Фред Хойл: October the First Is Too Late

At last our turn for dinner came round, none too soon, for I was hungry. We were put at a table by ourselves.

‘Any idea of what you want to do tomorrow?’ I asked.

‘I’m afraid we’ll have to call it off, Dick. But don’t let me drag you back to London.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Not explicitly. How are you fixed?’

‘In what way?’

‘Have you any engagements, ones it would be difficult to break?’

‘Not really. Why?’

‘I’ll have to go back to the States. If you’re free I’d like you to come along.’

I laughed. My bank manager was just going to love the suggestion. ‘What would I use for money?’

‘There’s no problem. You travel on contract.’

We closed the subject at this point until we were back in the van. Then John began, ‘I suppose I’d better tell you a bit of what’s going on. It won’t make much sense I’m afraid.’

I put a pile of clothing under my pillow, to make a backrest as I stretched out on my bunk. My legs were beginning to stiffen up.

‘I suppose you’ve followed the general outline of the things that have been turning up in space research?’

‘Yes, more or less, so far as it’s possible from newspaper reports.’

‘One of the aims of the space programme is to take a look at the outside world in unfamiliar parts of the spectrum.’

‘You mean things like X-rays and gamma rays?’

‘That’s right. But of course X-rays and gamma rays are at the high frequency end. There’s a lot of stuff in the far infra-red, stuff that gets absorbed in our own atmosphere just like the X-rays do. I’m talking now about wavelengths roughly a hundred times less than the shortest radio waves.’

‘What’s the point—curiosity?’

‘It started that way. The first idea was to pick up radiation from the Sun, to check that it had the intensity everybody expected it to have.’

‘Did it?’

‘Within a reasonable margin of accuracy. It wasn’t something to hold a press conference about. Yet interesting, technically. That was all, or nearly all.’

‘It doesn’t sound as if it would make the girls swoon.’

‘What was odd though was that some of the electronics, not in this experiment itself you understand, but electronics connected with other things that were going on, went badly wrong. It seemed as if they were suffering from pick-up troubles. Naturally there was a hell of an inquest about it. Nothing sensible could be found. All the circumstantial evidence pointed to a modulation in the region of a hundred megacycles, a modulation on the current output from the new infra-red experiment. On the face of it this seemed impossible. Well, to cut it short, the lads just had time to modify the gadgetry before the next shot went up. The circumstantial evidence unfortunately turned out to be right. There was a modulation at nearly a hundred megacycles.’

‘Could it have been a pick-up as well?’

‘Everybody felt it had to be. Well, the inquest grew now to major proportions. It was still going on when I left the States. I’m not involved myself very directly with this stuff. It happens the chap in charge of the experiment is a friend of mine. The last thing I heard was that they had a proof it wasn’t the Sun itself, at least they thought so. They thought they’d demonstrated it had come from the rocket. Yet nobody had any real idea of why or how.’

‘You think it might be the Sun after all?’

I knew how John’s mind worked, at any rate psychologically. I had a pretty good notion this was his opinion.

‘I don’t know—yet. Back at the hotel I put a call through to this friend. I couldn’t get him personally but I got one of his chaps. They’re going to ring back with some information I need tomorrow morning. Then I’ll be in a much better position to say.’

I lay awake that night for a long time. It astonished me how easily John had been able to fall asleep. I could hear him breathing deeply and quite regularly as if there was nothing in the world to worry about. I had a general idea of what he had told me. Yet for the life of me I couldn’t see its relevance to the disturbing incidents of the last three days.

The following morning John went back to the hotel. It was half past ten by the time he came back.

‘We’ll have lunch at twelve. There’s a plane from Glasgow to London at three o’clock. We should have time to catch it.’

‘How about the car and the caravan?’

‘We’ll take the car to Glasgow. I’ve made arrangements for the van to be collected from here.’

‘What else?’

‘Can you manage the midday plane to New York on Friday?’

This would give me three days to put my affairs to rights in London. It wouldn’t be easy but I could make it. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Good, I’m going to put in an hour’s calculation.’

John worked quickly and keenly. I could see it was nothing but algebra and arithmetic. As I watched I was struck by the difference between the mathematician and the musician. When I had worked myself with a similar intensity a few weeks ago, back in Cornwall, I had been in a kind of trance. There was nothing trance-like about John. With a swoop like an eagle he came to a stop. I didn’t need to ask him if it had turned out successfully. So much was obvious. Nor did I ask him what it meant.

‘Satisfied?’

‘Yes.’ He sat for a minute and then added, ‘Funny.’

‘How?’

‘The conclusion. I have demonstrated the correctness of a hunch—at the expense of an appalling conclusion. Oddly enough it seems more satisfactory this way round, better than being wrong and having a sensible, straightforward answer. It shows the important thing is to know your reasoning powers work properly. Where they lead you is really unimportant, which I suppose is why human beings are able to achieve completely new things. Basically, it’s why we’re no longer swinging by our tails from trees.’

That was all I got out of him.

The journey back to London was uneventful. We parted at the air terminal, each to make his own arrangements. We didn’t meet again until an hour before the plane to New York was due to depart on the Friday morning.

The intervening days were busy enough for me. Actually I must admit that I was quite glad to get out of London. Frankly, I had got my personal affairs into something of a tangle. I managed to track down Alex Hamilton, not an easy exercise. I asked him to keep an eye on my place, to use it if he wanted. I told him a little of my difficulties, lest in occupying my simple apartments he should find himself assailed by too many girls on too many sides. This sent him into another of his prolonged fits of silent laughter. He asked me if I had any spare unwanted cash to lend him. I said emphatically I had not.

We grew mellow in the transatlantic plane after a couple of cocktails. The hours slipped away and John and I soon found ourselves through American immigration and customs.

We took a taxi from Kennedy airport to an hotel whose name I have forgotten. It was somewhere mid-town. At dinner that night, which we ate in a nearby restaurant, I at last got round to asking John what his plans were. He answered:

‘We’re going on to California as soon as I’m through the things I must do here. It’ll probably take about three days. I think it’s simpler if I work it out alone. Do you think you can keep yourself happy for a day or two?’

I said I had no doubt I could find plenty to do. He went on:

‘I’m going to turn in pretty early tonight. I find it’s a good idea to take the change of clock in at least a couple of bites.’

It may seem strange that until then I had no idea of exactly where we were going. It is my practice in life to take as little account of times and schedules as I can. I like to be as little tied down by commitments. Surprises are the spice of life. Surprises rarely come to those busy fellows who are always consulting their engagement book. As I got into bed that night I had no idea what I was going to do in the next two or three days. It turned out they were quite uneventful. For one thing I felt tired, more exactly, drained of energy, I suppose by the five-hour shift in the clock.