"And if Hitler and his Germans had won out, the world would speak German instead?”
“They have won out on Fallenby’s Earth, sir, and they do speak German.”
“And make their dates ‘after Hitler’ instead of A.D.?” “Right. And I suppose there’s an Earth in which the Slavic tribes won out and everyone speaks Russian.” “Somehow,” said Berg, “it seems to me we should have foreseen it; and yet, as far as I know, no one has. After all, there are an infinite number of inhabited Earths; we can’t be the only one that has decided to solve the problem of unlimited population growth by expanding into the worlds of probability.” “Exactly,” said Mishnoff, earnestly, “and it seems to me that—if you think of- it—there must be countless inhabited Earths so doing, and there must be many multiple occupations in the three hundred billion Earths we ourselves occupy. The only reason we caught this one is that, by sheer chance, they decided to build within a mile of the dwelling we had placed there. This is something we must check.”
“You imply we ought to search all our Earths.”
“I do, sir; we’ve got to make some settlement with other inhabited Earths. After all, there is room for all of us; to expand without agreement may result in all sorts of trouble and conflict.”
“Yes,” said Berg, thoughtfully; “I agree with you.”
LARENCE RIMBRO stared suspiciously at Berg’s old face, creased now into all manner of benevolence. “You’re sure now?” “Absolutely,” said the Sector Head, “We’re sorry that you’ve had to accept temporary quarters for the last two weeks—”
“More like three.”
“—three weeks, but you will be compensated.”
“What was the noise?” “Purely geological, sir. A rock was delicately balanced and with the wind, it made occasional contact with the rocks of the hillside. We’ve removed it and surveyed the area to make certain that nothing similar will occur again.”
Rimbro clutched his hat and said, "Well, thanks for your trouble.”
"No thanks necessary, I assure you, Mr. Rimbro. This is our job.”
RIMBRO was ushered out. and Berg turned to Mishnoff, who had remained a quiet spectator of this completion of the Rimbro affair.
Berg said, “The Germans were nice about it, anyway. They admitted we had priority and got off. Room for everybody, they said. Of course, as it turned out, they build any number of dwellings on each unoccupied world. —And now there’s the project of surveying our other worlds and making similar agreements with whomever we find. It’s all strictly confidential, too. It can’t be made known to the populace without plenty of preparation. —Still, none of this is what I want -to speak to you about.”
"Oh?” said Mishnoff. Developments had not noticeably cheered him; his own bogey still concerned him.
Berg smiled at the younger man. “You understand, Mishnoff, that we in the Bureau— and in the Planetary Government, too—are very appreciative of your quick thinking, of your understanding of the situation. This could have developed into something very tragic, had it not been for you. This appreciation will take some tangible form.” “Thank you, sir.”
"But as I said once before, this is something many of us should have thought of. How is it you did? —Now we’ve gone into your background a little. Your co-worker, Ching, tells us you have hinted in the past at some serious danger involved in our probability- pattern setup, and that you insisted on going out to meet the Germans—although you were obviously frightened. You were anticipating what you actually found, were you not? How did you do it?” Mishnoff said, confusedly “No, no. That was not in my mind at all; it came as a surprise. I—”
SUDDENLY, he stiffened. Why not now? They were grateful to him. He had proved that he was a man to be taken into account; one unexpected thing had already happened.
He said, firmly, "There’s something else.”
“Yes?”
(How did one begin?) “There’s no life in the Solar System other than the life on Earth.”
“That’s right,” said Berg, benevolently.
“And computation has it that the probability of developing any form of interstellar travel is so low as to be infinitesimal.”
“What are you getting at?” “That all this is so in this probability! But there must be some probability-patterns in which other life does exist in the Solar System, or in which interstellar drives are developed by dwellers in other star systems.”
Berg frowned. “Theoretically.”
“In one of these probabilities, Earth may be visited by such intelligences. If it were a probability-pattem in which Earth is inhabited, it won’t affect us; they’ll have no connection with us in Earth- proper. But if it were a probability-pattern in which Earth is uninhabited, and they set up some sort of base, they may find, by happenstance, one of our dwelling places.” “Why ours?” demanded Berg, drily. “Why not a dwelling place of the Germans, for instance?”
“Because we spot our dwellings one to a world. The German Earth doesn’t, and probably very few others do. The odds are in favor of us by billions to one. And if extra-terrestrials do find such a dwelling, they’ll investigate and find the route to Earth- proper—a highly-developed, rich world.”
“Not if we turn off the twisting-place,” said Berg.
“ONCE THEY know that twisting-places exist, they can construct their own” said Mishnoff. “A race intelligent enough to travel through space could do that; and from the equipment in the dwelling they would take over, they could easily spot our particular probability. —And then how would we handle extra-terrestrials? They’re not Germans, or other Earths; they would have alien psychologies and motivations. And we’re- not even on our guard. We just keep setting up more and more worlds and increasing the chance every day that—”
His voice had risen in excitement and Berg shouted at him, “Nonsense. This is all ridiculous—”
The buzzer sounded and the communiplate brightened, and showed the face of Ching. Ching’s voice said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but—”
“What is it?” demanded Berg, savagely.
“There’s a man here I don’t know what to do with. He’s drunk or crazy; he complains that his home is surrounded, and that there are things staring through the glass-roof of his garden.”
“Things?” cried Mishnoff. “Purple things with big red veins, three eyes, and some sort of tentacles instead of hair. They have—”
But Mishnoff and Berg didn’t hear the rest; they were staring at each other in sick horror.