Chapter I: The Morning the Sun Didn't Rise

May the fifth was scheduled to be Police Inspector Hines's wedding day, but it happened that on that morning the sun did not rise, and so the wedding was postponed.

Otherwise it was just like every other morning. There were no storms, no earthquakes, no unusual phenomena of any kind. A great many people, as a matter of fact, simply disbelieved their clocks when they got up and therefore yawned and went back to bed again.

Others, checking up with the telephone company's time, reasoned sensibly that there was an eclipse or something of the sort, and searched the morning newspapers for details while they breakfasted by artificial light. But the morning newspapers, at least on the Atlantic Coast, bore only their usual quotas of divorces, embezzlements, ax murders and other diverting narratives. Having been printed during the night, they were entirely silent about the sun's eccentric absence. So it was quite a few hours before people became really alarmed.

Probably the first man in the United States to notice any oddity in the morning was a man wearing a green celluloid eyeshade, in the operating office of New York's gigantic uptown power station. He has no importance in the affair other than that priority.

He sat in a very brilliantly lighted office with a huge instrument board before him, on which were vast numbers of dials. A recording ammeter ticked away at his left, tracing a graph of current-consumption for one-half of the whole city. A master voltmeter and a visual master ammeter were just before his eyes.

There were windows on two sides of the room. Through them he could look out over the sleeping city. Long rows of unwinking street lights glittered in deserted avenues. The forms of the East River bridges were outlined in lines of fire. The city was silent and still, sleeping heavily. What few noises came from the empty streets seemed extraordinarily loud.

The man with the green eyeshade opened a window and took grateful breaths of the cool morning air. He was in his shirt sleeves, with his vest unbuttoned. It was hot in the office, with that peculiarly dry and stuffy heat with which we Americans fill our office buildings.

From far below, in the vast halls of the power station, there came a constant subdued, contented humming. Turbine-driven dynamos purred softly, making the electric current which supplied alike the street lamps and the buildings of half the city.

* * * * *

From the other windows he could see toward the east, over the sprawling bulk of Brooklyn toward the sea. There was a faint, pale-grayish glow in the sky. False dawn. Stars began to dim against its brightness. Gradually, very gradually, the dark shapes of buildings began to take form. There were no colors in the sky as yet, merely a subdued gray radiance. But a paler reflection of that pale gray light made rectangular shapes out of irregular bulks.

From the windows of the operating office the city ceased to be a pattern of glittering lights against the dark. It acquired a third dimension. Perspectives developed, and it was possible to discover that this dim, ungainly shape was nearer or farther away than that one.

The man with the green eyeshade--his name does not matter--lowered the window and went back to his seat. It was his task to forecast the demand of the city for power, and to see to it that there were always humming steel monster dynamos in readiness to supply that force.

An easy task, ordinarily. Framed upon the wall at his left, a typical graph of the city's consumption of electricity showed the normal use of current. From six to eight at night, when people dined and electric signs flared, and all dwellings were lighted up, the demand was at its peak. Then more lights burned. More cooking devices functioned. More current was consumed by all the contrivances of an electrified civilization.

The downtown power station had a lesser peak at this hour, but its greatest load came when electrically-driven power devices of lofts and factories were operating. Uptown, the peak load came from homes.

The man in the operating office rested his hand conveniently near a certain switch. It would signal for the cutting off of certain dynamos, assigned to run the street lighting system. He waited for those lights to be extinguished. He did not look out the window for his information, but at his master ammeter. When that needle flickered back to the normal indication for this hour, the dynamos below would cease to run until needed again. Most of the monster machines were idle now, anyhow.

Presently there would come a slow creeping upward, when a myriad early risers turned on lights for their dressing. The master ammeter would record that activity. And then ten thousand electric toasters would perform their function, beginning with half an hour after sunrise, and from then on would come the steady increase in the amount of current used, until ten o'clock would see the last electric dish-washing device turned off; and the normal load of elevators, curling irons, and other trivia would require only two giant generators to run until the noon hour approached.

The man with the green eyeshade waited. The needle held steady. The street lights had not been turned off. Presently there was a slow climb upward. A myriad early risers, wakened by their alarm clocks, had turned on their lights. Time passed slowly. The load increased again. Electric toasters were functioning, and eggs were being boiled.

The man in the operating office of the uptown power station could follow the activities of a city by watching a single giant dial. But he was frowning a little. The load was increasing. There was no drop. His eyes sought a clock at hand. Just the time for sunrise. The load continued to increase.

Frowning, he shifted his hand and swung another switch. A hitherto silent, idle monster below began to hum contentedly. Watching the dial, presently he threw another switch. Still another began to purr, down in the echoful open space where metal monsters lay quiescent.

A telephone rang beside him. He spoke impatiently.

"I don't know. That's what the load calls for." He lifted his eyes and searched a row of circuit ammeters. "No. Everything's all right. If you have to start up another boiler, better go ahead."

A few minutes later, frowning more markedly than before, he lifted the instrument and called himself.

"Get three extra boilers ready. I'm going to need them unless the load falls off."

He watched his instruments in frowning, concentrated attention. He was entirely too busy to glance out of the window. Twice he looked at a clock and at the graph on the wall. Three times the normal demand for power at this time. Now four times.

He called for more boilers to supply steam. Discipline in the power plant is as strict, of course, as in any naval vessel. Orders are obeyed. More and more of the metal monsters whirred and whined and purred themselves into a contented humming.

Eight o'clock. The man with the green eyeshade bit at his nails. Then he looked out of the window. Three seconds of incredulous gazing, and he picked up the telephone instrument.

"Prepare for peak loading," he said curtly. "There's an eclipse or something. It's still dark outdoors."

And from then on he glanced at the windows as often as at his instruments. It was dark outside. At eight o'clock in the morning the street lights of New York were glittering jewels set in rows. The East River bridges were limned in lines of glowing lights. Puzzled people began to appear upon the streets. Store fronts were lighted. Windows in apartments and in private homes began to glow in vivid small rectangles.

At half past eight the man in the green eyeshade raised the window and stared shakenly upward. The sky was a dull, dead, velvety black. No stars were visible. No trace of illumination; no faintest ray of light came down from above. The city lived and moved and had its being in what would have been an entirely normal fashion--for night-time. Nothing at all had happened. Nothing whatever had occurred. The only oddity that could be discovered anywhere was simply the fact that on that morning the sun had not risen.