Scimitar SL-2

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Professor Paul Landon, known to an entire generation of university students as “Lava,” hurried through the lower ground floor doorway of the Royal Geographical Society. Out into the darkness of wide, tree-lined Exhibition Road were the capital’s highway of enormous museums, running south from Hyde Park.

He paused on the broad graystone doorstep, a spot where many another great man had stood before him — the explorers Captain Scott of the Antarctic and Ernest Shackleton; the first conquerors of Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary, who made the summit, and Lord Hunt, who led the historic 1953 expedition.

Like Professor Landon, they were celebrated Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society, and like him, they had all delivered a series of stunning Spring Lectures at the lectern of the auditorium inside the great building. Like him, they had packed the place, and held their audience spellbound.

The prime difference between the great adventurers of the twentieth century and Professor Paul “Lava” Landon was that of subject. Whereas Scott, Shackleton, Hillary, and Hunt had entertained with breathtaking accounts of human survival in freezing conditions, the Professor had just explained in dazzling detail the forthcoming end of the world. No firm dates, of course. Like all masters of global geophysics, Professor Landon operated in approximate time slots of 10,000 years.

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