“The fact remains,” said the commander of the armed forces, “that we can only prevent an overall catastrophe by preparing what may become an overall catastrophe. People who can’t face that fact have no place in politics.” “I disagree once more with my military adviser,” said the president. “There is always a place for the idealist in politics. Our poet has given us a wonderful idea. He suggests we form an international parliament to rule the heavens. We certainly will! Our allies will like us for it, our competitors will think they can use it to delay us. Loud-mouthed statesmen everywhere will feel important because they are members of it, which will reduce the risk of war. I hope, sir” — he addressed the poet — “I hope you will represent us in this parliament. The whole conception is yours. You will be inaugurating a new era.” The poet blushed and looked pleased.
“Meanwhile,” said the president, “since the formation of this parliament may take years, mankind will advance to its destiny in the sky. Science will open a gateway into a universal store-house of empty space, remote minerals, and unbreathable gas.”
My chief and the army commander worked hard in the following days and all the people of the summit were drawn into money-making activity. Low-level fuel-bunkers and furnaces were built beneath crucibles from which pipes ran up the central lift-shaft. Lifts with clamps fixed to them now slid up cables attached to the axletree’s outer wall. The top pylon sprouted three huge burners, each differently shaped, with spire-like drills in the centres and domes beneath to shield the operators. Meanwhile, foreign statesmen met the poet in a steering committee to draw up an agenda for an international legal committee which would write a constitution for an international parliament which would govern the heavens. The steering committee’s first meetings were inconclusive. And then the first big test was held.
It lasted six seconds, made a mark on the sky like a twisted stocking, and produced a sound which paralysed the nearest operators and put observers on other summits into a coma lasting several hours. The sound was less concentrated at ground level, where the irritation it caused did not result in unconsciousness. And inside the axletree nobody heard it at all, or experienced it only as a pang of inexplicable unease: the outer shape of the building baffled the vibration. The chief announced to the directors that the test had been successful. He said, “We now know that our machines work perfectly. We now know, and can guard against, their effect on human beings. My technicians and all foreign observers are being issued with padded helmets which make the wearers deaf to exterior vibration. People on ground level can protect themselves by plugging their ears with twists of cloth or withered grass, though small lumps of rubber would be more suitable. We will start the main test in two days’ time.”
“You intend to deafen half the dwellers on the continent for a whole month?” said the president. “Listen, I don’t like groundlings more than anybody else here. But I need their support. So does the axletree. So do you.”
“We have enough resources to do without their support for at least four weeks,” said the director of food and fuel. “But that din causes headaches and vomiting,” said the president. “If twisted grass is not one hundred per cent effective the outsiders will swarm into the axletree and swamp us. The axletree will be the only place they can hear themselves think.”
“All immigration into the axletree was banned the day before yesterday,” said the director of public security. “The police are armed and alert.”
“But here is a protest signed by many great scientists,” said the president, waving a paper. “Most of them work for the professor’s college. They say the tests have been planned on a too-ambitious scale, and the effect on world climate could be disastrous.”
“Our new wave of prosperity will collapse if tests are curtailed,” said the financial secretary. “Even outsiders get employment through that. They should be prepared to suffer some inconveniences.”
“The scientists who signed that paper are cryptocooperators,” said the army commander.
The president got up and walked round the room. He pointed to his chair and said, “Would anyone like to take my place? Whoever sits there will go down in history as a weakling or a coward, no matter what he decides to do.”
Several directors eyed the chair thoughtfully, but nobody moved. “Right,” said the president. “Let all outsiders on the earth below be supplied with earplugs and sleeping-pills. I authorize a test lasting one whole night, starting at sunset and ending at dawn. The public reaction will decide what we do after that. They may want us to hand over the whole works to our scribbler’s heavenly parliament. The steering committee has agreed on an agenda now. I promoted that crazy scheme to distract attention from our activities, but I fear it will soon be my only hope of shedding unbearable responsibility. So now get out, all of you. Leave me alone.”
Preparations for the big test were organized very quickly, and security precautions on our summit were so increased that movement there became very difficult. Machinery was being installed which only the army chief and the leading industrialists understood. The president seemed unwell and I was employed to guard and help him. He announced that he would pass the night of the test on the ground outside, using nothing but the protection supplied to ordinary people, and this was such good publicity that the other directors allowed it. So he and I travelled west to a mild brown land where low hills were clothed with vines and olives. We waited for sunset on the terrace of a villa. The president removed his shoes and walked barefoot on the warm soil. He said, “I like the feel of this. It’s nourishing.”
He lay down with his head in a bush of sweetsmelling herb. Bees walked across his face. “You can see they aren’t afraid of me,” he muttered through rigid lips. He sat up and pointed to the axletree, saying, “Everybody in there is crazy. I wonder what keeps it up?”
The sky overhead was clear and smooth but beyond a range of blue mountains lay a vaster range of turbulent clouds. These hid the axletree base so that the rest did, indeed, seem built on cloud.
The air grew cold, the sun set and the land was dark, but above the clouds the axletree was still sunlit. No separate summits were distinct, it looked like a golden tusk flushing to pinkness above the dark advancing up it form the base. Inside that dark the tiny lights of many windows defined the axletree against the large, accidental, irregular stars. My eye fixed on the top which flushed pink, then dimmed, and a white spark appeared where it had been, and the spark widened into a little white fan.
The noise hit us soon after that. We thrust rubber plugs into our ears, and that reduced it, but it was still unbearable. We would certainly have swallowed the sleeping-pills (which caused instant stupor) had I not produced helmets and clapped them on our heads. The relief was so profound that we both felt, I know, that absolute silence was the loveliest thing in the world. We were sitting on chairs now, and the moon was up, and the earth at our feet began gleaming moistly with worms. All creatures living in the earth or on solid bodies were struggling into the air. Ants, caterpillars and centipedes crawled up trees and clung in bunches to the extreme tips of twigs. Animals went to the tops of hills and crouched side by side, predators and victims, quite uninterested in feeding, but eventually clawing and biting to get on top of each other’s backs. Birds tried to escape the air they usually felt at home in. Robins, partridges and finches packed themselves densely into the empty rabbit-holes. Winged insects fled to openings and clefts in animal bodies, which gave the best insulation from the sound. The president and I leapt to our feet, scratching and slapping ourselves in a cloud of midges, moths and mosquitoes. We ran to our cars, followed by the armed guards who came floundering out of the shrubberies.