“In that case,” Nicklin said, fighting off bemusement, “there wouldn’t be any way to detect the change.”
“That’s what I would probably have said—before last week.” Hepworth drank again, more deeply this time. “For the last three years, on and off, I’ve been trying to design an ultra-sensitive flow meter for use in liquid oxygen. It had to have a self-contained source of electrons, so I decided to use radioactive cobalt. There were all kinds of design complications, which I won’t go into because they’re so boring, but cobalt 60 was great for the job, because the nuclei spray more electrons out of their south poles than from their north pole’s.
“Normally they cancel each other out, but if you cool the stuff right down you can use magnetism to align a lot of the atoms—and you get a blob of metal which shoots more electrons out of one end than out of the other.”
Hepworth paused, eyes alert and twinkling, to scan his listeners’ faces. “Does any of this ring a bell? A school bell, perhaps.”
Nicklin, anxious to make Montane feel dim by comparison, ransacked his memory. “Wasn’t there a famous experiment with cobalt 60…back on Earth… three or four hundred years ago?”
“There was indeed!” Hepworth said. “The one which proved that the universe is not symmetrical! Perhaps that gives you an inkling of how I felt last week when I hauled my flow meter out of a locker, where it had languished for the best part of a year, and discovered that my little electron beam was going the wrong way!”
Nicklin’s mind balked at the implications of what he had just been told. “Perhaps you set the equipment up wrong.”
“That’s what Professor Phair tried to put across on me.” Hepworth gave a reminiscent little smile. “Just before I punched him in the throat.”
Montane made a faint sound of disapproval.
“I don’t get this,” Nicklin said. “Surely, if everything in the universe was reversed, including time, all processes and relationships would be unaltered, and you wouldn’t be able to detect the change. If your electron beam was pointing at the lab door before the Big Jump, it would still be pointing at the lab door after the jump.”
Hepworth’s smile did not fade. “You’re forgetting that parity is not conserved in the weak nuclear force.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. Have you a nuclear physics degree?”
“All I’ve got is a degree of discomfort,” Nicklin said. “From sitting on these steps.”
“Enough said, I think.”
Left with an uncomfortable feeling that he had failed to assimilate a vital point, Nicklin stared at Hepworth’s chubby countenance. His thoughts became unfocused as he noticed that Hepworth had an enormous blackhead at the side of his nose. Located just where nose merged into cheek, the blackhead had a faint bluish umbra and was so big that it presented a visible disc. How can he go around with a thing like that on his face? Nicklin wondered, his mind surrendering to irrelevancy. Why doesn’t he squeeze it out, for Christ’s sake?
“Something still troubling you, Jim?” Hepworth enquired mildly.
“The time aspect has me stumped,” Nicklin said, choosing not to make any offensive personal comment. He no longer had scruples about such things, especially since the day he had exploded three human beings in less than ten seconds, but he was loath to alienate someone who could turn out to be an interesting companion. Good conversationalists were a rare breed among the mission’s workers, and the few who had something worthwhile to say had no wish to say it to him.
“Time is one of the great imponderables,” Hepworth stated in the grand tones of an unemployed and unemployable actor. He drained his glass, then allowed his gaze to rest for a brief moment on Nicklin’s untouched drink. Nicklin, who had almost forgotten the pleasures of rapport, at once handed him the glass.
“Imponderable is the right word,” he said. “Where did you get the forty billion years from?”
“I can assure you that I didn’t pluck them out of a hat.” Hepworth, having got his throat warmed up for action, swallowed half his second drink in a single gulp. “Richard Gott’s historic theory proposed that the Big Bang created two universes—the one we all used to inhabit, which went forwards in time; and the one we’re in now, which is going backwards in time. The Region One universe, as Gott dubbed it, was about twenty billion years old; this one, Region Two, appears to be about the same age—so it’s reasonable to assume that we have jumped back some forty billion years.
“The symmetry in that proposal also has a certain appeal to—”
“This is all very interesting,” Montane cut in, the dryness in his voice showing that he had become bored, “but I’m afraid the work here calls for practical skills rather than… May I ask, by the way, if you’re a believer? Do you accept my message that Orbitsville is a trap which the Devil has set for God’s children?”
Hepworth snorted. “No more than I believe in that other great trinity—Goldilocks, Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood.”
Well said, Scott, Nicklin thought regretfully, but your job interview technique grows worse.
“In that case, I don’t think we should take up any more of each other’s time,” Montane said. “Unless there are other considerations—”
“Considerations?”
“Corey wants to know if you have any money,” Nicklin said helpfully.
“Not a penny!” Hepworth seemed as proud of being broke as he had of being fired from his job. “Not a red cent, not a brass farthing, not a sou!” He gave Nicklin a puzzled glance. “Do I look as if I’ve got money?”
Montane placed his hands on his knees with an air of finality and rose to his feet. “I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey, Scott.”
Hepworth showed no inclination to move. “I used to design ramjet engines—the same kind that you have on that starship over there—and I can repair and maintain them. I can also, if called upon, serve as a pilot.”
Looking ahead as he went up the slope, Nicklin could see Hepworth among the crowd waiting for their first glimpse of the Liscard’s interior. The physicist had used most of his last stipend to buy a duvet coat, a garment which made him easily recognisable at a distance because of its violent shade of lime green. Montane, Kingsley and Affleck were there too, plus a number of people whose names Nicklin had yet to learn, but the one person he really wanted to see was missing.
Danea Farthing’s absence was a direct consequence of the improvement in the mission’s fortunes. First there had been the publicity. Not only did it come free, but the news agencies and television companies were prepared to pay substantial sums for interviews and pictorial rights.
The global exposure had brought in some moral and financial backing—then the enigmatic green lines had entered the headlines again, this time with the discovery that they were visible on the outside of the Orbitsville shell. Interest in and support for Montane’s cause had promptly increased.