If the Corianis set off her signal-bomb a mere one hundred sixteen thousand thousand million miles from Maninea, the cloud could be detected within a week. If it were set off farther away, its detection would be delayed. But ships to search had been asked for; when they came, they'd follow the Corianis' course back toward Kholar, stopping to look for iron-clouds every few light-days along the way. They'd pick up an artificial cloud of iron vapor long before light passing through it could get to either planet.
So the shipping-service forces hoped. The job of finding one space-ship on a sight-light-year course, with possible errors hi all three dimensions-it wasn't an easy one. But if the shipping service did find the Corianis, it could feel proud.
But it didn't. It only found out where the Corianis had vanished.
VII
The Corianis' loudspeaker system bellowed, demanding attention. An agitated voice tried to explain to the passengers why they must remain on board for the time being. There was now in port-in fact right next to the Corianis -another ship of the same name and same design and same interior and exterior fitting. That other ship had brought passengers to Maninea who had claimed to be, and been believed to be, the persons the Corianis brought. Somebody who claimed to be the Planetary President had been on that other ship. Naturally, there was concern when a second claimant to that identity and office appeared. There'd been a Minister of State from Kholar on the other vessel. And a Speaker of the Senate, and a Chairman of a Lower House Committee and-in short-persons claiming to be nearly everybody down to the smallest child on board the ship.
The passengers on the Corianis erupted in indignation. Everybody knew who he was! It was ridiculous to ask him to stay on board while the identification of the other person claiming to be him was investigated! That other person was an impostor! He was a scoundrel! Clap him in jail and…
Jack Bedell was possibly the only person on board the Corianis who really tried to make sense of the agitated words from the public-address system. The others seethed and growled and roared their resentment; he listened.
His expression changed from astonishment to incredulity, and then much later to a very great thoughtful-ness. Kathy watched his face as bewilderment and uneasiness increased in her.
"It's official!" he said presently, almost in awe. "And no politician would dare try to make anybody believe such a thing! It's panic-pure, unimaginative panic that makes them admit it!"
Kathy swallowed. "I can-imagine one person impersonating somebody else," she said uneasily. "But a lot of people-a shipload! And-the President of the planet? How could anybody impersonate him? Too many people know him too well!- Couldn't they be crazy to suspect us of being impostors?"
Bedell shook his head. "Delusions have a sort of cockeyed logic to them," he told her. "Nothing is as crazy as facts. I believe this. Reality can always outguess imagination!"
She stared at him.
"I've forgotten the figures," he added, "but the odds are billions to one against any person having the same fingerprints as any other member of the human race since time began. Of course, two in a generation is unthinkable. And here we've got scores of identical-fingerprint pairs of people turning up. The odds against it-oh, nobody will believe it!"
"But it can't be true, can it?" asked Kathy. She felt more comfortable, talking to Bedell, than she'd ever felt with anybody else. She hoped he felt the same way.
"Oh, it's probably true," said Bedell. "It's just impossible. That's always upsetting… Let's get some lunch and think about it."
They moved past corridors full of people who had been prepared to leave the ship and now were forbidden to do so. They were infuriated; they were insulted.
"Leaving aside the impossibility of the thing," observed Bedell as he and Kathy seated themselves in one of the ship's dining salons, "there are some other angles. There are two
Planetary Presidents. Which is which? There are two Ministers of State for Kholar. The duplication runs all down the line. I wonder if there's another me on board that other ship. I'd guess that the odds are less than for most people. And I wonder if there's another you."
Kathy started. She turned pale. "Nobody'd have reason to impersonate me!" she protested. But she was frightened. "Anyhow that-that couldn't be!"
Jack Bedell shrugged, but he smiled at her, reassuringly. They saw a waiter, but no one came to serve them. Presently other passengers came into the dining-room, talking indignantly of the affront of suspecting them of being fakes.
Strangers in uniform moved past the doorway of the dining-saloon. A pompous figure, the Minister of State, stood splendidly in their way. He addressed them as if they were voters, his voice rolling and sonorous and angry. He oratorically protested the outrage of doubting his identity. It would be resented! There would be retaliation! An apology was in order, and an immediate withdrawal of the order forbidding him to land…
The strangers walked around him and moved on. A bewildered man in ship's uniform led the way.
"They're going to the purser's office," said Bedell, nodding his head. "They'll take the passenger-list to compare with the other Corianis' list of people on board. Of course the local problem is that their president exists in two copies. That will upset the whole planetary government."
"You-seem to know what's going on," said Kathy, uneasily.
"I don't," Bedell told her. "But there's such a thing as a universe of discourse-an acceptance of the preposterous so you can arrive at sense. // it's true that there are doubles of almost everybody, alike even to fingerprints -why-such-and-such other things must be true, also. But not even in a universe of discourse would absolutely everybody on both ships be absolutely alike! There'd have to be some exceptions… How long have you been the secretary of somebody who would naturally want you on this trade-treaty trip?"
She licked her lips. She was scared; the idea of another, independent version of herself, knowing everything she knew, capable of anything she could do, but not under her control…
"I've had my job three months," she said. "Before that…"
"The chances are good that you're unique," said Bedell, "if the universe of discourse I'm thinking of is valid."
The men in strange uniforms went back past the dining salon door. They were followed by the Speaker of the Senate of Maninea. He expostulated furiously. The men in the strange uniforms looked hunted and upset. They still had the ship's purser with them.
"I think," said Bedell, "that this is going to go pretty far. How'd you like to look out a port at this lunatic world which says we can't be ourselves because somebody else is us?"
He led the way down two levels to where nobody crowded the corridors. It was quite silent, here. Someone had turned off the thread-thin whisper of music which prevented ghastly silence on the ship while in flight. They went to the end of a corridor. Bedell cranked open the shutters of a port and they looked out.
They were in the Corianis, but the Corianis rested solidly aground two hundred yards away. The other ship was gigantic; it was solid. It was an absolutely perfect duplicate of the Corianis from which they looked. It was not the kind of object one could imagine as partaking of the impossible or the unreal. There was nothing ghostly about it; it was defiantly an actual thing.
Bedell looked down at the spaceport's surface.
"There," he observed with careful calmness, "there's the purser-from this ship. And there's the other of him, over there. There are two qf him, just as the loudspeakers said."