“As has already been mentioned,” he said in a high-income drawl, “my ship had attempted to dock in the normal manner, but Captain Lessen was unable to complete his manoeuvre. There appeared to be some kind of repulsive force acting on the ship and preventing it from getting to within thirty metres of the Orbitsville shell.
“The shell itself was in a highly unusual condition—it was shining with a greenish light which was pulsing on and off several times a second. It is possible that the radiation had something to do with repelling the ship. Perhaps it hadn’t—I don’t really know. It was all so… I mean…”
Renard smiled unhappily and Nicklin saw that his lips had begun to quiver. The man looked as though he would have the sleek arrogance of the very wealthy in normal circumstances, but it was obvious that he was now in a state of shock. He shook his head, bringing the interview to a premature end, and turned to a black-haired woman of striking appearance who was standing just behind him, looking equally distraught. He put his arms around her and she slowly inclined her head on to his shoulder.
“I’ve seen that woman before,” Cham White announced triumphantly, as though claiming a prize. “She’s connected with some so-called scientific organisation which says it has proof of life after death. Her name is Silvia… Silvia…”
“London,” Zindee supplied.
“That’s right. Of the… um… Anima Mundi Foundation. I wonder what she was doing on that ship.”
“If you find her so fascinating, why don’t you just take yourself off to Portal 36 and ask her?” Nora said tardy.
“There’s no call for you to be jealous,” Cham replied, looking gratified over what he saw as a compliment. “Besides, from what we’ve heard so far, it’ll be quite some time before anybody will be able to travel between portals.”
“Why is that?” Nicklin said.
“No ships! You’re not paying attention, Jim. Everything, but everything, that was outside the shell has disappeared—and that includes all the interportal ships.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Nicklin mumbled, shrugging slightly in response to a sympathetic glance from Zindee. It came to him that he had not really accepted the sensational news as being true. The portals, those kilometre-wide circular holes in the Orbitsville shell, were almost five million kilometres apart. Taking a direct interior route from one portal to another, even if Mach 2 aircraft were available, would entail ninety days of non-stop flying—the kind of odyssey which was ruled out by logistics and economics.
“I keep expecting somebody to discover that it’s all been a hoax, or a mistake,” Nicklin explained. “Two or three hundred years ago, back on Earth, somebody made a radio broadcast of a play about invaders from some nearby planet and it panicked a lot of people.”
“H. G. Wells,” Cham said knowledgeably. “It was H. G. Wells who made that broadcast.”
“Whoever it was, he scared a lot of people and there was no need for it.”
“This is different, Jim,” Nora White said. “I wish they would skip all this human interest stuff and take us back to the scientists in Beachhead. At least they had some idea of what they were talking about.”
As if responding to her wish, the scene on the platform faded and, after some sparkling swirls of colour, was replaced by a holomorphic group of men and women seated at a circular table. A female voice announced the return to the main OTTV studios in Beachhead City for further expert comment, then went on to name all the members of the panel and list their qualifications. The first speaker, named Carpenter, was a youthful professor of observational astronomy from the Garamond University.
“The events of the past few hours are unique in the history of Optima Thule,” he began. “Incredible though it may seem…”
“You can easily tell that guy’s a scientist,” Cham said loudly. “Nobody else would be pompous enough to refer to the Big O as Optima Thule.”
“Be quiet,” Nora chided. “The rest of us want to hear what he’s saying.”
“…understand that when we say everything outside the shell has disappeared, we mean everything! At close range, all interstellar and interportal ships which were in dock have vanished, plus several of the latter which were en route between portals. And not only ships—docking cradles, cargo handling gear, passenger transfer tubes, even radio and TV antennae. Anything which was projecting beyond the boundary line of Optima Thule has been sheared off—with a perfect mirror finish on the metal sections, incidentally—and has vanished from our awareness.”
Professor Carpenter paused to take a sip of water. “At what we might style as intermediate range, the outer planet of our own local system—Napier—has vanished. All this is trivial, however, compared to the fact that—on the cosmic scale—every star known to us can no longer be observed, every galaxy known to us can no longer be observed.
“To my mind, there is only one possible interpretation of those facts, incredible though it may seem—and that is that Optima Thule has been repositioned.”
“I can’t believe this,” a grey-haired woman said, shaking her head with an air of sadness. “You claim to be a qualified scientist, and yet you sit there and try to make us believe that our world—Orbitsville—has been moved!”
“I am a qualified scientist,” Carpenter replied, in the measured tones of one who was determined not to be provoked. “And I did not say that Orbitsville had been moved. The word I used was ‘repositioned’. It is obvious that no movement in the conventional sense of the word was involved—the repositioning was achieved instantaneously.”
His words were followed by a babel of voices as all the holomorphs tried to make points at the same time. Nicklin gave up trying to follow the various threads of argument and lapsed into a reverie until the televiewer scene changed. The group at the table dissolved, to be replaced by an outdoors shot—a view of Portal 1 at the centre of Beachhead City. It was recognisable because of the statue of Vance Garamond, the discoverer of Orbitsville, at the edge of what appeared to the casual eye as a circular black lake.
The camera advanced until it was poised at the edge of the aperture then rotated forwards, simulating a leisurely dive into space. When it steadied the corner of the Whites’ living room was filled with an intense blackness which was stippled with hundreds of glowing specks. Professor Carpenter could be heard in voice-over, commenting on the complete absence of familiar star patterns and the presence of totally alien constellations.
As always, Nicklin found the view of the outside universe to be something of a disappointment. Orangefield was less than a thousand kilometres from Beachhead—an easy enough journey by air—but he had never taken the trouble to go there, and hence had never seen the stars in actuality. For him, those remote flecks of light had very little relevance to the problems, pressures and pleasures of everyday life. His family had been on Orbitsville for six generations, and the course of their lives had not been affected in any way by stars or patterns of stars…
“And what about Earth?” another man was heard to say.
“We no longer know where Earth is. We don’t know how to get there.” Carpenter sounded as though he was deriving a perverse satisfaction from the negatives. “Therefore all contact with Earth has been lost, probably for ever. That also goes for Terranova, of course.”
Who cares about Earth or Terranova? Nicklin thought. Museum pieces! Staring into the near-featureless blackness was beginning to make him feel drowsy. He decided to give it just another five minutes, time enough to be sure that Cort Brannigan had vacated his premises, then he would take his leave of the Whites and get back to important business. It was the task of the astronomers to find out why the universe looked different—in the meantime he had a juice extractor and a bicycle wheel to repair, jobs which had been promised for that very afternoon.