"Arthur C. Doyle - The Poison Belt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clarke Arthur C)

obscure planetary system to which we belong. A third-rate sun,
with its rag tag and bobtail of insignificant satellites, we
float under the same daily conditions towards some unknown end,
some squalid catastrophe which will overwhelm us at the ultimate
confines of space, where we are swept over an etheric Niagara or
dashed upon some unthinkable Labrador. I see no room here for
the shallow and ignorant optimism of your correspondent, Mr.
James Wilson MacPhail, but many reasons why we should watch with
a very close and interested attention every indication of change
in those cosmic surroundings upon which our own ultimate fate
may depend."

"Man, he'd have made a grand meenister," said McArdle. "It just
booms like an organ. Let's get doun to what it is that's
troubling him."

The general blurring and shifting of Fraunhofer's lines of the
spectrum point, in my opinion, to a widespread cosmic change of
a subtle and singular character. Light from a planet is the
reflected light of the sun. Light from a star is a self-produced
light. But the spectra both from planets and stars have, in this
instance, all undergone the same change. Is it, then, a change
in those planets and stars? To me such an idea is inconceivable.
What common change could simultaneously come upon them all? Is
it a change in our own atmosphere? It is possible, but in the
highest degree improbable, since we see no signs of it around
us, and chemical analysis has failed to reveal it. What, then,
is the third possibility? That it may be a change in the
conducting medium, in that infinitely fine ether which extends
from star to star and pervades the whole universe. Deep in that
ocean we are floating upon a slow current. Might that current
not drift us into belts of ether which are novel and have
properties of which we have never conceived? There is a change
somewhere. This cosmic disturbance of the spectrum proves it. It
may be a good change. It may be an evil one. It may be a neutral
one. We do not know. Shallow observers may treat the matter as
one which can be disregarded, but one who like myself is
possessed of the deeper intelligence of the true philosopher
will understand that the possibilities of the universe are
incalculable and that the wisest man is he who holds himself
ready for the unexpected. To take an obvious example, who would
undertake to say that the mysterious and universal outbreak of
illness, recorded in your columns this very morning as having
broken out among the indigenous races of Sumatra, has no
connection with some cosmic change to which they may respond
more quickly than the more complex peoples of Europe? I throw
out the idea for what it is worth. To assert it is, in the
present stage, as unprofitable as to deny it, but it is an
unimaginative numskull who is too dense to perceive that it is
well within the bounds of scientific possibility.