lives in a plane if I’m liable to go out like that....” Mona turned and gazed at the now blank mirror. “Almost looked as if something happened to me when I gazed at Sirius, didn’t it? First time I’ve ever seen Sirius close up.”
“Truly, but at other times we’ve viewed different parts of the heavens.” Bob made a gesture. “Hang it all, dear, this is absurd. How could Sirius...?”
“Of course, how could it?” she exclaimed; then she smiled with something like her old carelessness and picked up her flying helmet from the table. “Just the same, Bob, I’m taking no more tours with ‘Tiny’ until I find out what’s wrong with me. Maybe I’ve got astrophobia.”
“Huh? What in blazes is that?”
“Fear of heights. Standing gazing into space on that mirror is a pretty dizzy business at that.”
Bob nodded slowly, frowning. It struck him that Mona’s conclusion was illogical. An ace strato-pilot bowling over just through looking into a space-mirror...?
“Well....” Mona tightened the helmet strap under her chin. “That seems to be all, except for goodbye. I’ve got to get back to the airport. No, no, don’t worry about me!” she added quickly. “I’ll be quite all right. See you at home—I hope.”
She had been striding across the polished floor as she spoke; now the door closed behind her. A few minutes later Bob heard her fast rocket-plane scream over the Observatory’s lofty height. Through the big window he watched it descending in an ‘S’ of sparks towards the cloud-pack low down in the moonlight. Below, far below, lay Los Angeles.
Moodily, shaken by Mona’s queer lapse, he turned back again to ‘Tiny’, switched it on again and studied Sirius for himself, long and earnestly. Certainly he could not see anything about it to occasion horror—nor did he feel unbalanced in any way. Finally he decided to study the data concerning the star.
“Spectrum deficient in dark lines, proving metallic absorption,” he muttered. “Star not surrounded by metallic vapours, thereby putting it in Class B, totally apart from the G-type dwarf like our own Sun. A hydrogen envelope, mostly transparent....” He closed the file and scowled. “Damned if I know why I’m reading this stuff anyway!”
“Hello there!” the loudspeaker bawled suddenly, and Bob gave a start. He reached across and snapped on the microphone.
“Yes? What’s wrong?”
It was the checking department. “Say, Bob, there’s nothing here that shows any divergence. Better carry on with the eastern section. Whoever figured that neutronium might be out in space must have been nuts.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Bob responded. “I’ll carry on. Stand by for reports.”
He switched off and with a troubled frown reseated himself in the control chair and went to work.
* * * * * * *
Once she had arrived at the Los Angeles airport Mona went to the briefing room for her instructions, and found that they gave her about forty-five minutes breathing space before she had to take off for Rio. Just enough time in fact to see the airport surgeon.
As it happened he was on night duty, and greeted her in his usual matter-of-fact style as she walked into his office. He knew her well enough, since routine physical check-ups were the law for all men and women pilots engaged on public work.
“I think Bob may have been right, Mona,” he commented, when she had outlined her disorder. “Probably the altitude. Anyway, I’ll have a look. Step over here, will you?”
Gone were the days when a doctor had need to poke and probe. Mona simply stepped, fully clothed as she was, into a cabinet and the surgeon closed the door upon her. Beneath a battery of radiations, predominant amongst which were X-rays, every detail of her physique was reflected on to screens. Meters and gauges automatically showed respiration, heartbeats, and blood pressure.
Finally the surgeon switched off, unlocked the cabinet and Mona stepped out to find him considering his notes.
“I’ve seen a few healthy young women in my time, but few like you,” he commented, smiling. “You check up in every detail, Mona—and with a heart like yours, you ought to live to be a hundred and fifty.”
“You’re not—just cheering me up, doc?” Mona asked, seriously.
“Why on earth should I? I state facts as I find them....” The surgeon put down his notebook and frowned at her. “What are you worrying about, girl? This machine does not lie, and it says you are in perfect health. Your fainting spell was purely the attenuated air of that Observatory; I’m sure of it.”
“Yes—I suppose so.” Mona reflected for a moment, and then she gave her sunny smile. “I’ve never been the worrying type, so I suppose I shouldn’t start now. It’s not the faint that has me worried, doc, but something else. The feeling of awful revulsion I had when I looked at Sirius in that reflector mirror. It was as though I’d looked at something indescribably obscene.”
The surgeon shrugged. “Can’t help you there, Mona. It’s a mental reaction and a psychiatrist’s job: I only deal with the body....”
He broke off, alert and listening. Mona, too, detected at the same moment a distant bass rolling sound. It only took her a second or two to interpret it—the same dreaded note she had heard in many a stricken city—
“Earthquake!” she gasped. “No doubt of it....”
She flung herself to the doorway with the doctor immediately behind her. The instant she reached the corridor the earthquake arrived in all its shattering fury. The rumbling became a roar, drumming above the steady crack of fissuring walls. Mona reeled and stumbled her way along the main corridor of the medical department, surrounded now by nurses and medical students who had also nothing in mind save escaping the disaster.
Panting for breath Mona reeled outside into the big open quadrangle of the building. Behind her, the big main edifice split and crumpled like grey tissue paper. Dazed she looked around her. The metal flooring of the quadrangle was splitting in all directions. In the distance buildings were visibly swinging out of the perpendicular and then avalanching downwards. Fire spurted reddishly in all directions; electric sparks flew as cables became entangled with metal. And the vast, overpowering din which gulped and rolled from the Earth’s interior—
Then silence. So sudden it was startling. Steam hissed from somewhere. A chunk of metal dropped with a clang. Mona stood looking about her, disturbed air currents blowing a fast rising wind past her face. She began moving through the excitedly chattering medical staff, inwardly astonished at finding herself alive. Apparently the quake had been severe, but not of very long duration. Many light-standards were still standing, though some of them were drunkenly tilted.
She gained the main airport field to find that nothing was much disturbed. Her own rocket-flyer was just as she had left it.
“What’s the damage, Harry?” she asked one of the ground mechanics.
“Pretty bad,” Mrs. Driscoll,” he answered grimly. “Just had word through. Quake destroyed all eastern Los Angeles. We got the tail end of it.”
Mona sighed as she climbed through the doorway of the flyer’s control cabin.
“Bang
