was invented, and before then, of course…And never forget
that, having no gravity, they can go right through the middle of the system, without affecting the planets. Only a hit on the sun registers, and then it's too late.'
He looked at the clock, '2.05! We ought to see it now against the sun.' He stood up and raised the window shade. The yellow sunlight streamed in and I moved away from the dusty shaft of light. My mouth was dry as desert sand. Murfree was mopping his brow, but beads of sweat stood out all along his cheeks and neck.
Hayes took out several slips of exposed film-negative and handed them out, 'I came prepared, you see.' He held one up and squinted at the sun. 'There it is,' he remarked placidly, 'My calculations showed it would be in transit with respect to Earth at the time of collision. Rather convenient!'
I was looking at the sun, too, and felt my heart skip a beat. There, quite clear against the brightness of the sun, was a little, perfectly round, black spot.
'Why doesn't it vaporize?' stammered Murfree. 'It must be almost in the sun's atmosphere.' I don't think he was trying to disprove Hayes' story. He had gone past that. He was honestly seeking information.
'I told you,' explained Hayes, 'that it is^ transparent to almost all solar radiation. Only the radiation it absorbs can go into heat and that's a very small percentage of all it receives. Besides, it isn't ordinary matter. It's probably much more re-factory than anything on Earth, and the Solar surface is only at 6,000 degrees Centigrade.'
He pointed a thumb over his shoulder, 'It's 2.09 Ѕ, gentlemen. The super-neutron has struck and death is on its way. We have eight minutes.'
We were dumb with something that was just simply unbearable terror. I remember Hayes' voice, quite matter-of-fact, saying, 'Mercury just went!' then a few minutes later, 'Venus has gone!' and lastly, 'Thirty seconds left, gentlemen!'
The seconds crawled, but passed at last, and another thirty seconds, and still another…
And on Hayes' face, a look of astonishment grew and spread. He lifted the clock and stared at it, then peered through his film at the sun once more.
'It's gone!' He turned and faced us, 'It's unbelievable. I had thought of it, but I dared not draw the atomic analogy too far. You know that not all atomic nuclei explode on being hit by a neutron. Some, cadmium, for instance, absorb them one after the other like sponges do water. I -'
He paused again, drew a deep breath, and continued musingly, 'Even the purest block of uranium contains traces of all other elements. And in a universe of trillions of stars acting like uranium, what does a paltry million of cadmium-like stars amount to - nothing! Yet the sun is one of them! Mankind never deserved that!'
He kept on talking, but relief had finally penetrated and we listened no longer. In half-hysterical fashion, we elected Gilbert Hayes to the office of Perpetual President by enthusiastic acclamation, and voted the story the whoppingest lie ever told.
But there's one thing that bothers me. Hayes fills his post well; the Society is more successful than ever - but 1 think he should have been disqualified after all. His story fulfilled the second condition; it sounded like the truth. But I don't think it fulfilled the first condition.
I think it was the truth!
I had series on my mind by now. 'Super-Neutron' was certainly intended to be but the first in a long chain of very clever and very ingenious tales to be told at the meetings of the 'Honorable Society of Ananias.' It didn't work out that way. There was never a second story, not even the beginnings of one, not even the idea for one.
By the time I was writing 'Super-Neutron,' in February of 1941,1 had heard of uranium fission and had even discussed it in some detail with Campbell. I managed to refer to it in the course of the story as 'the classical uranium fission method for power.' I also spoke of the metal cadmium as a neutron absorber. It wasn't bad for a story that appeared in 1941, and I sometimes quote it in public to create an impression.
Notice, though, that in the same paragraph in which I mention fission, I also talk of 'masurium.' Actually, masurium was the name given to element # 43 in 1926, but that discovery had proven a false alarm. The element was really discovered in 1937 and was given the now-accepted name of 'technetium.' It seems, then, that I could look years into the future and see uranium fission,as a practical power source, but I couldn't look a few years into the past and see the correct name for element #43.
This brings us to March 17, 1941, and one of the key turning points of my literary career.
By that day, I had written thirty-one stories. Of these I had already sold seventeen and was yet to sell four more. Of all these stories, three perhaps, and no more, were to turn out to be of more than ephemeral value, and those were the three 'positronic robots' stories I had so far written: 'Robbie,' 'Reason' and 'Liar!'
Looking back on my first three years as a writer, then, I can judge myself to be nothing more than a steady and (perhaps) hopeful third-rater. What's more, that's all I considered myself then, too. Nor did anyone else, at that time, seriously consider me as a potential first-magnitude star in the science fiction heavens - except, maybe, Campbell.
What are the odds, then, that on March 17, 1941, I would sit down and write something that for thirty years now has been considered by a surprising number of people to be the outstanding short classic of magazine science fiction? It was one of those things that couldn't possibly happen - yet it did.
It began when I walked into Campbell 's office that day and, as usual, suggested an idea. What it was I don't remember, but whatever it was he turned it down instantly, not because it was such a bad idea but because he had something he wanted to show me that crowded everything else out of his mind. He had come across a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson that went: 'If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God! '[10]
Campbell asked me what I thought would happen if the stars would appear at only very long intervals. I had nothing intelligent to suggest.
'I think men would go mad,' he said thoughtfully.
We talked about that notion for quite a while, and I went home to write a story on the subject, one that Campbell and I decided from the start was to be called 'Nightfall.'
I began it that night. I can remember the details exactly: my parents' apartment on Windsor Place in Brooklyn, across the street from the candy store; my own room, just next to the living room, is clear in my mind, with the position of my bed, my desk, my typewriter - and myself getting started.
In years to come, fans would occasionally vote in polls designed to decide the best science fiction short stories of all time. Quite frequently, 'Nightfall' would finish in first place. Just a couple of years ago, the Science Fiction Writers of America polled their membership to decide the best science fiction short stories ever published, for inclusion in a Hall of Fame anthology. "Nightfall' finished in first place by a sizable margin. And, of course, it has been anthologized a dozen times so far.