Down to Earth

Chapter 3-1

A cold wind was streaming across Pengeness Head and a cold grey sea was breaking on its eastern shore, throwing up more shingle on to the vast shingle-banks for which the peninsula is remarkable. The wind rattled the doors and windows of the huts that huddled round the lighthouse, and rippled the stretches of dead water out on the marsh where the water-birds stood with their backs to it, like old men with hunched shoulders and their hands in their pockets. And further inland the wind swept over the abandoned rifle-ranges and wailed into the streets of the peninsula’s one town, Brydd, so that it was small wonder there was nobody about that afternoon.

Digby Cox, coasting down Beacon Hill in his ancient station-wagon, surveyed the town from afar and shuddered. “My home-town,” he muttered, “and how I hate it. Who could be a success in Brydd?”

Once Brydd had stood as an outpost against possible invasion, but, since the invention of aircraft, those days were past, and now there was little reason for its continued existence. It was on the road to nowhere and it was the centre of nothing. Its monastery had been a ruin for four hundred years, its barracks for forty, and yet three thousand people lingered on, taking in each other’s washing and braving the winds that swept in from all four quarters.

Digby came to the foot of the hill and accelerated angrily. “Bankrupt,” he exclaimed, with a certain relish. “That’s the long and the short of it, we’re bankrupt. Ruined by big ideas and small means!”

The station-wagon rattled over the disused railway’s level-crossing, and then Brydd’s huge and ugly church loomed into view. Digby skirted it, came out into the Square and pulled up in front of the shop that had been his father’s, and was now his and his brother’s. It was a fine, double-fronted shop — shuttered today, for early-closing — and its stock mainly consisted of wireless-sets, television-sets and all the accessories that the modern world is heir to. There was even a tape-recorder and, as Digby let himself into the shop, his eye fell on it, and he gave a short laugh. “I must have been crazy when I ordered that,” he reflected. “Who on earth in Brydd would want a tape-recorder, even in this year of grace nineteen seventy-three?”

He closed the door hurriedly because of the wind, but some of it was too quick for him and a number of leaflets lying on the counter went leaping into the air and scattered themselves on the floor. He cursed sombrely and went through into the back of the shop.

There was no sign of his brother either in their living-room or in the kitchen, so he had to brave the wind again, crossing the garden towards the large shed at the garden’s end that served them as a workshop. Strange-looking aerials festooned the shed, which was a wooden one, and it had been built at that inconvenient distance from the house on the insistence of the insurance company. “One spot of lightning,” the agent had said, “and up the whole show will go in smoke! To say nothing of the outlandish voltages you’ll be using.”

Digby pushed open the door and went in. “Hullo, Bryan,” he said, but his brother, at the far end of the shed, had ear-phones on and did not hear him. In any case, he had quite extraordinary powers of concentration.

An electric kettle had just come to the boil on the bench nearest the door, and Digby went to it. He spooned some tea into the tea-pot and poured in the boiling water.

“Hey, Bryan,” he shouted. “I’m back and I’ve made tea!”

Bryan jerked off the ear-phones and swung round. “A most extraordinary thing!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been analysing sun-spots on a ten-M wave-length, and now I seem to be picking up Morse!”

Digby strode the length of the shed and studied the instrument-panel. “Nonsense,” he said. “You can’t be picking up Morse on that fixing. Either your screening is faulty or you’re cuckoo — and my preference is for the latter explanation.”

“No, seriously,” said Bryan, holding up the earphones. “You listen.”

“No, thanks. Those things give me a headache, and I’ve enough on my plate without that.”

“But you can read Morse, and I can’t! Come on, Digby — I’ll hook up the amplifier!”

“Even that doesn’t tempt me,” said Digby, shaking his head. “I suppose I’m just not in the mood for cosmic Morse. Come and have a cup of tea, and I’ll tell you my news, which is lousy.”

Bryan reluctantly climbed down from his stool and followed his brother to the bench where the tea-pot stood. “You mean we’re out of business?” he asked.

“As good as. My efforts to negotiate an overdraft were turned aside with a light laugh, so then there was nothing for it except to go to Cunningham and tell him we couldn’t meet his account. I asked him for another six months’ credit, but if he heard me, he didn’t let on. In fact, all he could say was, ‘Well, Mr. Cox, I’m prepared to help you to the extent of taking back everything that’s unsold — ’ ”

Bryan interrupted his brother with a gasp. “All this?” he asked, with a gesture towards the equipment with which the shed was filled.

“Most of it. And half the stock in the shop. Actually, there is just a faint chance that we can pull through, but to do so we shall have to give up all dreams of fame and glory. No more experiments in radaroscopy, no more research into the nature of cosmic rays, and no more fun and games with the universe as our playground. Instead, we shall just have to devote ourselves to repairing radios, selling light-bulbs and installing door-bells, which will be a change, to say least of it.”

He poured out two cups of tea, and for some minutes nothing broke the silence except the whine and throb of the generating-plant in the adjoining out-house. Bryan’s expression suggested that his heart would break and all Digby’s sympathy went out to him. At eighteen, he reflected, one has met with fewer disappointments than at twenty-five, and they are proportionately harder to take. Also, Bryan was the more single-minded of the two and exploring cosmic space by means of radar-techniques was his ruling passion.

“When’s Cunningham sending for the stuff?” he asked, at length.

“He mentioned Friday.”

“The day after tomorrow? . . . Oh, God!”

He drank his tea and returned to the bench where he had been working.”

“Digby, I wish you’d listen to this Morse,” he murmured. “It’s most peculiar.”

As he spoke, he inserted the jack-plug of the amplifier and pressed a couple of switches. The amplifier hissed and crackled and then, underlying the atmospherics, came the unmistakable stutter of Morse.

“There you are, Digby!” he shouted. “What’s that? Morse or Scotch mist?”

Digby joined him and stood for a few moments listening. “Yes, it’s Morse, all right,” he agreed presently, “but it’s as I said. Your screening’s faulty and you’re picking up Morse on another —”

He broke off and the degree of interest in his expression increased. He put his head nearer the amplifier and Bryan asked what had struck him.

Digby made an impatient gesture, then exclaimed, “Good God! . . . Bryan, where’s a piece of paper?”

His excitement was infectious, and Bryan hurriedly thrust a note-pad and pencil in his hand. Digby scribbled rapidly and too illegibly for Bryan to be able to make out the message, but under his breath he suddenly muttered, “My God — Pollenport!”

God — Pollenport!”The name burst across Bryan’s consciousness like a star-shell, and he gazed up into his brother’s face in wild surmise. Was he really getting a message from Jonah Pollenport, the man who, five years before, had commanded the first spaceship ever to leave the earth?

As long as Digby scribbled there was nothing for Bryan to do except curb his impatience, and half a millennium seemed to creep by before at last his brother said, “All right, Bryan. You can switch off.”

“But the Morse is still coming through!”

“Yes, I know, but it’s simply the same message repeating itself on an endless band,” said Digby, then added, with maddening calm, “As a matter of fact, it’s from Jonah Pollenport, and he’s on the planet Antigeos.”

“Well, for God’s sake tell me what the message is before I burst!” cried Bryan, switching off.

Digby consulted his note, and read, “This is Jonah Pollenport calling the Earth from the planet Antigeos. Will anyone receiving this signal please acknowledge on the same wave-length. The signal will now be repeated. . . .’ ”

“Antigeos?” whispered Bryan. “Then it does exist after all?”

“Presumably,” said the calmer Digby. “Unless — unless we’re the victims of a hoax.”

Bryan hardly heard him. He was gazing at the silent amplifier rather as Sir Galahad must have gazed at the Holy Grail and, when he found his voice, he asked what were the chances of anyone else picking up the signal.

“Small,” Digby assured him. “We haven’t a monopoly of the ultra-short waves, but we do know that there isn’t a great deal of research being done in that field. Of course, Pollenport may be using a variety of wavelengths, but, even if he is, he’s limited to the ultra-short ones by the Heaviside — Kennelly layer.”

“Naturally,” said Bryan. “So now we just build an enormously powerful transmitter and make contact with him?”

“Oh yes? And how can we build an enormously powerful transmitter between now and Friday? And, without cash or credit, where are we going to get the necessary equipment for stepping up our voltages from?”

“From Cunningham!” cried Bryan. “Yes, we’ll have to let him into the secret. It’s horrible having to share the glory with him, but there’s nothing else for it.”

Digby laughed. “You’re quite an optimist, aren’t you?” he murmured. “Brother, you can take it from me that Mr. Cunningham isn’t interested in glory. He wouldn’t see any percentage in it, and the knowledge that we’ve picked up a message from Pollenport would leave him as cold as an iceberg. No, we’ve got to think of something else.”

He strolled pensively back to the tea-pot and poured himself out another cup of tea. He lit a cigarette with shaking hands and Bryan switched on the amplifier once more. The Morse was still stuttering faintly behind the atmospherics and Bryan’s sense of frustration became almost impossible to bear. “Think of it, Digby!” he murmured. “You and I are the first men on Earth to get proof of the existence of Antigeos!”

proof Digby didn’t reply, and Bryan struggled to recall all that he’d ever heard about Antigeos. To the best of his knowledge the planet’s existence had originally been hypothesised by a Professor Wittenhagen as early as the nineteen-forties, but it wasn’t until nearly twenty years later that Wittenhagen’s theory had been published. According to the theory, Antigeos constituted the Solar System’s tenth planet, and that it had escaped the astronomers’ notice for so long was accounted for by the fact that it shared the Earth’s orbit, revolving round the sun at the same speed as the Earth and at a point diametrically opposite to it, so that, from the terrestrial point of view, it was forever hidden by the glare of the sun itself.