The Other Side of the Sun

By Paul Capon

Timothy Penn led a very regulated life. He worked as an assistant clerk in a bookstore and he spent time reading in the park. But he was fascinated by the news of the possible existence of a planet in Earth's orbit but on the opposite side of the Sun. And then when he won the largest dividend ever awarded in a national football pool, he did something that would completely overturn his humdrum existence. He purchased a passage on the "Skylark", a spaceship bound on a trip around the Sun to see if that other planet really did exist.

Timothy not only found adventure but romance in the person of Rose Pollenport, the beautiful daughter of the world famous scientist in command of the expedition. The planet on the other side of the Sun, which they called Antigeos, was a strange but intriguing place, with inhabitants that seemed both very human and very alien. And Timothy's adventure was only beginning when they landed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thunderchild Publishing
• Release date: Jan 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9781479476190

Book preview

Dedication

TO

MY DAUGHTER,

FELICITY

CHAPTER I - The Finding of Antigeos

1

On a spring afternoon in the late nineteen sixties, an elderly, rather shabby man stood cogitating in a patch of sunshine between two Ebury Street houses. The outmoded headgear he wore — a bowler hat — combined with old-fashioned pince-nez to give him an almost archaic look, and he would never know that, during the few seconds he stood there in the sunlight, the vagaries of chance chose him to be the prime mover in someone else’s great adventure.

The problem that exercised him was a simple one — should he throw up his job there and then, kiss it good-bye and chuck all the forms and pamphlets his employers had given him into a dustbin, or should he make one more effort towards turning failure into success?

He glanced distastefully at the doors of two or three of the near-by houses and at last came to a decision. All right, he muttered. I’ll try just once more — only once more, mind — and if I don’t strike lucky I’ll pack it up for good and all, and then, with no great show of resolution, he ambled off along the street gazing up at the windows for signs of life. He was just as tired of ringing bells and getting no answer as he was of hearing people say, Not today, thank you, and he wanted to be sure that when next he made a call the door was opened.

A neat newly-painted house caught his attention momentarily, but then he noticed that the ground-floor windows were closed and that three bottles of milk stood on the steps. He was about to pass on when he happened to glance down at the basement window and so had an oblique view of a room in which a young man sat, cleaning his shoes.

Might be worth trying, thought the man in the bowler hat. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen a basement with a bow-window before — that by itself ought to mean something. He pushed open the area-gate and started down the steps.

The young man who lived in the basement and whose name was Timothy Penn answered the door promptly. He still had a shoe in his hand and he continued to polish it while the canvasser, perfunctorily tipping his decrepit bowler, launched into his sales-patter: A good afternoon to you, sir. I represent the Greatorex Football Pools and I’m here to invite you to join the Greatorex Happy Circle of contented investors —

At this point Timothy started to shake his head slowly and so spurred the canvasser into a breathless gallop of words, As you no doubt know, sir, it is now a foregone conclusion that the Government will take over the pools as from the end of this season. I put it to you, sir, that this is your very last chance of winning a sizeable dividend — once the industry is nationalised we shall see very little return on our investments. Now, sir, forgive me being personal, but you are exactly the type to win big money: why, only last week a client that I introduced — same build as yourself, same colour hair and, yes, brown eyes too — won no less than fifteen thousand pounds. Just think what you could do —

However, Timothy went on shaking his head and the old man’s voice trailed dejectedly into silence. Timothy muttered, Sorry, and was about to close the door when the canvasser startled him by angrily tugging a handful of papers from his pocket. All right, mate — that’s my lot, he shouted. They can keep their lousy job and — and — fury muffled his words and he bent almost double in his efforts to tear up the sheaf of paper.

What on earth are you doing? Timothy asked.

Doing? I’m turning it in — that’s what I’m doing, the canvasser told him; and, straightening up, he went on, I’ve had just about enough. Yes, I said to myself, ‘Just one more go and if there’s nothing doing, I’ll call it quits.’ All bloody morning I’ve been at it and not a nibble, not one single solitary salvationary nibble!

And what about the chap that won fifteen thousand?

Him! snorted the canvasser, derisively. He doesn’t exist, mate — that’s what happened to him. That’s only the sort of thing they tell us to say.

The old man looked so utterly wretched and defeated that Timothy was moved to sympathy. All right, he said. I’ll subscribe or whatever it is you want me to do. How much?

Only a couple of bob. And you might win thousands, though I doubt it.

Timothy, smiling, handed over two shillings and the dispirited canvasser gave him a large tawny envelope.

2

Timothy had things more important to think about than football coupons. His rose-coloured suit, for instance.

The tailor had persuaded him that unless he ordered one of the new-style suits he would find himself the only man in London without one, but now that the suit had arrived, qualms infested him.

He changed his shirt, put on his collar and tie, brushed his hair and all the time in the mirror he caught reflected glimpses of the suit as it lay there on the bed mocking him with its outrageous rosiness. Hell, he muttered. I’ve paid for it and I’ve got to wear it. Damned if I’ll let it intimidate me!

He donned the suit and, self-conscious even in the privacy of his room, surveyed himself as well as he could in the only mirror he had, which was a small one. The suit looked very different from when he had tried it on at the tailor’s. Then his interest in it had still been amused and detached, but now the thing was becoming possessive, it was claiming a share of his personality and he could not be sure that this was desirable.

In spite of the care he bestowed on his toilet, he wasn’t going anywhere in particular that afternoon. His only plans were to sit in the Park and read a book until teatime and then, in the evening, to go to the cinema. He wouldn’t be taking a girl with him, because he knew none he dare ask. His trouble was excessive shyness — girls terrified him even more than they appealed to him, he saw them as shimmering, restless creatures who never stayed still long enough for him to invite them out. So he remained a dreamy, solitary young man, relying on his imagination to afford him a more satisfactory life than any provided by the realities.

Since he had no appointment, there was hardly a limit to the time he could spend dawdling in his room putting off the zero moment when he would have to sally forth in all his roseate splendour. He folded up his working clothes and put them away, straightened the books on the bookshelves, tore up a circular and threw it into the wastepaper-basket, and was about to do the same with the football coupons when he hesitated, reflecting that he might as well see what they were all about.

That year there was conflict in the football-pool world. The rival proprietors were fighting each other tooth and nail, the uneasy truce of the last twenty years was shattered and now, with unlimited supplies of money and paper, and all the publicity they could grab, they battled shamelessly to enrol each other’s clients. The cause of the war lay simply in the fact that, when the pools were nationalised, the owners were to be compensated in ratio to the present season’s turnover; and they fought each other relentlessly, even to the point of hiring razor-gangs to terrorise rival canvassers, and hardly a week went by but what one pool or another triumphantly announced the largest dividend ever paid out.

So far Timothy had remained unaffected and indifferent. He had never in his life felt the slightest desire to fill in a football coupon, he wasn’t by nature a gambler nor was he greedy and he was fairly well contented with things as they were. Now, however, mildly curious, he drew out the various pieces of paper contained in the tawny envelope and shuffled through them. They were all vilely printed in orange and heliotrope inks and the most striking of them was a hand-out that called itself The Greatorex Weekly News. Its main headline screamed:

MRS. RIBB (Winner of £93,000) SAYS NO POOL LIKE GREATOREX

and beneath was a muddy photograph of a startled charwoman almost completely encircled by the five Greatorex brothers beaming ferociously.

Unctuous oafs, Timothy muttered. Trying to look as if their only motives for running the pool were altruistic. He turned his attention to the coupon itself and was astonished to discover that, in the penny-points pool, punters were asked to forecast the results of no fewer than fifteen matches. Fifteen! he exclaimed. And each of them can finish in any one of three different ways. Why, the odds must be millions to one against a correct solution. Let’s see, three threes are nine, three nines are twenty-seven, three twenty-sevens are — and he took out his pen and worked out the rest of the sum on the back of the envelope.

More than thirteen millions to one! And he went on to calculate that it would cost over fifty-five thousand pounds to cover every chance.

It would be difficult to say exactly how he came to a decision to try his luck. He sat there with the coupon in front of him and his pen in his hand, and somehow it just happened. He thought, After all, I have paid for it . . . with some hazy idea that the money he’d given the canvasser was a stake and not a subscription. He believed it entitled him to twenty-four chances in the penny-points pool and consequently spent the next few minutes entering a series of random forecasts.

3

When at length Timothy ventured forth into Ebury Street he made strenuous efforts to appear nonchalant; but nonchalance is not a quality to be achieved by struggle, and his efforts only succeeded in making him the more self-conscious, so much so that even his head would not seem to sit naturally on his shoulders and he found himself unable to look anywhere except fixedly into the middle distance. A small boy shouting to his friend across the street, Gripes, Alfie, here’s a pink ‘un! did nothing to increase his ease of mind and he did not enjoy having to pass between the two boys while they gaped at him and pretended to be petrified by astonishment. The larger boy remarked perspicaciously, Cor, I bet he feels rum, then the two of them broke loose from their rapture and went whooping off along the street.

Timothy, his face as red as his suit, hastily turned a corner and headed towards the Buckingham Palace Road. From the opposite direction came a girl in blue and she was wearing one of the new cirrus skirts which were just then coming into fashion; it flowed from her waist to her ankles, a tenuous unpractical loveliness, and there was just enough breeze to make it stream out into the air much like the cloud after which it was named. With it she wore a backless, sleeveless bodice narrowly slashed down the front as far as her waist, and this was the controversial deep-vee neck-line that was so agitating the Grundys of the time. Not since the short hair and short skirts of the twenties had a fashion inspired so many irascible and censorious letters to the Press — many of them, no doubt, written by the very generation that had so incurred its elders’ disapproval forty years before.

She was a pretty girl and as she neared Timothy she gave him a friendly half-smile as if to say, Good — here’s someone else who believes in a brighter and a gayer world, and in that moment the worst of Timothy’s diffidence dissolved, he squared his shoulders and walked confidently on as if he’d been born and bred to the wearing of roseate suits.

He posted the football coupon, bought an evening-paper and glanced at the headlines while waiting for a bus. There was nothing startling in the news, the principal headline merely said:

NO RECOGNITION FOR U.S. GOVERNMENT

and Timothy briefly scanned the report’s opening paragraph: To a crowded House of Commons this afternoon the Foreign Secretary reaffirmed his refusal to grant recognition to the Washington provisional government. However, it did not escape notice that, during the course of his speech, he used the word ‘premature’ and in some quarters this was taken to indicate a slight softening in the Foreign Office attitude. . . .

Timothy’s bus hove in sight. He signalled it and tucked the newspaper under his arm.

The glance the conductor gave him as he got on to the bus was frankly admiring. That’s the spirit, mate, he said.

What, my suit?

Yes. I wouldn’t mind one like it.

Wouldn’t you? said Timothy, encouraged. He held out two pennies. Hyde Park Corner, please.

No, I wouldn’t, repeated the conductor, punching the ticket. Only my missus won’t let me. We was only talking about it last night — myself, I fancied a nice bright lemon material, as a matter of fact, but the missus said, ‘Yes, and a proper old lemon you’d look. No, Charlie, as long as I have any say on the subject you’ll wear navy-blue, for best, just like you always have!’ So mate, that’s that.

Timothy grinned and started up the stairs to the top-deck. . . .

4

The fountain by the Achilles Statue was an enchanting sight that afternoon — the slender column of its middle jet and the eight surrounding parabolas sparkled in the April sunshine and, from Timothy’s point of view, as he looked at it with his back to Park Lane, the spray was bridged by the arc of a diminutive rainbow.

London was becoming a city of fountains. Timothy, at twenty-three, wasn’t old enough to remember a time when there had scarcely been any. He thought of the display he was watching now as the new fountain, but the others — the ones in St. James’s Park, in Green Park, in Kensington Gardens, at Piccadilly Circus and along the embankments on both sides of the river — he accepted as integral features of the London scene. He imagined the town without them must have been unbearably grim and he reflected that it wasn’t surprising that the older generation, with its everlasting talk of the war and what it had done in the blitz, should be a somewhat glum and dispirited lot.

He strolled slowly along the Broad Walk, came to a small cluster of deck-chairs and sat down. There was no one near him except a small boy of eight or so, solemnly playing with a diabolo. He looked a very small boy to be entirely alone and when, presently, the diabolo rocketed from its string and came spinning through the air towards Timothy, Timothy said, as he returned the toy, I suppose you’re all right, sonny? I mean, you’re not lost or anything like that?

Why, no — I ain’t lost, said the child, with a strong trace of American accent. Momma’s behind that tree there. Are you lost, then?

Smiling, Timothy said that he wasn’t lost either and from behind the indicated tree an acidulous voice quavered, "Luther, you mustn’t say ‘I ain’t lost —’"

But, Mom, I ain’t, am I? Luther protested, and scampered off towards his mother to pursue the argument.

Timothy finished reading his newspaper, then let it fall on his knee, turned his face to the sun and closed his eyes. He was on the verge of falling asleep when he was disturbed by the same querulous voice that he had heard before. He opened his eyes to discover a thin angular woman standing over him with an ingratiating smile on her lips.

Pardon me, sir, but I wonder if I might glance at your paper. I guess that headline refers to the Commons debate and —

Certainly, said Timothy and handed her the newspaper.

Luther sauntered up while she was reading the report. What you talking to this man for, Mom? he asked, accusingly.

"This gentleman very kindly lent me his newspaper. There’s something in it concerning the States."

What about the States?

Only something about the Washington government.

Oh, that, muttered the little boy, and turned to Timothy. My Pop says they’re just a goddamned bunch of lousy Reds.

Luther! his mother exclaimed. Why, I’m sure your father never said a thing of the sort.

He did, too! shrilled Luther passionately. I heard him telling it to Mr. Golopoulos over the telephone and then he said —

His mother shushed him and said to Timothy with a toothy smile, I guess you’re like most English people and think that now the civil war’s over it’s time we Americans went back home?

Timothy muttered noncommittally, and she went on, Oh, I wouldn’t blame you. Only my husband and me, and Luther, aren’t just the usual run of refugees. We’d’ve been over here in any case on account of my husband being —

Luther put in, Mom, when are we going along to the maze?

In a minute, Luther, in a minute. How often have I to tell you it’s rude to interrupt grown-ups when they’re talking?

When can I interrupt them, then? asked Luther and ambled away, fretfully banging the diabolo-sticks against the reel.

Oh that maze! moaned the American woman. Ever since it opened last month we’ve had to go see it every time we’ve come to the Park.

Yes, children find it very thrilling, murmured Timothy, and prayed that the woman might go off to the maze and lose herself. He wanted to be left alone to enjoy his afternoon.

I guess there’s something wrong with modern children, the woman went on. I mean, they’re amused by such silly simple things — mazes and that stupid diabolo. You’d almost think Luther was a throw-back — why, my grannie used to play with diabolos when she was a girl. I gave Luther a very expensive bomber for his birthday and, do you know, he’s hardly touched it?

Luther magically reappeared from behind the deck-chair. What didn’t I touch? he demanded.

That lovely bomber I gave you.

His face clouded. Aw, I didn’t like it, he muttered. Mom, why can’t we go to the maze?

Oh, very well, said his mother, getting up. But you mustn’t expect to be there long.

Timothy watched them as they walked across the grass towards the new maze by the Serpentine. He felt sorry for Luther, the little boy’s half-arrogant, half-wistful manner had touched him and he was disturbed by the quite evident lack of understanding between mother and son. He was an orphan himself, he liked to believe that all mothers were perfect and resented anything that damaged his cherished conception of his own mother, in which she figured as a being of ineffable wonder and beauty.

Actually he did not so much as know her name. He knew nothing of his origins except the name of the hospital where he was born and the approximate date of his birth. It had been during the war and it was the custom each night for all the babies to be wheeled into a separate ward, so that the mothers might sleep undisturbed. Then one night a high-explosive bomb scored a direct hit on the maternity-ward, twelve women were killed and Timothy’s mother was one of them. There were no casualties among the babies, but they were thrown out of the cots that bore their identity-tags and Timothy was never identified, nor did any relatives come forward to claim him. However, it afforded him no satisfaction to know that he was that rare thing — a person completely untrammelled by family ties and obligations. He would have preferred a life in which there was more affection and the certainty of knowing that at least someone cared what became of him.

Along the line of trees the chair-attendant was advancing upon him, and he fumbled in his pocket for coppers.

Seen you often enough before, said the attendant, as he took the money. Only not in them trousers.

He tittered, and Timothy, to whom the ancient catch-phrase was new, wondered why the old man particularly remarked his trousers. Yet he wasn’t curious enough to ask, and only murmured, You must have a good memory for faces.

Got to, in this job. People dodge about so. Doesn’t do to keep trying to sell ‘em tickets they already got. He gazed thoughtfully about him, then went on, Yes, I reckon I must’ve sold you some scores of tickets. And I remember us having quite a long talk once — why, it must be four, if not five, years ago. We talked about Antigeos — like everyone else at the time.

Oh yes?

You was full of it.

Was I?

Not so full of it now, eh?

I don’t know — I’m still interested, but there’s never anything about it in the papers.

You’re right, there isn’t, agreed the attendant, with a brief cackle. Perhaps someone made a little mistake.

Perhaps, said Timothy, yet reluctant to admit the possibility.

And after the attendant had gone his thoughts went back to Antigeos. He murmured the name and, screwing up his eyes, looked into the glare of the sun’s disc. He was moved by desperate longings and his mind was filled with a restless indefinable wonder.

5

There had been a time, five years before, when millions shared Timothy’s interest in Antigeos. For about three months people had hardly talked of anything else and whenever in the streets, on buses or in cafes, you heard the phrase, "Now look here, old man, it stands to reason —" you could lay long odds that the matter that stood to reason was the existence or nonexistence of Antigeos. It was a question that made people unexpectedly angry. Friendships impaled themselves upon it and foundered. Whether you were for Antigeos or against it depended largely on what newspaper you read. And on your age — young people mostly liked the idea, old people loathed it.

It had all started quite quietly when a stout squat woman of nearly sixty stumped into the reception-hall of the Daily Messenger building with a small brown-paper parcel under her arm. She was dressed entirely in black and there was a certain militant aspect about her bearing that made the hall-porter remark to himself, Look out, here comes trouble.

However, he was wrong. The woman came to the reception-counter and said, in perfectly equable tones, Please, I am wishing to see the science editor, Professor Pollenport.

The hall-porter was relieved, and mildly surprised — usually, foreign ladies of militant aspect demanded to see Lord Sanderlake himself and no one else.

On what business? he asked.

Not with business at all. I have certain informations, perhaps of uttermost importance, or perhaps nothing. I cannot say, because I am not being an astrologer.

This remark gave the hall-porter a clue. He turned to the little switchboard at his side, paused with his finger on one of the switches and murmured, I don’t think Professor Pollenport’s in, but what name?

Ilse Wittenhagen, said the stout lady.

He depressed the switch and spoke into the mouthpiece. Mr. Melhuish? Hall-porter speaking. There’s a Mrs. Wittenhagen here and I understand she wants to see someone about some astrology. . . . Very good, sir — I’ll send her up.

Anthony Melhuish was a smooth dapper young man of impeccable manners, and it was his job to shelter his superiors from the ceaseless hail of cranks and lunatics that patters relentlessly down upon any national newspaper. His bread-and-butter depended upon his ability to suffer crackpots gladly, and people who claimed to be the Beast Six-six-six or to control the weather or to be able to cause earthquakes by an entirely new method invariably received courteous and tactful treatment at his hands. He separated the sheep from the goats, and then subdivided the goats into tedious goats and colourful goats, sent the one type packing and turned in a brief news-story on the other. Charm and inoffensiveness were his chief characteristics, and when Ilse Wittenhagen was shown into his office she at once felt at her ease.

Mrs. Wittenhagen? he murmured, smoothing his pale hair with a pale hand.

"Ja. Frau Ilse Wittenhagen, widow of the late Professor Wittenhagen of Vienna. You have heard of him?"

Who hasn’t? said Melhuish, who hadn’t. He was, I believe, an astrologer?

Oh no. That is to say, he was not famous so. No, he was famous at being a physicist.

Oh yes. Of course.

However, in year 1937 the Professor retired from teaching and went to live in a house by Salzburg, which is being his home-town. I was there engaged as his housekeeper and he is interesting himself once more in the hobby of his boyhood — astrology. He builds to himself the little observatory on the hill-top —

Excuse me a moment, said Melhuish, but are you sure you don’t mean ‘astronomy’?

"Ja, as I say, astrology —"

What, foretelling the future by the stars and all that?

Mrs. Wittenhagen looked shocked. Please, what an idea! You cannot believe the Professor is being superstitious?

Oh, definitely not. Then I take it that actually he was interested, not in astrology, but in astronomy?

"Jawohl, as I have already said, he was, as a hobby, an astrologer."

Melhuish gave up. And?

"And then, after a year only, is coming die Anschluss."

Oh yes? Melhuish was young enough to have only a hazy idea of this event of more than thirty years before; in fact, for a moment, reasoning by onomatopoeia, he imagined it must have been a cloudburst or a tidal-wave, then decided that either was unlikely and prompted, Now that was when —

That was when Hitler is marching on to Austria, and when Schuschnigg —