the blue of the sea and beyond it, purple Knocknarea, the red of the early rhododendrons, my father’s red cheeks and beard: it is funny how easily you forget the colors when there is only grey around you. But oh, nothing has changed, and that is so good; everything is as it was when I left after Christmas, Mrs. O’Carolan is fat and fusty and kind. Mama is Mama, pretending she is an artist and a poet and a tragic queen from a legend all rolled into one; Papa is Papa, worried and hurried and so busy with his telescopes and sums I’m sure he has already forgotten I’m here. And Craigdarragh is Craigdarragh: the woods, the mountain, the waterfall. Today I revisited the Bridestone up above the woods on the slopes of Ben Bulben. How peaceful it is there with only the wind and the song of the blackbird for company. Peaceful, and, dare I say, magical? It is like nothing has changed for a thousand years, one can imagine Finn MacCumhall and his grim Fianna warriors hunting the leaping stag with his red-eared hounds through some woodland glade, or the sunlight glinting from the spearpoints of the Red Branch Heroes as they march to avenge some slaughtered comrade.
Perhaps my imagination is too vigorous after months of confinement in that grey prison of Cross and Passion: I could have sworn that I was not alone as I came down through the woods from the Bridestone, that there were shadowy shapes flitting from tree to tree, unseen when I looked for them, giggling at my foolishness. Ah well, I did say it was an enchanted, faery place.
* * * *
EXCERPTS FROM DR. EDWARD GARRET DESMOND’S ECTURE TO THE ROYAL IRISH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN, APRIL 16, 1909.
THEREFORE, GENTLEMEN, IT is clearly impossible for these fluctuations in luminosity from Bell’s Comet to be due to the differing albedos of its spinning surfaces, as my mathematical proofs have demonstrated. The only explanation for this unprecedented phenomenon is that these emissions of light are artificial in origin.
(
General consternation among the learned fellows
.)
If artificial, then we must address ourselves to the disturbing truth that they must,
must
, gentlemen, be works of intellects: minds, learned fellows, as great as, if not greater than, our own. It has long been held that we are not the unique handiwork of our Creator; the possibility of great civilizations upon the planets Mars and Venus and even beneath the forbidding surface of our own moon has been many times mooted by respected men of science and learning.
(
Heckler: “Intoxicated men of absinthe and bourbon!” Laughter
.)
What I am now proposing, if I may, gentlemen, is a concept of a whole order of magnitude greater than these speculations. I am proposing that this artifact, for artificial it must be, is evidence of a mighty civilization
beyond our solar system
, upon a world of the star Wolfe 359, for it is from the direction of this star that the object called Bell’s Comet originates. Having ascertained that the object was indeed no mere lifeless comet, I attempted to ascertain its velocity. As the learned fellows are doubtless too aware, it is difficult in the extreme to calculate the velocity of astronomical phenomena; nevertheless, I estimated the object’s velocity to be three hundred and fifty miles per second.
(
Murmurs of amazement from the learned fellows
.)
However, over the four-week period during which I kept the object under daily observation, weather permitting, the velocity decreased from three hundred and fifty miles per second to one hundred and twenty miles per second. Clearly, the object is decelerating, and from this information only one conclusion is possible—that the object is a spatial vehicle of some form, despatched by the inhabitants of Wolfe 359 to establish contact with the inhabitants of our earth.
(
Heckler: “Oh come now.”
)
While the exact design of such a spatial vehicle is beyond my conception, I have some tentative suggestions as to
Perhaps my imagination is too vigorous after months of confinement in that grey prison of Cross and Passion: I could have sworn that I was not alone as I came down through the woods from the Bridestone, that there were shadowy shapes flitting from tree to tree, unseen when I looked for them, giggling at my foolishness. Ah well, I did say it was an enchanted, faery place.
* * * *
EXCERPTS FROM DR. EDWARD GARRET DESMOND’S ECTURE TO THE ROYAL IRISH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN, APRIL 16, 1909.
THEREFORE, GENTLEMEN, IT is clearly impossible for these fluctuations in luminosity from Bell’s Comet to be due to the differing albedos of its spinning surfaces, as my mathematical proofs have demonstrated. The only explanation for this unprecedented phenomenon is that these emissions of light are artificial in origin.
(
General consternation among the learned fellows
.)
If artificial, then we must address ourselves to the disturbing truth that they must,
must
, gentlemen, be works of intellects: minds, learned fellows, as great as, if not greater than, our own. It has long been held that we are not the unique handiwork of our Creator; the possibility of great civilizations upon the planets Mars and Venus and even beneath the forbidding surface of our own moon has been many times mooted by respected men of science and learning.
(
Heckler: “Intoxicated men of absinthe and bourbon!” Laughter
.)
What I am now proposing, if I may, gentlemen, is a concept of a whole order of magnitude greater than these speculations. I am proposing that this artifact, for artificial it must be, is evidence of a mighty civilization
beyond our solar system
, upon a world of the star Wolfe 359, for it is from the direction of this star that the object called Bell’s Comet originates. Having ascertained that the object was indeed no mere lifeless comet, I attempted to ascertain its velocity. As the learned fellows are doubtless too aware, it is difficult in the extreme to calculate the velocity of astronomical phenomena; nevertheless, I estimated the object’s velocity to be three hundred and fifty miles per second.
(
Murmurs of amazement from the learned fellows
.)
However, over the four-week period during which I kept the object under daily observation, weather permitting, the velocity decreased from three hundred and fifty miles per second to one hundred and twenty miles per second. Clearly, the object is decelerating, and from this information only one conclusion is possible—that the object is a spatial vehicle of some form, despatched by the inhabitants of Wolfe 359 to establish contact with the inhabitants of our earth.
(
Heckler: “Oh come now.”
)
While the exact design of such a spatial vehicle is beyond my conception, I have some tentative suggestions as to
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