The Light of Darkness

I am not one of those Africans who feel ashamed of their country because, in 50 years, it has made less progress than Europe in 500. But where we have failed to advance as fast as we should, it is owing to dictators like Chaka; and for this, we have only ourselves to blame. The fault being ours, so is the responsibility for the cure.

Moreover, I had better reasons than most for wishing to destroy the Great Chief, the Omnipotent, the All-Seeing. He was of my own tribe, being related to me through one of my father's wives, and he had persecuted our family ever since he came to power. Although we took no part in politics, two of my brothers had disappeared, and another had been killed in an unexplained auto accident. My own liberty, there could be little doubt, was largely due to my standing as one of the country's few scientists with an international reputation.

Like many of my fellow intellectuals, I had been slow to turn against Chaka, feeling—as did the (continued on page 174)Light of Darkness(continued from page 113) equally misguided Germans of the 1930s—that there were times when a dictator was the only answer to political chaos. Perhaps the first sign of our disastrous error came when Chaka abolished the Constitution and assumed the name of the 19th Century Zulu emperor of whom he genuinely believed himself the reincarnation. From that moment, his megalomania grew swiftly; like all tyrants, he would trust no one and believed himself surrounded by plots.

This belief was well-founded; the world knows of at least six well-publicized attempts on his life, and there are others that were kept secret. Their failure increased Chaka's confidence in his own destiny and confirmed his followers' fanatical belief in his immortality. As the opposition became more desperate, so the Great Chief's countermeasures became more ruthless—and more barbaric. Chaka's regime was not the first, in Africa or elsewhere, to torture its enemies; but it was the first to do so on television.

Even then, shamed though I was by the shock of horror and revulsion that went round the world, I would have done nothing if fate had not placed the weapon in my hands. I am not a man of action, and I abhor violence, but once I realized the power that was mine, my conscience would not let me rest. As soon as the NASA technicians had installed their equipment and handed over the Hughes Mark X Infrared Communications System, I began to make plans.

It seems strange that my country, one of the most backward in the world, should play a central role in the conquest of space. That is an accident of geography, not at all to the liking of the Russians and the Americans. But there is nothing that they could do about it; Umbala lies on the Equator, directly beneath the paths of all the planets—and it possesses a unique and priceless natural feature, the extinct volcano known as the Zambue Crater.

When Zambue died, more than a million years ago, the lava retreated step by step, congealing in a series of terraces to form a bowl a mile wide and a thousand feet deep. It had taken the minimum of earth-moving and cable-stringing to convert this into the largest radio telescope on Earth. Because the gigantic reflector is fixed, it scans any given portion of the sky for only a few minutes every 24 hours, as the Earth turns on its axis. This was a price the scientists were willing to pay for the ability to receive signals from probes and ships right out to the very limits of the Solar System.

Chaka was a problem that they had not anticipated; he had come to power when the work was almost completed, and they had had to make the best of him. Luckily, he had a superstitious respect for science, and he needed all the rubles and dollars he could get. The Equatorial Deep Space Facility was safe from his megalomania; indeed, it helped to reinforce it.

The Big Dish had just been completed when I made my first trip up the tower that sprang from its center. A vertical mast, more than 1500 feet high, it supported the collecting antennas at the focus of the immense bowl; a small elevator, which could carry three men, made a slow ascent to the top.

At first, there was nothing to see but the dully gleaming saucer of aluminum sheet, curving upward all around me for half a mile in every direction. But presently I rose above the rim of the crater and could look far out across the land I hoped to save. Snow-capped and blue in the western haze was Mount Tampala, the second highest peak in Africa, separated from me by endless miles of jungle. Through that jungle, in great twisting loops, wound the muddy waters of the Nya River—the only highway that millions of my countrymen had ever known. A few clearings, a railroad and the distant white gleam of the city were the only signs of human life; once again I knew that overwhelming feeling of helplessness when I look down on Umbala from the air and realize the insignificance of man against the infinite forest.

The elevator cage clicked to a halt, a quarter of a mile up in the sky; when I stepped out, I was in a tiny room packed with coaxial cables and instruments. There was still some distance to go, for a short ladder led through the roof to a platform little more than a yard square. It was not a place for anyone prone to vertigo; there was not even a handrail for protection. A central lightning conductor gave a certain amount of security, and I gripped it firmly with one hand all the time I stood on this triangular metal raft, so close to the clouds.

The stunning view, and the exhilaration of slight but ever-present danger, made me forget the passage of time. I felt like a god, completely apart from terrestrial affairs, superior to all other men. And then I knew, with mathematical certainty, that here was a challenge that Chaka could never ignore.

Colonel Mtanga, his chief of security, would object, but his protests would be overruled. Knowing Chaka, one could predict with complete assurance that on the official opening day he would stand here, alone, for many minutes, as he surveyed his empire. His bodyguard would remain in the room below, having already checked it for booby traps. They could do nothing to save him, when I struck from three miles away—and through the range of hills that lay between the radio telescope and my observatory. I was glad of those hills; though they complicated the problem, they would shield me from all suspicion. Colonel Mtanga was a very intelligent man, but he was not likely to conceive of a gun that could fire round corners. And he would be looking for a gun, even though he could find no bullets ...

I went back to the laboratory and started my calculations. It was not long before I discovered my first mistake. Because I had seen the concentrated light of its laser beam punch a hole through solid steel in a thousandth of a second, I had assumed that my Mark X could kill a man. But it is not as simple as that; in some ways, a man is a tougher proposition than a piece of steel. He is mostly water, which has ten times the heat capacity of any metal. A beam of light that will drill a hole through armor plate or carry a message as far as Pluto—which was the job the Mark X had been designed for—would only give a man a painful but quite superficial burn. About the worst I could do to Chaka, from three miles away, was to drill a hole in the colorful tribal blanket that he wore so ostentatiously, to prove that he was still one of the People.

For a while, I almost abandoned the project. But it would not die; instinctively, I knew that the answer was there, if only I could see it. Perhaps I could use my invisible bullets of heat to cut one of the cables guying the tower, so that it came crashing down when Chaka was at the summit. Calculations showed that this was just possible, if the Mark X operated continuously for 15 seconds. A cable, unlike a man, would not move, so there was no need to stake everything on a pulse of energy. I could take my time.

But damaging the telescope would have been treason to science, and it was almost a relief when I discovered that this scheme would not work. The mast had so many built-in safety factors that I would have to cut three separate cables to bring it down. This was out of the question; it would require hours of delicate adjustment to set and aim the apparatus for each precision shot.

I had to think of something else; and because it takes men a long time to see the obvious, it was not until a week before the official opening of the telescope that I knew how to deal with Chaka the All-Seeing, the Omnipotent, the Father of his People.

By this time, my graduate students had tuned and calibrated the equipment, and we were ready for the first full-power tests. As it rotated on its mounting inside the observatory dome, the Mark X looked exactly like a large, double-barreled reflecting telescope—which indeed it was. One 36-inch mirror gathered the laser pulse and focused it out across space; the other acted as a receiver for incoming signals, and also was used, like a superpowered telescopic sight, to aim the system.

We checked the line-up on the nearest celestial target, the Moon. Late one night, I set the cross wires on the center of the waning crescent and fired off a pulse. Two and a half seconds later, a fine echo came bouncing back. We were in business.

There was one detail still to be arranged, and this I had to do myself, in utter secrecy. The radio telescope lay to the north of the observatory, beyond the ridge of hills that blocked our direct view of it. A mile to the south was a single isolated mountain; I knew it well, for years ago I had helped to set up a cosmic-ray station there. Now it would be used for a purpose that I could never have imagined, in the days when my country was free.

Just below the summit there were the ruins of an old fort, deserted centuries ago. It took only a little searching to find the spot I needed—a small cave, less than a yard high, between two great stones that had fallen from the ancient walls. Judging by the cobwebs, no human being had entered it for generations.

When I crouched in the opening, I could see the whole expanse of the Deep Space Facility, stretching away for miles. Over to the east were the antennas of the old Project Apollo Tracking Station that had brought the first men back from the Moon. Beyond that lay the airfield, above which a big freighter was hovering as it came in on its underjets. But all that interested me were the clear lines of sight from this spot to the Mark X dome and to the tip of the radio telescope mast three miles to the north.

It took me three days to install the carefully silvered, optically perfect mirror in its hidden alcove. The tedious micrometer adjustments to give the exact orientation took so long that I feared I would not be ready in time. But at last the angle was correct, to a fraction of a second of arc. When I aimed the telescope of the Mark X at the secret spot on the mountain, I could see over the hills behind me. The field of view was tiny, but it was sufficient; the target area was only a yard across, and I could sight on any part of it to within an inch.

Along the path I had arranged, light could travel in either direction. Whatever I saw through the viewing telescope was automatically on the line of fire of the transmitter.

It was strange, three days later, to sit in the quiet observatory with the power packs humming around me, and to watch Chaka move into the field of the telescope. I felt a brief glow of triumph, like an astronomer who has calculated the orbit of a new planet and then finds it in the predicted spot among the stars. The cruel face was in profile when I saw it first, apparently only 30 feet away at the extreme magnification I was using. I waited patiently, in serene confidence, for the moment that I knew must come—the moment when Chaka seemed to be looking directly toward me. Then with my left hand I held the image of an ancient god who must be nameless; and with my right I tripped the capacitor banks that fired the laser, launching my silent, invisible thunderbolt across the mountains.

Yes, it was so much better this way. Chaka deserved to be killed, but death would have turned him into a martyr and strengthened the hold of his regime. What I had visited upon him was worse than death, and would throw his supporters into superstitious terror.

For Chaka still lived; but the All-Seeing would see no more. In the space of a few microseconds, I had made him less than the humblest street beggar.

And I had not even hurt him. There is no pain, when the delicate film of the retina is fused by the heat of a thousand suns.