The damage was done, and thoroughly, by the time three strong ushers gathered him in. He offered no resistance either to them or to the police to whom they gave him. In night court, an hour later, he listened quietly to the charges against him.
“Guilty or not guilty?” asked the presiding magistrate.
“Your Honor, that is purely a question of epistemology,” said Roger earnestly. “The fixed stars move, but Corny Toastys, the world’s greatest breakfast food, still represents the peudo-position of a Diedrich quantum- integer in relation to the seventh coefficient of curvature!” Ten minutes later, he was sleeping soundly. In a cell, it is true, but soundly nonetheless. Soundlessly, too, for the cell was padded. The police left him there because they realized he needed sleep…
Among other minor tragedies of that night can be included the case of the schooner Ransagansett, off the coast of California. Well off the coast of California! A sudden squall had blown her miles off course, how many miles the skipper could only guess.
The Ransagansett was an American vessel, with a German crew, under Venezuelan registry, engaged in running booze from Ensenada, Baja California, up the coast to Canada, then in the throes of a prohibition experiment. The Ransagansett was an ancient craft with foul engines and an untrustworthy compass. During the two days of the storm, her outdated radio receiver—vintage of 1975—had gone haywire beyond the ability of Gross, the first mate, to repair.
But now only a mist remained of the storm, and the remaining shreds of wind were blowing it away. Hans Gross, holding an ancient astrolabe, stood on the dock, waiting. About him was utter darkness, for the ship was running without lights to avoid the coastal patrols.
“She clearing, Mister Gross?” called the voice of the captain from below.
“Aye, sir. Idt iss Blearing rabbidly.”
In the cabin, Captain Randall went back to his game of blackjack with the second mate and the engineer. The crew—an elderly German named Weiss, with a wooden leg—was asleep abaft the scuttlebutt—wherever that may have been.
A half hour went by. An hour, and the captain was losing heavily to the engineer.
“Mister Gross!” he called out.
There wasn’t any answer, and he called again and still obtained no response.
“Just a minute, mein fine feathered friends,” he said to the second mate and engineer and went up the companionway to the deck.
Gross was standing there, staring upward with his mouth open. The mists were gone.
“Mister Gross,” said Captain Randall.
The first mate didn’t answer. The captain saw that his first mate was revolving slowly where he stood.
“Hans!” said Captain Randall. “What the devil’s wrong with you?” Then he, too, looked up.
Superficially the sky looked perfectly normal. No angels flying around, no sound of airplane motors. The Dipper—Captain Randall turned around slowly, but more rapidly than Hans Gross. Where was the Big Dipper?
For that matter, where was anything? There wasn’t a constellation anywhere that he could recognize. No sickle of Leo. No belt of Orion. No horns of Taurus.
Worse, there was a group of eight bright stars that ought to have been a constellation, for they were shaped roughly like an octagon. Yet if such a constellation had ever existed, he’d never seen it, for he’d been around the Horn and Good Hope. Maybe at that—but no, there wasn’t any Southern Cross!
Dazedly, Captain Randall walked to the companionway. “Mistress Weisskopf,” he called. “Mister Helmstadt. Come on deck.”
They came and looked. Nobody said anything for quite a while.
“Shut off the engines, Mister Helmstadt,” said the captain. Helmstadt saluted—the first time he ever had—and went below.
“Captain, shall I wake opp Feiss?” asked Weisskopf.
“What for?”
“I don’t know.”
The captain considered. “Wake him up,” he said.
“I think ve are on der blanet Mars,” said Gross.
But the captain had thought of that and had rejected it.
“No,” he said firmly. “From any planet in the solar system the constellations would look approximately the same.”
“You mean ve are oudt of de cosmos?”
The throb of the engines suddenly ceased, and there was only the soft familiar lapping of the waves against the hull and the gentle familiar rocking of the boat.
Weisskopf returned with Weiss, and Helmstadt came on deck and saluted again.
“Veil, Captain?”
Captain Randall waved a hand to the after deck, piled high with cases of liquor under a canvas tarpaulin. “Break out the cargo,” he ordered.
The blackjack game was not resumed. At dawn, under a sun they had never expected to see again—and, for that matter, certainly were not seeing at the moment—the five unconscious men were moved from the ship to the Port of San Francisco Jail by members of the coast patrol. During the night the Rarnsagansett had drifted through the Golden Gate and bumped gently into the dock of the Berkeley ferry.
In tow at the stern of the schooner was a big canvas tarpaulin. It was transfixed by a harpoon whose rope was firmly tied to the aftermast. Its presence there was never explained officially, although days later Captain Randall had vague recollection of having harpooned a sperm whale during the night. But the elderly able-bodied seaman named Weiss never did find out what happened to his wooden leg, which is perhaps just as well.
III
Milton Hale, PH.D., eminent physicist, had finished broadcasting and the program was off the air.
“Thank you very much, Dr. Hale,” said the radio announcer. The yellow light went on and stayed. The mike was dead. “Uh—your check will be waiting for you at the window. You—uh—know where.”
“I know where,” said the physicist. He was a rotund, jolly-looking little man. With his busy white beard he resembled a pocket edition of Santa Claus. His eyes winkled, and he smoked a short stubby pipe.
He left the sound-proof studio and walked briskly Sown the hall to the cashier’s window. “Hello, sweet-heart,” he said to the girl on duty there. “I think you have two checks for Dr. Hale.”
“You are Dr. Hale?”
“I sometimes wonder,” said the little man. “But I carry identification that seems to prove it.”
“Two checks?”
“Two checks. Both for the same broadcast, by special arrangement. By the wav, there is an excellent revue at the Mabry Theater this evening.”
“Is there? Yes, here are your checks, Dr. Hale. One for seventy-five and one for twenty-five. Is that correct?”
“Gratifyingly correct. Now about that revue at the Mabry?”
“If you wish, I’ll call my husband and ask him about it,” said the girl. “He’s the doorman over there.”
Dr. Hale sighed deeply, but his eyes still twinkled. “I think he’ll agree,” he said. “Here are the tickets, my dear, and you can take him. I find that I have work to do this evening.”
The girl’s eyes widened, but she took the rickets.
Dr. Hale went into the phone booth and called this home. His home, and Dr. Hale, were both run by his elder sister. “Agatha, I must remain at the office this evening,” he said.
“Milton, you know that you can work just as well in your study here at home. I heard your broadcast, Milton. It was wonderful.”
“It was sheer balderdash, Agatha. Utter rot. What did I say?”
“Why, you said that—uh—that the stars were—I mean, you were not—”
“Exactly, Agatha. My idea was to avert panic on the part of the populace. If I’d told them the truth, they’d have worried. But by being smug and scientific, I let them get the idea that everything was—uh—under control. Do you know, Agatha, what I mean by the parallelism of an entropy-gradient?”