“Then she is dead?”
“Well-she is probably not alive. But if she is found, maybe she can be revived. She’s in the freezing compartment of her ship, at minus-forty degrees. Her body will not decay for some time, I think. She thought. At any rate, she thought it was the best chance she had.”
“I could have given her a better one,” Wan said dejectedly. Then he brightened. There was the other female, Janine, who was not frozen. Wishing to impress her, he said, “That is a gosh number.”
“What is? What kind of a number?”
“A gosh number, Janine. Tiny Jim talks about them. When you say ‘minus-forty’ you don’t have to say whether it is in Celsius or Fahrenheit, because they are the same.” He tittered at the joke.
They were looking at each other again. Wan could see that something was wrong, but he was feeling stranger, dizzier, more fatigued at every second. He thought perhaps they had not understood the joke, so he said, “Let us ask Tiny Jim. He can be reached just down this passage, where the dreaming couch is.”
“Reached? How?” demanded the old man, Payter.
Wan did not answer; he was not feeling well enough to trust what he said, and, besides, it was easier to show them. He turned abruptly away and hauled himself toward the dreaming chamber. By the time they followed he had already keyed the book in and called for number one hundred twelve. “Tiny Jim?” he tried; then, over his shoulder, “Sometimes he doesn’t want to talk. Please be patient.” But he was lucky this time, and the Dead Man’s voice responded quite quickly.
“Wan? Is that you?”
“Of course it is me, Tiny Jim. I want to hear about gosh numbers.”
“Very well, Wan. Gosh numbers are numbers which represent more than one quantity, so that when you perceive the coincidence you say, ‘Gosh.’ Some gosh numbers are trivial. Some are perhaps of transcendental importance. Some religious persons count gosh numbers as a proof of the existence of God. As to whether or not God exists, I can give you only a broad outline of-“
“No, Tiny Jim. Please stick to gosh numbers now.”
“Yes, Wan. I will now give you a list of a few of the simplest gosh numbers. Point-five degrees. Minus-forty degrees. One thirty-seven. Two thousand and twenty-five. Ten to the 39th. Please write one paragraph on each of these, identifying the characteristics which make them gosh numbers and-“
“Cancel, cancel,” Wan squeaked, his voice rising higher because it smarted so. “This is not a class.”
“Oh, well,” said the Dead Man gloomily, “all right. Point-five degrees is the angular diameter of both the sun and the Moon as seen from Earth. Gosh! How strange that they should be the same, but also how useful, because it is partly because of this coincidence that Earth has eclipses. Minus-forty degrees is the temperature which is the same in both Fahrenheit and Celsius scales. Gosh. Two thousand twenty-five is the sum of the cubes of the integers, one cubed plus two cubed plus three cubed and so on up to nine cubed, all added together. It is also the square of their sum. Gosh. Ten to the thirty-ninth is a measure of the weakness of the gravitational force as compared with the electromagnetic. It is also the age of the universe expressed as a dimensionless number. It is also the square root of the number of particles in the observable universe, that is, that part of the universe relative to Earth in which Hubble’s constant is less than point-five. Also-well, never mind, but gosh! Gosh, gosh, gosh. On these goshes P.A.M. Dirac constructed his Large Numbers Hypothesis, from which he deduced that the force of gravity must be weakening as the age of the universe increased. Now, there is a gosh for you!”
“You left out one thirty-seven,” the boy accused.
The Dead Man cackled. “Good for you, Wan! I wanted to see if you were listening. One thirty-seven is Eddington’s fine structure constant, of course, and turns up over and over in nuclear physics. But it is more than that. Suppose you take the inverse, that is one over one thirty-seven, and express it as a decimal. The first three digits are Double Ought Seven, James Bond’s identification as a killer. There is the lethality of the universe for you! The first eight digits are Clarke’s Palindrome, point oh seven two nine nine two seven oh. There is its symmetry. Deadly, and two-faced, that is the fine structure constant! Or,” he mused, “perhaps I should say, there is its inverse. Which would imply that the universe itself is the inverse of that? Namely kind and uneven? Help me, Wan. I am not sure how to interpret this symbol.”
“Oh, cancel, cancel,” said Wan angrily. “Cancel and out.” He was feeling irritable and shaky, as well as more ill than he had ever been, even when the Dead Men had given him shots. “He goes on like that,” he apologized to the others. “That’s why I don’t usually speak to him from here.”
“He doesn’t look well,” said Lurvy worriedly to her husband, and then to Wan, “Do you feel all right?” He shook his head, because he did not know how to answer.
Paul said, “You ought to rest. But-what did you mean, ‘from here.’ Where is, uh, Tiny Jim?”
“Oh, he is in the main station,” said Wan weakly, sneezing.
“You mean-“ Paul swallowed hard. “But you said it was forty-five days away by ship. That must be a very long way.”
The old man, Payter, cried: “Radio? Are you talking to him by radio? Faster-than-light radio?”
Wan shrugged. Paul had been right; he needed to rest, and there was the couch, which had always been the exact proper place to make him feel good and rested.
“Tell me, boy!” shouted the old man. “If you have a working FU radio-The bonus-“
“I am very tired,” said Wan hoarsely. “I must sleep.” He felt himself falling. He evaded their clutching arms, dove between them and plunged into the couch, its comforting webbing closing around him.
4 Robin Broadhead, Inc.
Essie and I were water-skiing on the Tappan Sea when my neck radio buzzed to tell me that a stranger had turned up on the Food Factory. I ordered the boat to turn immediately and take us back to the long stretch of waterfront property owned by Robin Broadhead, Inc. before I told Essie what it was. “A boy, Robin?” she shouted over the noise of the hydrogen motor and the wind. “Where in hell a boy comes to Food Factory?”
“That’s what we have to find out,” I yelled back. The boat skillfully snaked us in to shallow water and waited while we jumped out and ran up the grass. When it recognized that we were gone, it purred down the shoreline to put itself away.
Wet as we were, we ran directly to the brain room. We had begun to get opticals already, and the holo tank showed a skinny, scraggly youth wearing a sort of divided kilt and a dirty tunic. He did not seem threatening in any way, but he sure as hell had no right to be there. ‘Voice,” I ordered, and the moving lips began to speak-queer, shrill, high-pitched, but good enough English to understand:
“-from the main station, yes. It is about seven seven-days- weeks, I mean. I come here often.”
“For God’s sake, how?” I could not see the speaker, but it was male and had no accent: Paul Hall.
“In a ship, to be sure. Do you not have a ship? The Dead Men speak only of traveling in ships, I do not know any other way.”
“Incredible,” said Essie over my shoulder. She backed away, not taking her eyes off the tank, and came back with a terrycloth robe to throw over my shoulders and one for herself. “What do you suppose is ‘main station’?”
“I wish to God I knew. Harriet?”
The voices from the tank grew fainter, and my secretary’s voice said, “Yes, Mr. Broadhead?”
“When did he get there?”
“About seventeen point four minutes ago, Mr. Broadhead. Plus transit time from the Food Factory, of course. He was discovered by Janine Herter. She did not appear to have had a camera with her, so we received only voice until one of the other members of the party arrived.” As soon as she stopped speaking the voice from the figure in the tank came up again; Harriet is a very good program, one of Essie’s best.