Where I Wasn't Going Part 12

Mike switched off the vocoder, flipped his intercom to the temporary galley in the morgue, and ordered two breakfasts readied. Then he set off for the morgue.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Mike Blackhawk located Dr. Y. Chi Tung's hammock, and nudged the scientist unceremoniously. The small physicist awoke and attempted to sit up in one gesture; b.u.mped his head on the hammock above, and laid back down just as suddenly.

"Come on down to engineering will you Is.h.i.+e?" The request was spoken softly.

"Hokey, dokey," said Is.h.i.+e and crawled out of the narrow aperture with the agility of a monkey.

Gesturing to the other to follow him, Mike led the way to the galley first, where the two picked up the readied breakfast and took them to Mike's quarters.

The "cups" of coffee were squeeze bottles; the trays were soft plastic packages, similar to the boil-in-the-bag containers of frozen food that had been common on Earth for some time.

Mike hesitated at the entrance to his engineering quarters, considering whether to shut the bulkhead, but discarded the idea as being more of an attention-getter than a seal for secrecy. He gestured Is.h.i.+e to the bunk, and parked himself at his console.

"We're in trouble," he said. "You and I together are responsible for the first s.p.a.ce attack on Earth."

He stopped and waited, owl-eyed, but the small physicist simply tackled his breakfast with no further comment than a raised eyebrow.

"We," said Mike solemnly, "wiped out Thule Base last night."

"As Confusion would say, there's no Thule like a dead Thule. What are you getting at Mike? You sound serious."

"You mean you slept through ... you didn't know we ... you didn't hear the ... yes, I guess you slept! Well...."

Rapidly Mike sketched the events of the past nine hours, bringing his story completely up to date, including the information he'd gleaned from the Cow, but making no reference to his access to the computer's knowledge. Instead, he attributed the conclusions to himself.

The physicist sat so still when he had finished that Mike became seriously concerned. "Thule...." he began, but Is.h.i.+e started to speak.

"Mike, it did? It couldn't ... but ... of course, it must have ... the fields ... six hundred forty pounds of thrust! Only six hundred forty, yet ... yes, it could, if the thrust were exactly aligned ... thrust ...

Mike, thrust! _Mike, thrust!_ Real thrust! Mike do you know what this means?" His eyes were alight. His voice was reverent. He sprang from the bunk and knelt before the rack that held the churkling Confusor.

"My pretty," he said. "My delicate pretty. What you have done! Mike, we've got a s.p.a.ce drive!"

"Is.h.i.+e. Don't you realize? We wiped out Thule!"

"Thule, schmule--Mike, we've got a s.p.a.ce drive!"

Mike grinned to himself. He needn't have worried. Not about Is.h.i.+e, any how.

But now Is.h.i.+e was gesturing him over.

"Mike," he said, "you must show me in detail. In exact detail. What did you do? What was your procedure?"

Mike came over and casually reached towards the churkling device, saying "Why, I--" but Is.h.i.+e reacted with catlike swiftness, blocking the man before he could even touch the rack.

"No, don't touch it! Just _tell_ me what you did!"

Carefully now, Mike began outlining in detail his inspection of the device and each step he had taken as he added to its complexities.

When he had finished, the two sat back on their heels thinking.

Finally, Mike spoke.

"Is.h.i.+e, will you please tell me just how does this thing ... this Confusor ... _get_ that thrust? Just exactly what is involved here?"

Is.h.i.+e took his time answering, and when he did his words come slowly.

"Ah, yes. Confusor it is. I was attempting to confound Heisenberg's statement; but instead I think between us we have confused the issue.

"Heisenberg said that there was no certainty in our measurement of the exact orbit of an electron. That the instrument used to measure the position of the electron must inevitably move the electron; and the greater the attempt at precise measurements, the greater the error produced by the measurements.

"It was my hope," he went on, "to provide greater accuracy of measurement, by use of statistics over the vast number of electrons in orbit around the hydrogen atoms within the test ma.s.s. But this, apparently, will not be.

"Now to see what it is we have done.

"First, let us make a re-expression of the laws of math-physics. You understand that I am feeling my way here, for what we have done and what I thought I was doing are quite different, and I am looking with hindsight now at math-physics from the point of reality of this thrust.

"As I understand it, there's a mutual exclusiveness of particles, generally expressed by the statement that two particles may not occupy the same s.p.a.ce at the same time.

"But as I would put it, this means each particle owns its own place.

Now, inertia says that each particle not only owns its own place, but owns its own temporal memory of where it's going to be unless something interferes with it.

"Now let me not confuse you with semantics. When I say 'memory' and 'knowing' I am not implying a sentient condition. I am speaking of the type of memory and knowing that is a strain in the structure of the proton or atom. This is ... well, anyhow, not sentient. You will have to translate for yourself.

"So to continue, inertia, the way I would put it, says that each particle not only owns its own place, but owns its own temporal memory of where it is going unless it is interfered with.

"In other words, the particle arriving here, now, got here by remembering in this other sense that it was going from there to there to there with some inherent sort of memory. This memory can't be cla.s.sified as being in relation to anything but the particle itself.

No matter how you move the things around it, as long as the things around it don't exert an influence on the particle, the particle's memory of where it's been and where it's going form a continuous straight line through s.p.a.ce and must, therefore, have spatial co-ordinates against which to form a 'memory' pattern of former and future action.

"Now as I understand gravity, it's simply the statement that all particles in s.p.a.ce are covetous, in this same non-sentient sense, of the position in s.p.a.ce of all their neighboring particles. In other words, it's a contravention or the attempted contravention of the statement that two particles may not be in the same place at the same time. It seems that all particles have an urge to try to be in each other's s.p.a.ce. And this desire is modified by the distance that separates them.

"This adds up to three rules:

"1. No two particles may occupy the same s.p.a.ce at the same time.

"2. Even though they can't, they try.

"3. They all know where they're going, and where they've been without relation to anything but the spatial co-ordinates around them.

"That third statement seems to me to knock something of a hole in Einstein's relativity theory. Unless you wish to grant all these particles some method of determining their relations.h.i.+p to particles that are not near them.

"Communication between particles by any means is apparently limited by the speed of light, which is a relations.h.i.+p between s.p.a.ce and time, but apparently, from what we know of inertia, if the universe contained only a single particle, and that particle was in motion, it would continue to move regardless of the fact that its motion could not be checked upon in relation to other particles.

"This indicates to me that the particle has an existence in s.p.a.ce because it is created out of s.p.a.ce, and that s.p.a.ce must, therefore, have some very real properties of its own regardless of what is or is not in it. The very fact that there is a limiting speed to light and particle motion introduces the concept that s.p.a.ce has physical properties.

"In order to have an electromagnetic wave, one must have a medium in which an electric field or a magnetic field may exist. In order to have matter, which I believe to be a form of electromagnetic field in stasis, one must have special properties which make the existence of matter possible. In order to have inertia, one must also have spatial properties which make the existence of inertia possible.