, the carbohydrates will precipitate out, be shaped into loaves, loaves which you and I will be eating in the near future.”

“Well,” Dom said, “that’s that.” He switched off the set.

“He’s an insufferable little man,” Doris said.

“I don’t want to talk about him,” Dom said.

“Would you like to review a little history to get ready for the voter’s test?”

“Not now.”

“Something is on your mind,” she said.

“You,” he said. “Velikovsky.”

“I understand the first,” she said, with a leer.

“Was Velikovsky right?”

“At least about the properties of the Jovian atmosphere.”

“Was it a lucky guess?”

“He doesn’t explain everything, of course,” she said. “You’re thinking about those frozen mammoths, aren’t you?”

“He’s the only one who even had a good guess about them.”

“Perhaps it’s good that everything can’t be explained,” Doris said. “It leaves us something to worry about and something to learn, a little bit at a time, so that we won’t sit around and think about what you’re thinking about all the time.”

He grinned. “I’ll get around to that.” He stood and looked out a window. “Mars was a living planet once. The sun may have been hotter, the planet was certainly wetter. A change in orbit would explain why she died, and Velikovsky said Mars had troubles with Venus before she settled down into a stable orbit. Velikovsky uses the changes in Earth calendars to make some good points. People who had good math seemed to make silly mistakes about the length of the day and changed their calendars later. And why, in all of the primitive races, was there a fear of comets?”

“Are you leading up to something?” she asked.

“Envision the orbits of Pluto and Neptune.”

“Yes, I see what you mean,” she said. “Pluto actually comes inside the orbit of Neptune at one point.”

“Will there ever be a collision? Pluto’s a small planet. If he got knocked off his orbit and came cruising across the orbits of the inner planets, what would happen?”

“They’re not in the same plane, Pluto and Neptune, but I think you have my attention. I’ll do some calculations. And that takes care of Velikovsky for the moment. What about taking care of me?”

“I want to do some research,” he said. “Can you get me all the observations of the outer planets? Figure a cost on taking one of the new hydropower scouts out there at the next conjunction. I think it’s within the next three years.”

“You’ve been thinking about this for some time,” she said.

“Do you think the two of us can handle one of the new Explorer class scouts?”

“A second honeymoon to Pluto,” she said. “I’m underwhelmed. Don’t you have any immediate work I could, ah, help you with?”

She stood and looked into his eyes. She was dressed in shorts and halter. The very feminine spread of her hips reminded him that he did have immediate plans for her.

Pluto would have to wait.