"There is a physical problem with the patient," I explained. "We don't want him to hurt the body, which is only on loan."
"Up to your mind—swapping tricks again, hey Coypu? One of these days you will go too far—" He looked at me and scowled. "I said out and I mean out. All of you."
As he said this he sprang forward and seized my wrist and applied—a very good armlock. Of course I let him do it since I don't beat up on doctors. He was strong and good enough—I hoped—to handle Berkk's body in an emergency. I left with the others as soon as he let go.
A number of hours passed and we were beginning to yawn and head for bed when the communicator buzzed. Angelina and I were wanted in the lab.
Coypu and Mastigophora were slouched deep in their chairs. trying to outmatch each other in looking depressed.
"Impossible," Mastigophora moaned. "No control, can't erect blocks, can't access, terrible. It's the multiple personality thing, you see. My colleague has explained that Professor Slakey has in some unspecified manner multiplied his body, or bodies. His brain or brains or personality is in constant communication or something like that. It sounds like absolute porcuswinewash. But I have seen it in action. I can do nothing."
"Nothing," Coypu echoed hollowly.
"Nothing?" I shouted. "There has to be something!"
"Nothing…" they intoned together.
"There is something," Angelina said, ever the practical one. "Forget Slakey and get back to looking into the guts of your interuniversal machine. Surely there has to be some way to get it working again."
Coypu shook his head looking, if possible, even gloomier. "While Dr. Mastigophora was brain—draining I tackled the problem again. I even stopped all the other projects that were running in the Special Corps Prime Base Central Computer. In case you didn't know it, the SCPBCC is the largest, fastest and most powerful computer ever built in the entire history of mankind." He turned on the visiscreen and pointed. "Do you see that satellite out there? Almost a third the size of this entire station. That's not a satellite—that's the computer. I had it working flat Out on this problem and this problem alone. I used the equivalent of about one billion years of computer time."
"And?"
"It has tackled this question from every point of view in every way. And the conclusion was the same every time. It is impossible to alter the access frequencies in the interumversal commutator."
"But it happened?" I said.
"Obviously."
"Nothing is obvious to me." I was very tired and my temper was shredding and all this gloom and doom was beginning to be very irritating. I jumped to my feet, walked over to the shiny steel control console, looked at its blinking lights and tracing graphs. And kicked it. I. hurt my toe but at least I had the pleasure of seeing one of the needles on a meter jump a bit. I started to bring my foot back for another kick. And froze.
Stood there on one leg for long seconds while my brain raced around in circles.
"He has just had an idea," Angelina said, her voice seemingly coming from a great distance. "Whenever he freezes up like that it means he has thought of something, had an inspiration of some kind. In a moment he will tell us—"
"I'll tell you now!" I shouted, jumping about to face them and neatly clicking my heels in the air as I did. "Your computer is absolutely right, Professor, and you should have more respect for its conclusions. Those universes will always be in the same place. As soon as we realize that, why the answer becomes obvious. We must look for the real reason why you cannot access those universes. Do you know what that is?"
I had them now, professorial jaws gaping, heads shaking, Angelina nodding proudly, waiting for my explanation.
"Sabotage," I said, and pointed at the control console. "Someone has changed the settings on the controls."
"But I set them myself," Coypu said. "And I have checked the original calculations and conclusions over and over again,"
"Then they must have been changed too."
"Impossible!"
"That's the right word for it. When all the possibilities have been tried—then it is tune to look to the impossible."
"My first notes, I think that I still have them," he said, stumbling across the room and tearing open a drawer. It fell to the floor and spilled out pens, paper clips, bits of paper, cigar butts and empty soup cans, all the things we leave in desk drawers. He scrabbled among the debris and pulled Out a crumpled piece of paper, smoothed it and held it up.
"Here. My own writing, my first calculations, the beginnings of determining the locations and settings. This could not be changed." He stamped over to the controls, flickered his fingers across the console keys, pointed a victorious finger at the equation on the screen. "There you see—the same as this."
He looked at the paper, then at the screen, then back to the paper until it looked like he was watching an invisible PingPong match.
"Different…" he said hoarsely. I must admit that my smile was a bit smug and I did enjoy it when Angelina gave me a loving hug and a kiss.
"My husband the genius," she whispered.
While Coypu hammered away at the computer, Dr. Mastigophora went to look at his patient.
"How is he?" I asked.
"Unconscious. We had to use the psycho blaster on him, paralyze his entire body as well as the brain. Nothing else seems to work."
"There it is! Hell!" Coypu shouted and we turned to look at his screen which showed a loathsome red landscape under a redder and even more loathsome sun.
"Hell," he said. "And Heaven. They are all there still. It was the calculations, the primary equations… changed, just slightly, just enough to make the later calculations vary farther and farther from the correct figures. But—how did it happen? Who has done this?"
"I told you—a saboteur. There is a spy in our midst." I said, very firmly.
"Impossible! There are no spies in the Special Corps. Certainly, none here in Prime Base. Impossible."
"Very possible. thinking about it in great detail and, unhappy as I am to say this, I can identify the spy."
I had them now. Even Angelina was leaning forward, waiting for further revelation. I smiled serenely, buffed my fingers on my shirt, turned and pointed. "There's your spy."
They all turned to look.
"The spy is none other than my good companion from the rock mine—Berkk."
Chapter 26
"How can you say that, Jim!" Angelina said. "He saved your life."
"He did—and I saved his."
"He was a prisoner like you. He wouldn't spy for Slakey."
"He was. And he did."
Coypu got into the disbelieving act. "Impossible. You told me, he's a simple mechanic. It would take a mathematician of incredible skill to alter those equations so subtly that I would never notice the changes."
I raised my hands to silence the growing protest.
"Dear friends—why don't we put this to the empirical test. Let's ask him."
In a matter of seconds the professor had pumped a massive electronic charge into Berkk's brain and drained it out of his heel. Leaving the brain empty of all intelligence. The captive Slakey was now just random fizzling electrons, which was fine; there were certainly enough other manifestations of him around. Then Coypu seized up the other fully charged TF that was full of Berkk and plugged it back to his body. A switch was thrown and, hopefully, Berkk was back home again. Dr. Mastigophora filled a hypodermic with psycho blaster antidote and shot it into Berkk's arm. He stirred and moaned and his eyes fluttered open.
"Why am I strapped down?"
I recognized his voice. Slakey was gone and Berkk was home again.
"Free him if you please, Professor." The clamps jumped open and I went to remove the restraining belt.
"Ouch," Berkk said, touching his bruised lips. "It was Slakey, wasn't it? He did this to me." He sat up and groaned. "Was it worth it? Did you get what you needed?"