The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle & Fred Hoyle

Author:Fred Hoyle & Fred Hoyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141967493
Publisher: Penguin Publishing
Published: 2010-07-01T16:00:00+00:00

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From the end of July a night watch was kept at the Nortonstowe shelter. Joe Stoddard was on the rota, as was natural since his work as a gardener had ceased by that time. Gardening was not an activity suited to the tropical heat.

It came about that Joe’s watch fell on the night of 27 August. No dramatic action took place. Yet at 7.30 the following morning Joe knocked hesitantly on Kingsley’s bedroom door. The previous evening Kingsley together with quite a number of other worthies had caroused somewhat heartily. So at first he was scarcely aware that Joe was trying to give him some message. Gradually he realized that the cheerful gardener was unusually solemn.

‘It’s not there, sir, it’s not there.’

‘What’s not there? For heaven’s sake go and fetch me a cup of tea. I’ve got a mouth like the bottom of a parrot’s cage.’

‘Cup of tea, sir!’ Joe hesitated but stood his ground stolidly. ‘Yes, sir. It’s just that you said I was to report anything unusual, and it really isn’t there.’

‘Look here, Joe, much as I have regard for you, I say most solemnly that I’ll disembowel you, here and now, unless you tell me what it is that isn’t there.’ Kingsley spoke slowly and loudly. ‘What isn’t there?’

‘The day, sir! There’s no Sun!’

Kingsley grabbed his watch. It was about 7.42 a.m., long after dawn in August. He rushed out of the shelter into the open. It was pitch black, unrelieved even by starlight, which was unable to penetrate the thick cloud cover. An unreasoning primitive fear seemed to be abroad. The light of the world had gone.

In England and the western lands generally the shock was cushioned by night, for to them it was during the night hours that the light of the Sun became extinguished. One evening the light faded slowly away as is normally the case. But eight hours later there was no dawn. The advancing wall of the Cloud had reached the Sun during the intervening hours.

The people of the eastern hemisphere experienced in full measure the horror of the fading light. To them the total unrelieved blackness fell in what should have been full day. In Australia for instance, the sky began darkening about noon, and by three o’clock not a glimmer was to be seen, except where artificial illuminations had been switched on. There was fierce wild rioting in many of the world’s major cities.

For three days the Earth lived as a black world, except for those pockets of humanity that possessed the technological sufficiency to provide their own lighting. Los Angeles and the other American cities lived in the artificial blaze of millions of electric bulbs. But this did not entirely protect the American people from the terror that gripped the rest of mankind. Indeed one might say that Americans had more leisure and opportunity to appreciate the situation as they sat huddled over television sets, waiting for the latest pronouncements of authorities who were powerless to understand or control the march of events.

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