The Second Deluge | Page 8

my word," exclaimed Professor Alexander Jones, "but this is
very curious! And suppose the fellow should be right, after all?"
"Right!" cried the president, Professor Pludder, disdainfully. "Who ever
heard of a watery nebula? The thing's absurd!"
"I don't see that it's absurd," replied Professor Jones. "There's plenty of
proof of the existence of hydrogen in some of the nebulae."
"So there is," chimed in Professor Abel Able, "and if there's hydrogen
there may be oxygen, and there you have all that's necessary. It's not
the idea that a nebula may consist of watery vapor that's absurd, but it
is that a watery nebula, large enough to drown the earth by
condensation upon it could have approached so near as this one must
now be without sooner betraying its presence."
"How so?" demanded a voice.
"By its attraction. Cosmo Versál says it is already less than three
hundred million miles away. If it is massive enough to drown the earth,
it ought long ago to have been discovered by its disturbance of the
planetary orbits."
"Not at all," exclaimed Professor Jeremiah Moses. "If you stick to that
argument you'll be drowned sure. Just look at these facts. The earth
weighs six and a half sextillions of tons, and the ocean one and a half
quintillions. The average depth of the oceans is two and one-fifth miles.
Now--if the level of the oceans were raised only about 1,600 feet,
practically all the inhabited parts of the world would be flooded. To
cause that increase in the level of the oceans only about one-eighth part
would have to be added to their total mass, or, say, one-seventh part,
allowing for the greater surface to be covered. That would be one
thirty-thousandth of the weight of the globe, and if you suppose that
only one-hundredth of the entire nebula were condensed on the earth,
the whole mass of the nebula would not need to exceed one
three-hundredth of the weight of the earth, or a quarter that of the

moon--and nobody here will be bold enough to say that the approach of
a mass no greater than that would be likely to be discovered through its
attraction when it was three hundred million miles away."
Several of the astronomers present shook their heads at this, and
Professor Pludder irritably declared that it was absurd.
"The attraction would be noticeable when it was a thousand millions of
miles away," he continued.
"Yes, 'noticeable' I admit," replied Professor Moses, "but all the same
you wouldn't notice it, because you wouldn't be looking for it unless the
nebula were visible first, and even then it would require months of
observation to detect the effects. And how are you going to get around
those bulletins? The thing is beginning to be visible now, and I'll bet
that if, from this time on, you study carefully the planetary motions,
you will find evidence of the disturbance becoming stronger and
stronger. Versál has pointed out that very thing, and calculated the
perturbations. This thing has come like a thief in the night."
"You'd better hurry up and secure a place in the ark," said Professor
Pludder sarcastically.
"I don't know but I shall, if I can get one," returned Professor Moses.
"You may not think this is such a laughing matter a few months hence."
"I'm surprised," pursued the president, "that a man of your scientific
standing should stultify himself by taking seriously such balderdash as
this. I tell you the thing is absurd."
"And I tell you, you are absurd to say so!" retorted Professor Moses,
losing his temper. "You've got four of the biggest telescopes in the
world under your control; why don't you order your observers to look
for this thing?"
Professor Pludder, who was a very big man, reared up his rotund form,
and, bringing his fist down upon the table with a resounding whack,
exclaimed:

"I'll do nothing so ridiculous! These bulletins have undoubtedly been
influenced by the popular excitement. There has possibly been a little
obscurity in the atmosphere--cirrus clouds, or something--and the
observers have imagined the rest. I'm not going to insult science by
encouraging the proceedings of a mountebank like Cosmo Versál.
What we've got to do is to prepare a dispatch for the press reassuring
the populace and throwing the weight of this institution on the side of
common sense and public tranquillity. Let the secretary indite such a
dispatch, and then we'll edit it and send it out."
Professor Pludder, naturally dictatorial, was sometimes a little
overbearing, but being a man of great ability, and universally respected
for his high rank in the scientific world, his colleagues usually bowed
to his decisions. On this occasion his force of character sufficed to
silence the doubters, and when the statement intended for the