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“The system would be too cumbersome,” Ambrose stated. “You need fixed points of reference.”

“How the hell would you know?” Snook, still shaken, was unable to curb his annoyance at the other man’s presumption. “How would you know what way they think? Do you even know how other human beings think?”

“I’m sorry, Gil, but don’t get side-tracked—what else can you remember?” Ambrose was unperturbed.

“Well, about the only thing that didn’t surprise him was the explanation of the two universes I picked up from you. He said, “Particles. Anti-particles. Correct. Our relationship almost precisely defined”.”

“This is interesting—nuclear physics, but no astronomy. And he qualified the thing a little? He said it was almost precisely defined?”

“Yes. Then there was something about time. And Thornton’s Planet came into it…” Snook’s voice faltered.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ve just remembered…this is where he seemed to get really worked up…he said that something had happened a thousand days ago. I remember the figure because of the way it came through. I get the feeling he didn’t mean exactly a thousand days—it was like the way we talk about something happening a year ago when we mean eleven or twelve or thirteen months.”

“What happened, Gil? Did he mention tides?”

“You knew!” Through his confusion, Snook was yet again aware of having to revise his opinions about Ambrose.

“Tell me what was said.” Ambrose had become gentle and persuasive, yet demanding.

“One thousand days ago the weight of our oceans decreased. The waters rose into the sky, until they touched the cloud-roof. Then they swept away the People. And the houses of the People.”

“This confirms all of my claims,” Ambrose said peacefully. “I’ll be known. From now on, I’ll be known.”

“Who’s talking about you?” Snook was baffled and angry as strange fears began to stir within him. “What happened on Avernus?”

“It’s quite straightforward. Thornton’s Planet is of like material to Avernus, and therefore was able to drag it out of its orbit. The tidal effects would have been severe, of course, and we’ve already learned that Avernus is a watery world…”

Snook pressed his hands to his temples. “Most of them were drowned.”

“Naturally.”

“But they’re real people! You don’t seem to care.”

“It isn’t that I don’t care, Gil,” Ambrose said in a neutral voice. “It’s just that there’s nothing we can do about it. There’s nothing anybody can do to help them.”

Something in the way Ambrose spoke intensified the turmoil in Snook’s mind. He lurched forward and grabbed the material of Ambrose’s jacket. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

“You’re under a strain, Gil.” Ambrose did not move or try-to break Snook’s grip. “Perhaps this isn’t a good time to discuss it.”

“I want to discuss it. Now.”

“All right—we hadn’t completed the debriefing anyway. What happened after the Avernian learned about Thornton’s Planet?”

“I don’t…There was something about predictions, I think. The last thing I remember is Felleth screaming, ‘No’. Screaming isn’t the right word—there wasn’t any sound—but he seemed to be in pain.”

“This is fascinating,” Ambrose said. “The adaptability and speed of your friend Felleth’s brain is…well, there’s no other word for it…super-human. And there’s the efficiency of his telepathic communication. We’ve opened whole new fields of study.”

“Why did Felleth scream?”

Ambrose gently disengaged himself from Snook’s grip. “I’m trying to tell you, Gil. I’m only guessing, but it’s a question of how much he was able to pull out of your mind. You’re not interested in astronomy, are you?”

“No.”

“But you remember something of what you heard or read about Thornton’s Planet being captured by our sun? And about the orbit it took up?”

“I don’t know.” Snook tried to calm his mind. “There was something about a precessing orbit…and about the planet coming back. In ninety-eight years, wasn’t it?”

“Go on. It’s important for us to find out if you really do know, at a conscious level, what’s going to happen.”

Snook thought for a momenta the neural connections were made, and a great sadness descended over him. “The next time Thornton’s Planet comes,” he said in a dull voice, “they reckon it will pass through the Earth.”

“That’s correct, Gil. You did have the knowledge.”

“But Avernus should be separated from the Earth by that time.”

“By a short distance, and that’s only if it keeps on separating at its present rate. In any case, it won’t make any difference -the miss distance will be so small that the catastrophe will be just as complete as if there was a head-on collission.” Ambrose glanced around the silent, watchful group. “The Earth won’t be affected, of course.”

“Do you think Felleth got all that?” Snook was unable to escape from the lethal fugue which was resounding inside his head. “Do you think that was why he screamed?”

“I’d say that’s what happened,” Ambrose said, his gaze steady on Snook’s face. “You told the Avernian that his world, and everybody on it, will be destroyed in less than a century from now.”

Chapter Nine

As before, emerging from below ground into the pure pastel light of a new day had the effect of easing the pressure on Snook’s mind, enabling him to put a distance between himself and the Avernians.

He filled his lungs with sun-seeded air and felt his body recover from the curious loss of muscle tone, post-coital in its essence, which had followed his encounter with the alien being. The world, his world, looked hearteningly secure and unchangeable, and it was almost possible to dismiss the notion that—within a matter of hours—another world would begin emerging into the light.

It was wrong, he told himself, to think of Avernus and its people breaking through into the light—because, for them. Earth’s yellow sun would not exist. On Avernus there would continue to be the same low cloud-roof, so thick that day brought only a general lessening of the overhead darkness. It was a watery, misty world—a blind world—with its steep-roofed dwellings of russet stone clinging like molluscs to the chain of equatorial islands…

The Turner-like vision appeared in Snook’s consciousness with such clarity that he knew, on the instant, it had come to him from Felleth. It was an afterimage, a residue of the strange mind-to-mind communion which had briefly spanned two universes, two realities. He paused, wondering how much knowledge of Avernus had been implanted within him during the moment of supreme intimacy, and how much information he had yielded in return.

“All right, Gil?” Ambrose said, eyeing Snook with proprietory concern.

“I’m fine.” The desire to escape being used like a laboratory animal prompted Snook to remain quiet about his new discovery.

“You were looking slightly…ah…pensive.”

“I was wondering about the Avernian universe. You’ve proved there’s an antineutrino sun inside our own sun—does that mean it’s the same with the other stars in the galaxy?”

“There isn’t enough evidence available to support even an educated guess. There’s a thing called the Principle of Mediocrity which states that the local conditions in our Solar System must be regarded as being universal, and that—because there’s an antineutrino sun congruent with Sol—the other stars in the galaxy are likely to have them as well. It’s only a principle, though, and I’ve no idea what the average density of matter in the Avernian universe might be. For all we know, there might be only a handful of their suns scattered around our galaxy.”