“Yes, it’s me.” His voice was hoarse, and there were dark pouches under the bloodshot eyes. He wore an antiradiation apron of shiny rubber, and the same worn old trousers held up by elastic braces.
Snow’s gaze flickered round the circular chamber and alighted on Rheya where she stood by an armchair at the other end. Then it returned to me, and I lowered my eyelids imperceptibly. He nodded, and I spoke casually:
“Rheya, come and meet Dr. Snow… Snow — my wife.”
“I… I’m just a minor member of the crew. Don’t get about much…” He faltered, but managed to blurt out: “That’s why I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you before…”
Rheya smiled and held out her hand, which he shook in some surprise. He blinked several times and stood looking at her, tongue-tied, until I took him by the arm.
“Excuse me,” he said to Rheya. “I wanted a word with you, Kelvin…”
“Of course.” (My composure was an ugly charade, but what else could I do?) “Take no notice of us, Rheya. We’ll be talking shop…”
I guided Snow over to the chairs on the far side of the room, and Rheya sat in the armchair I had occupied earlier, swivelling it so that she could glance up at us from her book. I lowered my voice:
“Any news?”
“I’m divorced,” he whispered. If anybody had quoted this to me as the opening of a conversation a few days before, I would have burst out laughing, but the Station had blunted my sense of humor. “It feels like years since yesterday morning,” he went on. “And you?”
“Nothing.” I was at a loss for words. I liked Snow, but I distrusted him, or rather I distrusted the purpose of his visit.
“Nothing? Surely…”
“What?” I pretended not to understand.
Eyes half shut, he leaned so close to me that I could feel his breath on my face:
“This business has all of us confused, Kelvin. I can’t make contact with Sartorius. All I know is what I wrote to you, which is what he told me after our little conference…
“Has he disconnected his videophone?”
“No, there’s been a short-circuit at his end. He could have done it on purpose, but there’s also…” He clenched his fist and mimed somebody aiming a punch, curling his lips in an unpleasant grin. “Kelvin, I came here to… What do you intend doing?”
“You want my answer to your letter. All right, I’ll go on the trip, there’s no reason for me to refuse. I’ve only been getting ready…”
“No,” he interrupted. “It isn’t that.”
“What then? Go on.”
“Sartorius thinks he may be on the right track,” Snow muttered. His eyes never left me, and I had to stay still and try to look casual. “It all started with that X-ray experiment that he and Gibarian arranged, you remember. That could have produced some alteration…”
“What kind of alteration?”
“They beamed the rays directly into the ocean. The intensity was only modulated according to a pre-set program.”
“I know. It’s already been done by Nilin and a lot of others.”
“Yes, but the others worked on low power. This time they used everything we had.”
“That could lead to trouble… violating the four-power convention, and the United Nations…”
“Come on, Kelvin, you know as well as I do that it doesn’t matter now. Gibarian is dead.”
“So Sartorius makes him the scapegoat?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t talked about that. Sartorius is intrigued by the visiting hours. They only come as we wake up, which suggests that the ocean is especially interested in our sleeping hours, and that that is when it locates its patterns. Sartorius wants to send our waking selves — our conscious thoughts. You see?”
“By mail?”
“Keep the jokes to yourself. The idea is to modulate the X-rays by hooking in an electro-encephalograph taken from one of us.”
“Ah!” Light was beginning to dawn. “And that one of us is me?”
“Yes, Sartorius had you in mind.”
“Tell him I’m flattered.”
“Will you do it?”
I hesitated. Snow darted a look at Rheya, who seemed absorbed in her book. I felt my face turn pale.
“Well?”
“The idea of using X-rays to preach sermons on the greatness of mankind seems absolutely ridiculous to me. Don’t you think so?”
“You mean it?”
“Yes.”
“Right,” he said, smiling as if I had fallen in with some idea of his own, “then you’re opposed to the plan?”
His expression told me that he had somehow been a step ahead of me all the time.
“Okay,” he went on. “There is a second plan — to construct a Roche apparatus.”
“An annihilator?”
“Yes. Sartorius has already made the preliminary calculations. It is feasible, and it won’t even require any great expenditure of energy. The apparatus will generate a negative field twenty-four hours a day, and for an unlimited period.”
“And its effect?”
“Simple. It will be a negative neutrino field. Ordinary matter will not be affected at all. Only the… neutrino structures will be destroyed. You see?”
Snow gave me a satisfied grin. I stood stock-still and gaping, so that he stopped smiling, looked at me with a frown, and waited a moment before speaking:
“We abandon the first plan then, the ‘Brainwave’ plan? Sartorius is working on the other one right now. We’ll call it ‘Project Liberation.’ “
I had to make a quick decision. Snow was no physicist, and Sartorius’s videophone was disconnected or smashed. I took the chance:
“I’d rather call the second idea ‘Operation Slaughterhouse.’ “
“And you ought to know! Don’t tell me you haven’t had some practice lately. Only there’ll be a radical difference this time — no more visitors, no more Phi-creatures — they will disintegrate as soon as they appear.”
I nodded, and managed what I hoped was a convincing smile:
“You haven’t got the point. Morality is one thing, but self-preservation… I just don’t want to get us killed, Snow.”
He stared back at me suspiciously, as I showed him my scribbled equations:
“I’ve been working along the same lines. Don’t look so surprised. The neutrino theory was my idea in the first place, remember? Look. Negative fields can be generated all right. And ordinary matter is unaffected. But what happens to the energy that maintains the neutrino structure when it disintegrates? There must be a considerable release of that energy. Assuming a kilogram of ordinary matter represents 10^8 ergs, for a Phi-creation we get 5^7 multiplied by 10^8. That means the equivalent of a small atomic bomb exploding inside the Station.”
“You mean to tell me Sartorius won’t have been over all this?”
It was my turn to grin maliciously:
“Not necessarily. Sartorius follows the Frazer-Cajolla school. Their theories would indicate that the energy potential would be given off in the form of light — powerful, yes, but not destructive. But that isn’t the only theory of neutrino fields. According to Cayatte, and Avalov, and Sion, the radiation-spectrum would be much broader. At its maximum, there would be a strong burst of gamma radiation. Sartorius has faith in his tutors. I don’t say we can’t respect that, but there are other tutors, and other theories. And another thing, Snow,” — I could see him beginning to waver — “we have to bear in mind the ocean itself! It is bound to have used the optimum means of designing its creations. It seems to me that we can’t afford to back Sartorius against the ocean as well as the other theories.”