When he awoke, almost frozen, in the parked taxi, that human factor dawned upon him. The driver was so sound asleep that no amount of shaking could arouse him. Dr. Hale’s watch had stopped, so he had no idea where he was or what time it was.
Unfortunately, too, he didn’t know how to drive a car. He took a quick drink to keep from freezing, and then got out of the cab, and as he did so, a car stopped.
It was a policeman — what is more it was a policeman in a million.
Yelling over the roar of the storm, Hale hailed him.
«I’m Dr. Hale,» he shouted. «We’re lost. Where am I?»
«Get in here before you freeze,» ordered the policeman. «Do you mean Dr. Milton Hale, by any chance?»
«Yes.»
«I’ve read all your books, Dr. Hale,» said the policeman. «Physics is my hobby, and I’ve always wanted to meet you. I want to ask you about the revised value of the quantum.»
«This is life or death,» said Dr. Hale. «Can you take me to the nearest airport, quick?»
«Of course, Dr. Hale.»
«And look — there’s a driver in that cab, and he’ll freeze to death unless we send aid.»
«I’ll put him in the back seat of my car, and then run the cab off the road. We’ll take care of details later.»
«Hurry, please.»
The obliging policeman hurried. He got back in and started the car.
«About the revised quantum value, Dr. Hale,» he began, then stopped talking.
Dr. Hale was sound asleep. The policeman drove to Waterbury airport, one of the largest in the world since the population shift from New York City northwards in the 1960’s and 70’s had given it a central position. In front of the ticket office, he gently awakened Dr. Hale.
«This is the airport, sir,» he said.
Even as he spoke, Dr. Hale was leaping out of the car and stumbling into the building, yelling, «Thanks,» over his shoulder and nearly falling down in doing so.
The warm-up roaring of the motors of a superstratoliner out on the field lent wings to his heels as he dashed for the ticket window.
«What plane’s that?» he yelled.
«Washington Special, due out in one minute. But I don’t think you can make it.»
Dr. Hale slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the ledge. «Ticket,» he gasped. «Keep change.»
He grabbed the ticket and ran, getting into the plane just as the doors were being closed. Panting, he fell into a seat, the ticket still in his hand. He was sound asleep before the hostess strapped him in for the blind take-off.
A little while later, the hostess awakened him. The passengers were disembarking.
Dr. Hale rushed out of the plane and ran across the field to the airport building. A big clock told him that it was nine o’clock, and he felt elated as he ran for the door marked «Taxicabs.»
He got into the nearest one.
«White House,» he told the driver. «How long’ll it take?»
«Ten minutes.»
Dr. Hale gave a sigh of relief and sank back against the cushions. He didn’t go back to sleep this time. He was wide awake now. But he closed his eyes to think out the words he’d use in explaining matters.
«Here you are, sir.»
Dr. Hale gave the driver a bill and hurried out of the cab and into the building. It didn’t look like he expected it to look. But there was a desk and he ran up to it.
«I’ve got to see the President, quick. It’s vital.»
The clerk frowned. «The president of what?»
Dr. Hale’s eyes went wide. «The president of the — Say, what building is this? And what town?»
The clerk’s frown deepened. «This is the White House Hotel,» he said, «Seattle, Washington.»
Dr. Hale fainted. He woke up in a hospital three hours later. It was then midnight, Pacific Time, which meant it was three o’clock in the morning on the Eastern Seaboard. It had, in fact, been midnight already in Washington, D.C., and in Boston, when he had been leaving the Washington Special in Seattle.
Dr. Hale rushed to the window and shook his fists, both of them, at the sky. A futile gesture.
Back in the East, however, the storm had stopped by twilight, leaving a light mist in the air. The star-conscious public thereupon deluged the weather bureaus with telephone requests about the persistence of the mist.
«A breeze off the ocean is expected,» they were told. «It is blowing now, in fact, and within an hour or two will have cleared off the light fog.»
By eleven-fifteen the skies of Boston were clear.
Untold thousands braved the bitter cold and stood staring upward at the unfolding pageant of the no-longer-eternal stars. It almost looked as though an incredible development had occurred.
And then, gradually, the murmur grew. By a quarter to twelve, the thing was certain, and the murmur hushed and then grew louder than ever, waxing toward midnight. Different people reacted differently, of course, as might be expected. There was laughter as well as indignation, cynical amusement as well as shocked horror. There was even admiration.
Soon in certain parts of the city, a concerted movement on the part of those who knew an address on Fremont Street, began to take place. Movement afoot and in cars and public vehicles, converging.
At five minutes to twelve, Rutherford R. Sniveley sat waiting within his house. He was denying himself the pleasure of looking until, at the last moment, the thing was complete.
It was going well. The gathering murmur of voices, mostly angry voices, outside his house told him that. He heard his name shouted.
Just the same he waited until the twelfth stroke of the clock before he stepped out upon the balcony. Much as he wanted to look upward, he forced himself to look down at the street first. The milling crowd was there, and it was angry. But he had only contempt for the milling crowd.
Police cars were pulling up, too, and he recognized the Mayor of Boston getting out of one of them, and the Chief of Police was with him. But so what? There wasn’t any law covering this.
Then having denied himself the supreme pleasure long enough, he turned his eyes up to the silent sky, and there it was. The four hundred and sixty-eight brightest stars spelling out:
For just a second did his satisfaction last. Then his face began to turn apoplectic purple.
«My God!» said Mr. Sniveley. «It’s spelled wrong!»
His face grew more purple still and then, as a tree falls, he fell backward through the window.
An ambulance rushed the fallen magnate to the nearest hospital, but he was pronounced dead — of apoplexy — upon entrance.
But misspelled or not, the eternal stars held their position as of that midnight. The aberrant motion had stopped and again the stars were fixed. Fixed to spell — USE SNIVELY’S SOAP!
Of the many explanations offered by all the sundry who professed some physical and astronomical knowledge, none was more lucid — or closer to the actual truth — than that put forward by Wendell Mehan, president emeritus of the New York Astronomical Society.
«Obviously, the phenomenon is a trick of refraction,» said Dr. Mehan. «It is manifestly impossible for any force contrived by man to move a star. The stars, therefore, still occupy their old places in the firmament.
«I suggest that Sniveley must have contrived a method of refracting the light of the stars, somewhere in or just above the atmospheric layer of earth, so that they appear to have changed their positions. This is done, probably, by radio waves or similar waves, sent on some fixed frequency from a set — or possibly a series of four hundred and sixty-eight sets — somewhere upon the surface of the earth. Although we do not understand just how it is done, it is no more unthinkable that light rays should be bent by a field of waves than by a prism or by gravitational force.