If I were to bawl down the passage and generally raise hell, somebody ought to show up if only to tell me what they thought of me. I turned back the sheet and got out of bed. I’d never seen the room I was in, and though I had a fairly good idea by ear of the position of the door, it wasn’t all that easy to find. There seemed to be several puzzling and unnecessary obstacles, but I got across at the cost of a stubbed toe and minor damage to my shin. I shoved out into the passage.
“Hey!” I shouted. “I want some breakfast. Room forty-eight!”
For a moment nothing happened. Then came voices all shouting together. It sounded like hundreds of them, and not a word coming through clearly. It was as though I’d put on a record of crowd noises—and an ill-disposed crowd, at that. I had a nightmarish flash, wondering whether I had been transferred to a mental home while I was sleeping and that this was not St. Merryn’s Hospital at all. The sound of those voices simply didn’t sound normal to me. I closed the door hurriedly on the babel and groped my way back to bed. At that moment bed seemed to be the one safe, comforting thing in my whole baffling environment. As if to underline that, there came a sound which checked me in the act of pulling up the sheets. From the street below rose a scream, wildly distraught and contagiously terrifying. It came three times, and when it had died away it seemed still to tingle in the air.
I shuddered. I could feel the sweat prickle my forehead under the bandages. I knew now that something fearful and horrible was happening. I could not stand my isolation and helplessness any longer. I had to know what was going on around me. My hands went up to my bandages; then, with my fingers on the safety pins, I stopped.
Suppose the treatment had not been successful? Suppose that when I took the bandages off I were to find that I still could not see? That would be worse still—a hundred times worse…I lacked the courage to be alone and find out that they had not saved my sight. And even if they had, would it be safe yet to keep my eyes uncovered?
I dropped my hands and lay back. I was mad at myself and the place, and I did some silly, weak cursing.
Some little while must have passed before I got a proper hold on things again, but after a bit I found myself churning round in my mind once more after a possible explanation. I did not find it. But I did become absolutely convinced that, come all the paradoxes of hell, it was Wednesday. For the previous day had been notable, and I could swear that no more than a single night had passed since then.
You’ll find it in the records that on Tuesday, May 7, the Earth’s orbit passed through a cloud of comet debris. You can even believe it, if you like—millions did. Maybe it was so. I can’t prove anything either way. II was in no state to see what happened myself; but I do have my own ideas. All that I actually know of the occasion is that I had to spend the evening in my bed listening to eyewitness accounts of what was constantly claimed to be the most remarkable celestial spectacle on record.
And yet, until the thing actually began, nobody had ever heard a word about this supposed comet, or its debris.
Why they broadcast it, considering that everyone who could walk, hobble, or be carried was either out of doors or at windows enjoying the greatest free firework display ever, I don’t know. But they did, and it helped to impress on me still more heavily what it meant to be sightless. I got around to feeling that if the treatment had not been successful I’d rather end the whole thing than go on that way.
It was reported in the news bulletins during the day that mysterious bright green flashes had been seen in the Californian skies the previous night. However, such a lot of things did happen in California that no one could be expected to get greatly worked up over that, but as further reports came in, this comet-debris motif made its appearance, and it stuck.
Accounts arrived from all over the Pacific of a night made brilliant by green meteors said to be “sometimes in such numerous showers that the whole sky appeared to be wheeling about us.” And so it was, when you come to think of it.
As the nightline moved westward the brilliance of the display was in no way decreased. Occasional green flashes became visible even before darkness fell. The announcer, giving an account of the phenomenon in the six o’clock news, advised everyone that it was an amazing scene and one not to he missed. He mentioned also that it seemed to be interfering seriously with shortwave reception at long distances, but that the medium waves on which there would be a running commentary were unaffected, as, at present, was television. He need not have troubled with the advice. By the way everyone in the hospital got excited about it, it seemed to me that there was not the least likelihood of anybody missing it—except myself.
And as if the radio’s comments were not enough, the nurse who brought me my supper had to tell me all about it.
“The sky’s simply full of shooting stars.” she said. “All bright green. They make people’s faces look frightfully ghastly. Everybody’s out watching them, and sometimes it’s almost as light as day—only all the wrong color. Even’ now and then there’s a big one so bright that it hurts to look at it. It’s a marvelous sight. ‘They say there’s never been anything like it before. It is such a pity you can’t see it, isn’t it?”
“It is,” I agreed somewhat shortly.
“We’ve drawn back the curtains in the wards so that they can all see it,” she went on. “If only you hadn’t those bandages you’d have a wonderful view of it from here.”
“Oh,” I said.
“But it must be better still outside, though. They say thousands of people are out in the parks and on the heath watching it all. And on all the flat roofs you can see people standing and looking up.”
“How long do they expect it to go on?” I asked patiently.
“I don’t know, but they say it’s not so bright now as it was in other places. Still, even if you’d had your bandages off today, I don’t expect they’d have let you watch it. You’ll have to take things gently at first, and some of the flashes are very bright. “They————Ooooh!”
“Why ‘oooh’?” I inquired.
“That was such a brilliant one then—it made the whole room look green. What a pity you couldn’t see it.”
“Isn’t it?’ I agreed. “Now do go away, there’s a good girl.” I tried listening to the radio, but it was making the same “ooohs” and “aaahs,” helped out by gentlemanly tones which blathered about this “magnificent spectacle” and “unique phenomenon” until I began to feel that there was a parry for all the world going on, with me as the only person not invited.
I didn’t have any choice of entertainment, for the hospital radio system gave only one program, take it or leave it. After a bit I gathered that the show had begun to wane. The announcer advised everyone who had not yet seen it to hurry up and do so, or regret all his life that he had missed it.
The general idea seemed to be to convince me that I was passing up the very thing I was born for. In the end I got sick of it and switched off. The last thing I heard was that the display was diminishing fast now and that we’d probably be out of the debris area in a few hours.
There could be no doubt in my mind that all this had taken place the previous evening—for one thing, I should have been a great deal hungrier even than I was had it been longer ago. Very well, what was this, then? Had the whole hospital, the whole city made such a night of it that they’d not pulled round yet?
About which point I was interrupted as the chorus of clocks, near and far, started announcing nine.
For the third time I played hell with the bell. As I lay waiting I could hear a sort of murmurousness beyond the door. It seemed composed of whimperings, slitherings, and shufflings, punctuated occasionally by a raised voice in the distance.