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 man. With his bushy white beard, he resembled a pocket edition of Santa Claus. His eyes twinkled and he smoked a short stubby pipe.
He left the sound-proof studio and walked briskly down the hall to the cashier’s window. «Hello, sweetheart,» 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 way, 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 the 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 tickets.
Dr. Hale went into the phone booth and called his 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 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 meant by the parallelism of an entropy-gradient?»
«Why — not exactly.»
«Neither did I.»
«Milton, have you been drinking?»
«Not y — No, I haven’t. I really can’t come home to work this evening, Agatha. I’m using my study at the university, because I must have access to the library there, for reference. And the star-charts.»
«But, Milton, how about that money for your broadcast? You know it isn’t safe for you to have money in your pocket when you’re feeling — like this.»
«It isn’t money, Agatha. It’s a check, and I’ll mail it to you before I go to the office. I won’t cash it myself. How’s that?»
«Well — if you must have access to the library, I suppose you must. Good-by, Milton.»
Dr. Hale went across the street to the drug store. There he bought a stamp and envelope and cashed the twenty-five dollar check. The seventy-five dollar one he put into the envelope and mailed.
Standing beside the mailbox he glanced up at the early evening sky — shuddered, and hastily lowered his eyes. He took the straightest possible line for the nearest tavern and ordered a double Scotch.
«Y’ain’t been in for a long time, Dr. Hale,» said Mike, the bartender.
«That I haven’t, Mike. Pour me another.»
«Sure. On the house, this time. We had your broadcast tuned in on the radio just now. It was swell.»
«Yes.»
«It sure was. I was kind of worried what was happening up there, with my son an aviator and all. But as long as you scientific guys know what it’s all about, I guess it’s all right. That was sure a good speech, Doc. But there’s one question I’d like to ask you.»
«I was afraid of that,» said Dr. Hale.
«These stars. They’re moving, going somewhere. But where they going? I mean, like you said, if they are.»
«There’s no way of telling that exactly, Mike.»
«Aren’t they moving in a straight line, each one of them?»
For just a moment the celebrated scientist hesitated.
«Well — yes and no, Mike. According to spectroscopic analysis, they’re maintaining the same distance from us, each one of them. So they’re really moving — if they’re moving — in circles around us. But the circles are straight, as it were. I mean, it seems that we’re in the center of those circles, so the stars that are moving aren’t coming closer to us or receding.»
«You could draw lines for those circles?»
«On a star-globe, yes. It’s been done. They all seem to be heading for a certain area of the sky, but not for a given point. In other words, they don’t intersect.»
«What part of the sky they going to?»
«Approximately between Ursa Major and Leo, Mike. The ones farthest from there are moving fastest, the ones nearest are moving slower. But darn you, Mike, I came in here to forget about stars, not to talk about them. Give me another.»
«In a minute, Doc. When they get there, are they going to stop or keep on going?»
«How the devil do I know, Mike? They started suddenly, all at the same time, and with full original velocity — I mean, they started out at the same speed they’re going now — without warming up, so to speak — so I suppose they could stop just as unexpectedly.»
He stopped just as suddenly as the stars might. He stared at his reflection in the mirror back of the bar as though he’d never seen it before.
«What’s the matter, Doc?»
«Mike!»
«Yes, Doc?»
«Mike, you’re a genius.»
«Me? You’re kidding.»
Dr. Hale groaned. «Mike, I’m going to have to go to the university to work this out. So I can have access to the library and the star-globe there. You’re making an honest man out of me, Mike. Whatever kind of Scotch this is, wrap me up a bottle.»
«It’s Tartan Plaid. A quart?»
«A quart, and make it snappy. I’ve got to see a man about a dog-star.»
«Serious, Doc?»
Dr. Hale sighed audibly. «You brought that on yourself, Mike. Yes, the dog-star is Sirius. I wish I’d never come in here, Mike. My first night out in weeks, and you ruin it.»
He took a cab to the university, let himself in, and turned on the lights in his private study and in the library. Then he took a good stiff slug of Tartan Plaid and went to work.
First, by telling the chief operator who he was and arguing a bit, he got a telephone connection with the chief astronomer of Cole Observatory.
«This is Hale, Armbruster,» he said. «I’ve got an idea, but I want to check my facts before I start to work on it. Last information I had, there were four-hundred sixty-eight stars exhibiting new proper motion. Is that still correct?»
«Yes, Milton. The same ones are still at it — no others.»
«Good. I have a list of them. Has there been any change in speed of motion of any of them?»
«No. Impossible as it seems, it’s constant. What is your idea?»
«I want to check my theory first. If it works out into anything, I’ll call you.» But he forgot to.
It was a long, painful job. First he made a chart of the heavens in the area between Ursa Major and Leo. Across that chart he drew 468 lines representing the projected path of each of the aberrant stars. At the border of the chart, where each line entered, he made a notation of the apparent velocity of the star — not in light-years per hour — but in degrees per hour, to the fifth decimal.
Then he did some reasoning.
«Postulate that the motion which began simultaneously will stop simultaneously,» he told himself. «Try a guess at the time. Let’s try ten o’clock tomorrow evening.»