“I thought we dealt with that notion at the start,” Hepworth said, with a patience which conveyed impatience. “What we have just witnessed was the creation of millions of planets out of the material of the Orbitsville shell. The big question now, or one of the big questions, is—is everybody still alive on them?”
“Everybody has to be dead,” Montane announced. “Everybody is—dead!”
Nicklin, who had thought his capacity for wonder exhausted, was freshly awed by Hepworth’s imaginative power. “How? How could anybody possibly be alive after all that?”
“How me no hows,” Hepworth replied. “I don’t think we’ll ever understand how it was done. But—and don’t ask me to explain this either—to me it seems that the whole exercise would have been pointless unless life was preserved. Don’t you see that?”
“I want to see that. I want to see that very much.”
“How much magnification can you give it?” Hepworth said to Megan Fleischer. “A hundred?”
She nodded, fingers moving on a panel in the armrest of her seat. A tiny red circle appeared near the centre of the screen. It adjusted position slightly to enclose one of the glowing specks, then it began to expand, magnifying the contained area, progressively obliterating the rest of the screen. The object it enclosed was quickly revealed to be a black disk surrounded by a thin circle of brilliance.
“That one is too nearly in line with the sun,” Hepworth said. “We’re looking at its night side, but the halo demonstrates an important point—it has an atmosphere. It proves, to me anyway, that whoever dissolved Orbitsville had our best interests at heart.”
“You’re a fool,” Montane whispered. “The Devil is our enemy.”
“Go out to one side a bit,” Hepworth said to the pilot.
The red circle immediately collapsed to its former size, moved to the left and centred itself on another mote of light. The process of magnification began again, and this time the target expanded to become a bright crescent which was—unmistakably—dappled with green and blue beneath the white curlicues of weather systems.
“There you are,” Hepworth said triumphantly. “A prime piece of Orbitsville real estate, parcelled up a different way.”
Nicklin’s mind made a dizzy leap. “Will we be able to see cities?”
“Possibly, but the trick would be to find them.” Hepworth made a sweeping gesture which took in the jewel-dusted margins of the screen outside the crimson circle. “What was the surface area of Orbitsville compared to, say, Earth? Wasn’t it something like 650 million times bigger? If nothing has gone to waste, that means we have about 650 million new planets out there—and our little handful of cities would be fairly insignificant.”
“I’ll start a radio scan,” Fleischer said. “It’s a bit soon to expect- ”
“Stop this!” Montane shouted, lurching to his feet, face contorted into a pale mask. “I’ll listen to no more of this… blasphemous mouthingl”
“We’re talking science now, Corey,” Hepworth said calmly, kindly and with more than a hint of condescension. “Sooner or later you’ll have to start dealing in the facts of the situation.”
“Facts! I’ll give you facts! Those are not real worlds-only God can create real worlds—and there are no cities. Every single soul we left behind has been claimed by the Evil One. They are all dead\”
Voorsanger shifted uneasily. “Just a minute, Corey. I’d like to hear what—”
“That man speaks for the Devil,” Montane cut in, voice rising in pitch. “I’m warning you, Ropp, if you listen to him you wiil put your own immortal soul at risk.”
“But if there’s a chance that my wife is still alive!” Voorsanger paused, looking oddly shamefaced but stubborn, and when he spoke again he avoided Montane’s gaze. “If there is any chance at all that Greta is still alive… and that all the others might still be alive… is it not our duty to turn back and try to find them?”
“But you saw what happened out there!” Montane’s voice was cracking, becoming an articulated shriek. “How can you even—?”
He stopped speaking, mouth and eyes widening in shock. He clapped his right hand to his chest and at the same time pressed the left to his back in a sudden twisting movement, almost as if he had been transfixed by an invisible blade. His tongue flickered for a moment, snake-like, depositing saliva on each side of his chin. Affleck, who had been standing by the ladder, darted to Montane’s side and lowered him into his seat.
“See what you done!” Affleck growled, switching a baleful stare between Voorsanger and Hepworth. “If Corey dies…”
“I’m not going to die, Nibs-it’s all right.” Montane took several deep breaths and, unexpectedly, produced a weak smile. “There’s nothing for you to be alarmed about.”
“Corey, you ought to lie down.”
Montane squeezed Affleck’s arm. “Just let me sit here, my good friend. I’m going to be fine, you’ll see.”
Affleck nodded uncertainly and backed away to his post by the ladder.
“I must apologise for my little display,” Montane said, addressing the others, and now, in contrast to his previous hysteria, sounding gentle and reasonable. “I accused Scott of blasphemy, but I was the real blasphemer. I presumed to make myself the channel for God’s divine wrath, and He sent me a little reminder that pride is a mortal sin.”
The cliches are just the same, Nicklin thought in dismay, his mind diverted from external wonders, but this has to be a different man.
“Doctor Harding is with us,” Voorsanger said. “I think I should ask him to come up here and—”
“Thank you, Ropp, but I assure you I am in no need of medical attention.” Montane’s eyes were bright and humorous as he looked at Hepworth. “Go on with what you were saying, Scott. I want to hear the scientist’s view of the Devil’s handiwork.”
“It was all a bit speculative,” Hepworth said, obviously in some doubt about the effects his words might have on Montane’s state of mind.
“Don’t be so modest! You were doing a wonderful job—laying down scientific laws that both Our Lord and the Devil have to obey. Go on with it, Scott—I really am interested.” Montane, becoming aware of the saliva on his chin, drew the back of his sleeve across it, momentarily dragging his mouth out of shape.
The action was so atypical of the normally fastidious preacher that Nicklin felt a twinge of unease. Corey, are you in there? he thought. Or have we a stranger in our midst?
“All right, let’s try to be as rational and unemotional as we possibly can,” Hepworth said in a subdued voice which hinted that he too could be concerned about Montane’s mental well-being. “Corey believes that Orbitsville was dissolved by the… um… Devil for the sole purpose of wiping out humanity, and I’m going to refer to that as the Malign Hypothesis. I disagree with him, so I’m going to champion the opposite point of view—the Benign Hypothesis.
“I have little doubt that the spheres we can see on our screens—all 650 million of them—are not ‘real’ planets in the normal astronomical sense. I would say that they are hollow shells, just as Orbitsville was a hollow shell; and I would say that their gravity is generated by the shell material, just as Orbitsville’s gravity was generated.”
“You’re assuming that they have gravity in the first place,” Montane cut in.
Hepworth nodded soberly. “That’s right, Corey—I’m making that assumption.”