"Who are these people?"
She frowned thoughtfully, one hand on the closet doorknob. "Dr. Tibor Sonderman s in earth sciences. I believe he used to be with Scripps. Georgia Keating doesn't have her doctorate, but then she's quite young. She has a JPL grant, but I believe it's running out. I've never met her— haven't met either of them, really, although I think Dr. Sonderman and I were at the governor's conference together, two years ago—oh, thank you, dear! Let me take that." While she was talking Dennis had walked to the closet, picked up the cleaner part she was looking for and fitted it onto the hose.
He stroked her shoulder and grinned. "What do you want cleaned, just the carpet here?"
"I think so," she said, glancing around at the room as though it were his. "Let's see, what else do I need to do?"
"You need to sit down while I do this for you," her grandson said. "You can go on telling me about these two people?"
Obediently Meredith sat on a hassock, watching him expertly slide the vacuum over the rug. "Well," she said, "this is just a sort of get-acquainted meeting. I haven't actually accepted the job, although I suppose— Good heavens!"
The glasses on the sideboard tinkled together, and she felt a sort of vibration through the house, as though a very heavy truck were rumbling by. But there were no trucks on Mountain Laurel Drive. It lasted only a moment. But the effect on her grandson lasted longer than that. He was transfixed, and the look on his face was very much like terror.
Tibor Sonderman was stopped for a light on Ventura Boulevard when he felt the tremor. A man making his way across the street in front of him with a four-legged crutch stopped, scowling angrily at the world. Hanging ferns outside a florist's shop at the corner swayed briefly. Tib switched on the radio and began to hunt across the dial.
All the stations were blandly continuing with whatever they had been doing, rock, folk, soul, sports, or talk. By the time he reached Meredith Bradison's house he had made his own assessment: no more than 3.5 on the Richter, or there would have been something said about it; no less than 3.0, or he wouldn't have felt it at all. Just another of the several hundred shocks that hit Southern California every year.
Rainy Keating's car was tucked into the little drive space ahead of him. Tib eased his little Horizon into the space between it and somebody's old Volkswagen beetle, and was admitted by a handsome, tiny, elderly woman. "Dr. Bradison?" he asked.
"Please call me Meredith," she said, letting him in through a sort of greenhouse of a foyer. From the look of the entrance Tib expected something Hollywoodian for a living room, if not a salon, but what he saw was a quite plain room furnished in clutter. On what was obviously a retired sofa bed Rainy Keating was listening to her telephone messages. "I think you two know each other?" Meredith said, and Rainy looked up with the phone to her ear to acknowledge Tib's presence.
"I'm sorry," she said after a moment, hanging up the phone as a tall, fair-bearded young man came in with a tray of glasses. "I was just checking to see—hey! I know you."
Dennis Siroca said apologetically, "I guess you do, Miz Keating. I'm the one that broke your what's-it."
"My orrery."
Meredith Bradison said, "Well, I didn't know you two knew each other, either."
"Just a little bit," Tib said, grinning. "It is probably -your grandson's fault that we are all here now, Meredith. He put on a little exhibition for us in Arecibo."
"Oh, Dennis! Were you that one?" He shrugged, not really embarrassed, and offered drinks around. "Well, you're full of surprises," she told him; and to the others, "I'm really grateful you came here today. I thought it was a good idea for us to know each other a little better before we got into any formal activities."
"It was a fine idea, Meredith," Rainy assured her. "Have you read the book?"
"Oh, yes. It's out of my field, of course, or most of it is. I can testify that the expansion of the atmosphere does take place under the appropriate conditions, of course— that's what brought Skylab down a few years ago. And there does seem to be a connection between large air mass activity and the glitches in the earth's rotation. After that I'm lost."
Rainy said, "We really need more experts. Maybe a nuclear physicist, a planetary astronomer, somebody with special training in the reactions between the solar wind and the atmosphere—no?" she added, looking at Tib.
He was shaking his head. "No, I think not. That's a herd, and we'd never get anywhere. You're all we need for the astronomical parts, Rainy."
"I don't know diddly-squat about the interior of the sun!"
"You know who to ask, though. And anyway, we're not going to worry about the interior of the sun. As I see it, that's the weakest link in the argument. Point two at the most, I'd even say point one."
Dennis, sitting on a footstool behind the couch and nominally out of range, asked, "What's point two mean, Mr. Sonderman?"
Tib glanced at Meredith, then, politely, to her grandson, "The probability of that happening, I would say, is only two chances out of ten. " He held up his hand as the boy started to speak. "How do I arrive at that figure, you are going to ask? I don't. I guess. Or, you could say, if I asked ten experts if it is so that the configuration of the planets could affect nuclear reactions in the core of the Sun, eight of them would say it was, excuse me, a load of bull. In fact, I think that is the weakest link in the argument." He was fumbling in his pocket as he spoke and paused to ask Meredith, "Shall I?" She nodded and he pulled out a pencil. "There are eight parts to the argument," he said. "One, the configuration of the planets, all on the same side of the sun—that we can take to be certain, probability one point oh. The effect of their gravity on the nuclear reactions I have already mentioned— does anyone want to suggest another value?"
No one did, and the three others watched silently as he talked and wrote down a little table:
Alignment of planets 1.0
Effect on core reaction 0.2
Consequent increase in flares 0.9
Consequent expansion of atmosphere 0.9
Consequent glitch 0.5
Consequent strain on tectonic faults 0.2
Consequent major earthquakes 0.5
Net probability of Jupiter Effect ?
Dennis, who had risen to look over his shoulder, exclaimed, "So you think it's about fifty-fifty?"
Sonderman looked up wryly at the boy. "You're averaging the chances, aren't you? No. That's not how you do it. You must multiply them—like so. " He pulled out a pocket calculator and began to punch figures. After a second the little red digits displayed a figure: 0.0081. "Eight chances in a thousand," he said. "A little worse than a hundred to one, and I would say that is generous."
Meredith looked at him wonderingly. "Then what are we all doing here?" she asked.
Tib shrugged. "Add to that the fact that one of the co-authors has already recanted, and I ask myself this question too."
He paused, and Meredith looked at him quizzically. "And what do you answer?"