The Poison Belt
Arthur Conan Doyle
Paperback
(Jazzybee Verlag, March 12, 2016)
In the course of its serene spinning on through space the earth runs into a belt or stratum of poisonous vapor, which is deadly to every living thing on earth. The only warning given is an inexplicable blurring of Frauenhofer’s lines in the spectroscope, and Professor Challenger, the hairy, fiery-tempered scientist, is the only man keen enough to foresee what is coming. Behold then, the nations of the earth, one by one on a bright summer day, succumbing, suddenly insensible, to the poison vapor. Every animal thing suffers alike; birds fall dead from the branches; horses drop as they stand in their shafts; men drop at their work or play. Engineers falling at their posts, leave their trains full of unconscious humanity to rush on to destruction. Fires break out in a thousand cities and the human race, and indeed all animal life on the earth, comes apparently to a terrible end. The only exception is a little party who under Challenger‘s guidance seal themselves in a room in his country house with a supply of cylinders of oxygen ...