“Yes and no. I’m saying that they could remain exactly where they are—if the Good Fairy wanted things to be that way. But—and this is the nub of everything—what would have been the point in dissolving Orbitsville in the first place?” Hepworth spread his hands and looked at each of his listeners in turn.
“Essentially, very little has changed out there. Instead of one huge Orbitsville there are 650 million little ones—turned inside out, of course—but if things stay as they are life will quickly return to normal. The cries of wonder and alarm from ordinary people will soon die down, because that’s the way ordinary people are. There will be a few adjustments to make, of course, and the annus mirabilis will excite historians, philosophers and scientific researchers for many centuries to come—but, in essence, everything will be pretty much the same as before.”
Hepworth paused, apparently distracted from his grand theme by the discovery that his shirt had crept up over his bulging stomach. He spent a few seconds stuffing it back into his pants before fixing his audience with a sombre gaze.
“So, I put it to you,” he said, “what would be the point in leaving all those brand-new planets where they are?”
“Perhaps there isn’t any point,” Nicklin said. “Perhaps that’s just the way it’s going to be.”
“That’s another line of thought—call it the Null Hypothesis—but I don’t like it. I don’t believe that the Good Fairy squanders her time and energy.”
Nicklin found himself floundering in the onrush of new concepts. “All right—where will the planets go? And why will they go?”
“That isn’t part of the bet,” Hepworth said simply. “I can’t explain the wheres and whys—all I’m saying is that the planets will be relocated. They may disappear suddenly, all at once; or the process may be a gradual one. For all we know it has already started—”
“It shouldn’t be too hard to find out, provided our old planet-search programme can handle that many points,” Fleischer said, beginning to address her main computer. “What we might be able to do is monitor say a one per cent sample, and then…” Her voice faded into an abstracted murmur as she became involved in the mathematics of the self-imposed problem.
Voorsanger glanced apprehensively at Montane before fixing his gaze on Hepworth. “All this is enough to start me questioning the whole purpose of this flight.”
Hepworth nodded. “Are you saying we should go back?”
“I suppose…” Voorsanger glanced again at Montane and his face suddenly hardened. “Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”
“How about you, Jim?”
“How would I know?” Nicklin said, unable to suppress the feeling that it was monstrously unfair to ask him for a judgement on such a vast issue and with so little hard evidence available. “Besides, we’re talking like a management committee again.”
“All right, we’ll ask the boss.” Hepworth looked at Montane. “How about it, Corey?”
“You fools!” Still grinning, Montane continued to stare at the ceiling. “You poor foolsl”
“I don’t think Corey is quite ready to give us a considered opinion.” Hepworth gave Affleck a meaningful look. “Nibs, why don’t you see if you can find Doctor Harding and bring him up here? I think it would be for the best…”
Affleck shuffled his feet, looking tortured, then stepped on to the ladder and sank out of view.
Hepworth returned his attention to Nicklin. “How about it, Jim?
“How about you?” Nicklin said, putting off any kind of decision. “What do you say?”
Hepworth gave him a strange little smile. “It’s a tough one—especially without suitable lubrication. There’s so much to find out about this universe. I’d like to go on, and at the same time I’d like to go back.”
“That’s a lot of help,” Nicklin said. “It seems to me that as you started the—”
“Gentlemen!” Megan Fleischer cut in. “Allow me to make up your minds for you—we have to turn back.”
“At least there’s no equivocation there,” Hepworth said coldly. “Would you mind telling us how you arrived at such a firm conclusion?”
“I don’t mind at all.” Fleischer smiled in a way that signalled her dislike for the physicist. “This ship isn’t fit to carry out an interstellar flight.”
“What?” Hepworth’s belligerence was immediate. “What are you talking about, woman?”
“I’m talking about the drive, man. We’re losing the left intake field.”
“Nonsense!”
Hepworth leaned over the control console, staring down at the field distribution display. Nicklin followed his line of sight and saw that the glowing butterfly had become noticeably asymmetric. He watched in chill fascination as, in the space of only a few seconds, the left wing—changing shape all the while—shrank to a writhing speck and finally blinked out of existence. In the same moment he felt a queasy upsurge in his stomach which told him the ship’s acceleration had been sharply reduced. There followed a ringing silence which was broken by Fleischer.
“As commander of this vessel,” she announced in clear, precise tones, “I have decided to abort the flight.”
“You stupid bitch!” Hepworth shouted.
He turned and ran to the ladder, reaching it in two grotesque low-gravity bounds, and lowered himself through the deck opening. Several seconds went by before it dawned on Nicklin that Hepworth was on his way to the engine cylinders. Gripped by a sense of unreality, he stood up and looked at the others half-expecting to receive some guidance as to what he should do next. Fleischer and Voorsanger gave him blank stares; Montane continued to grin wetly at the ceiling.
Nicklin loped past them and sprang on to the ladder. He went down it in the normal manner for a short distance, then realised that the quickest way to proceed in the low-gravity conditions was by a controlled fall. He curled his fingers loosely on the stringers, took his feet off the rungs and allowed himself to drop.
The fall was gentle and easily controllable by tightening his grip. Far below him he could hear Hepworth bellowing at people using the ladder to get out of his way. On almost all the decks that Nicklin passed there were children to applaud his unorthodox descent. Some adults eyed him with less enthusiasm, and he knew they were experiencing the qualms that travellers had always felt on noticing a disturbance in shipboard routine. It occurred to him that they would feel considerably worse when they learned what the disturbance was all about. The future of the New Eden express was being threatened from without and within.
He caught up with Hepworth on 14 Deck, the first on which there was access to the engine cylinders. Hepworth had already tapped his authorisation code into the lock and was dragging the shielded door open.
“What do you want?” he demanded, scowling at Nicklin with the face of an enemy.
What’s happening to us? Nicklin thought. “Scott, I’m with you. You’re not the only one who sweated in here. Remember?”
Hepworth’s brow cleared at once. “We’ve got a minor problem down here, Jim. That Fleischer woman would just love it if the whole drive complex packed up, but it isn’t going to! I know exactly what’s wrong—and I know exactly how to put it right.”
“That’s good,” Nicklin said, unhappily remembering Hepworth’s previous assertion that the weak acceleration was the result of unfavourable conditions outside the ship.
“It’s the output gate control mechanisms,” Hepworth said, stepping over the door’s high threshold into the bleakly illuminated environment of the engine cylinders. “They were never right! I told Corey that from the start. The contractors who overhauled them were a bunch of know-nothings, but he wouldn’t part with the money for a dependable job. Not Corey! And now that the inevitable has happened that bitch up above is trying to shift the blame on to me!”