[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
KNOWN UNTO HIS SERVANTS THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE SHORTLY TO BE; AND
HATH SIGNIFIED, SENDING BY HIS ANGEL; I EXORCISE THEE, ANGEL OF
PERVERSITY:
"BY THE SEVEN GOLD CANDLESTICKS, AND BY ONE LIKE UNTO THE SON OF MAN, STANDING
IN THE MIDST OF THE CANDLESTICKS; BY HIS VOICE, AS THE VOICE
OF MANY WATERS; BY HIS WORDS, 'I AM LIVING, WHO WAS DEAD; AND BEHOLD, I LIVE
FOREVER AND EVER; AND I HAVE THE KEYS OF DEATH AND OF HELL;' I
SAY UNTO YOU, ANGEL OF PERDITION: DEPART, DEPART, DEPART!"
The echoes rang and dwindled. The lunar silence flowed back, underlined by the
breathing of the people in the observatory and the sound of pumps laboring
somewhere beneath.
And slowly, and without a sound, the cloudy planet on the screen turned white
all over. The clouds and the dim oceans and continents blended into a
blue-white glare which shone out from the screen like a searchlight. It seemed
to penetrate their bloodless faces down to the bone.
Slowly, slowly, it all melted away: the chirruping forests, Chtexa's porcelain
house, the barking lungfish, the stump of the Message Tree, the wild
allosaurs, the single silver moon, the great beating heart of Blood Lake, the
city of the potters, the flying squid, the Lithian crocodile and his winding
track, the tall noble reasoning creatures and the mystery and the beauty
around them.
Suddenly the whole of Lithia began to swell, like a balloon--
The count tried to turn the screen off, but he was too late. Before he could
touch the black box, the whole circuit went out with a puffing of fuses. The
intolerable light vanished instantly; the screen went black, and the universe
with it. They sat blinded and stunned.
"An error in Equation Sixteen," the count's voice said harshly in the swimming
darkness.
No, Ruiz-Sanchez thought, no. An instance of fulfilled desire. He had wanted
to use Lithia to defend the faith, and he had been given that. Cleaver had
wanted to turn it into a fusion-bomb plant, and he had got that in full
measure, all at once. Michelis had seen in it a prophecy of infallible human
love, and had been stretched on that rack ever since. And Agronski--Agronski
had wanted nothing to change, and now was unchangeably nothing.
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Marc/My%2...es%20Blish%20-%20A%20Case%20
Of%20Conscience.htm (141 of 146)7/30/2004 4:22:04 AM
A Case Of Conscience, by James Blish
In the darkness, there was a long, ragged sigh. For a moment, Ruiz-Sanchez
could not place the voice; he thought it was Liu. But no. It was Mike.
"When we have our eyesight back," the count's voice said, "I propose that we
Page 105
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
suit up and go outside. We have a nova to watch for."
That was only a maneuver, an act of misdirection on the count's part--an act
of kindness. He knew well enough that that nova would not be visible to the
naked eye until the next Holy Year, fifty years to come; and he knew that they
knew.
Nevertheless, when Father Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez, sometime Clerk Regular in the
Society of
Jesus, could see again, they had left him alone with his God and his grief.
APPENDIX
The Planet Lithia (from Michelis, D., and Ruiz-Sanchez, R.: Lithia--a
preliminary report. J. I. R.
4:225, 2050; abstract.) Lithia is the second planet of the solar type star
Alpha Arietis, which is located in the constellation Aries and is
approximately 50 light-years from Sol. [1]
It revolves around its primary at a mean distance of 108,600,000 miles, with a
year of approximately 380 terrestrial days. The orbit is definitely
elliptical, with an eccentricity of 0.51, so that the long axis of the ellipse
is approximately 15 per cent longer than the short axis.
The axis of the planet is essentially perpendicular to the orbit, and the
planet rotates on its axis with a day of about 20 terrestrial, hours. Hence,
the Lithian year consists of 456 Lithian days. The eccentricity of the orbit
produces mild seasons, with long, relatively cold winters, and short, hot
summers.
The planet has one moon with a diameter of 1,256 miles, which revolves about
its primary at a distance of 326,000 miles, twelve times in the Lithian year.
The outer planets of the system have not yet been explored. Lithia is 8,267
miles in diameter, and has a surface gravity of 0.82 that of Earth. The light
gravity of the planet is accounted for by the relatively low density, which in
turn is the result of its composition. When the planet was formed there was a
much lower percentage of the heavy elements with atomic numbers above 20
included in its make-up than was the case with the Earth. Furthermore, the
odd-numbered elements are even rarer than they are on Earth; the only
odd-numbered elements that appear in any quantity are hydrogen, nitrogen,
sodium and chlorine. Potassium is quite rare, and the heavy odd-numbered
elements (gold, silver, copper) appear only in microscopic quantities and
never in the elemental form. In fact, the only uncombined metal that has ever
appeared on the planet has
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Marc/My%2...es%20Blish%20-%20A%20Case%20
Of%20Conscience.htm (142 of 146)7/30/2004 4:22:04 AM
A Case Of Conscience, by James Blish been the nickel-iron of an occasional
meteorite. The metallic core of the planet is considerably smaller than that
of the Earth, and the basaltic inner coating correspondingly thicker. The
continents are built, as on Earth, basically of granite, overlaid with
sedimentary deposits.
[1. An earlier figure of 40 light-years, often quoted in the literature, arose
from application of the so-called Cosmological Constant. Einstein's reluctance
to allow this "constant" into his scholium has now been fully justified, v.
Haertel, J. I. R. 1:21, 2047]
The scarcity of potassium has led to an extremely static geology. The natural
radioactivity of K40
is the major source of the internal heat of the Earth, and Lithia has less
than a tenth of the K40
content of the Earth. As a result, the interior of the planet is much cooler,
vulcanism is extremely rare, and geological revolutions even rarer. The planet
seems to have settled down early in life, and nothing very startling has
happened since. The major part of its uneventful geological history is at best
conjectural, because the scarcity of radioactive elements has led to great
difficulties in dating the strata.
Page 106
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
The atmosphere is somewhat similar to that of the Earth. [2] The atmospheric
pressure is 815.3
mm at sea level, and the composition of dry air is as follows:
Nitrogen 66.26 per cent by volume Oxygen 31.27 Argon, &c. 2.16 CO2 0.31 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]