The Lost Cavern by H. F. Heard

Author:H. F. Heard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2016-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

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I. THE SEA SYMPTOM

“I’m puzzled by some of my readings,” Skelton volunteered.

None of the men in the clubroom were sufficiently interested to raise their eyes from the illustrated papers they were leafing over. Skelton was the tidal expert. The other specialists of this team at the newest marine laboratory agreed about few things, but Skelton’s job was one of them, and Skelton was another. “After all,” they used to remark, “he’s really only a sort of lab. boy to us. The meteorologist has really more of value to give. Skelton’s nothing but a timekeeper.”

But Skelton was evidently puzzled enough not to take a snub. He cleared his throat with a certain defiance: “I’ve mentioned the possibility earlier on to one or two of you. But now there’s no doubt of it and, what’s more, no possible reason for it.” Still no one reacted.

“It’ll really matter to all of you, to all of you first and foremost, if it’s true.” A note of urgency made his voice strain. The tone more than the words irritated Bolder, one of the chemists. To stop the sound, which he found made reading difficult, he looked over the edge of Life and asked:

“What are they showing?”

“Well, it’s slight of course, but it’s unmistakable now, and there’s no doubt it is growing. The high-tides for each corresponding month have each of them been gaining on the last. There’s no doubt there’s an increase in the maxima, and there’s no reason for it.”

That made Exon intervene. He was the large marine biologist. Some one said that he had taken to his subject because molluscs were of all creation the hardest of animals to pick quarrels with.

“You’ll be saying next the moon’s out of step or the sun’s got a swelled head.”

“Laws of Nature don’t change.” This was from Stimson. He was the geneticist, one who had never quite recovered from the violent controversies with which the birth of his subject had been attended. He was an old man now and had been only a boy then. But his father—biology ran in the family—had been involved in the bitterness between the elder Darwinians and the Mendelians, as they were then called. Stimson reacted into the strictest orthodoxy. He repeated his maxims like a mantra whenever anyone introduced findings which might be radical. “Your instruments are wrong, young man, that’s what it is.”

Of course such a remark is a reflection. But it was clear that Stimson had the room with him. Skelton could not command a single ear. He was upset, quite upset. Of course it was clear that, if this was the reception given by such men as his colleagues, he could hope for nothing better from anyone outside—at least in the professional world. And how could he expect the lay world to attend if the experts disregarded?

He left the clubroom but before going to his apartment went back again to his division of the laboratories. He checked his tables over again with worried care. He plotted his graph over again.

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