It was unsettling, but fresh clothing from his waiting baggage made him feel better. He went to the lounge of the hotel, and it was not a lounge, and the hotel was not a hotel. Everything in the dome was indoors in the sense that it was under a globular ceiling fifty stories high. But everything was also out-doors in the sense of bright light and growing trees and bushes and shrubs.
He found Babs freshly garmented and waiting for him. She said in businesslike tones:
“Mr. Cochrane, I asked at the desk. Doctor Holden has gone to consult Mr. Dabney. He asked that we stay within call. I’ve sent word to Mr. West and Mr. Jamison and Mr. Bell.”
Cochrane approved of her secretarial efficiency.
“Then we’ll sit somewhere and wait. Since this isn’t an office, we’ll find some refreshment.”
They asked for a table and got one near the swimming pool. And Babs wore her office manner, all crispness and business, until they were seated. But this swimming pool was not like a pool on Earth. The water was deeply sunk beneath the pool’s rim, and great waves surged back and forth. The swimmers—.
Babs gasped. A man stood on a board quite thirty feet above the water. He prepared to dive.
“That’s Johnny Simms!” she said, awed.
“Who’s he?”
“The playboy,” said Babs, staring. “He’s a psychopathic personality and his family has millions. They keep him up here out of trouble. He’s married.”
“Too bad—if he has millions,” said Cochrane.
“I wouldn’t marry a man with a psychopathic personality!” protested Babs.
“Keep away from people in the advertising business, then,” Cochrane told her.
Johnny Simms did not jounce up and down on the diving board to start. He simply leaped upward, and went ceilingward for easily fifteen feet, and hung stationary for a full breath, and then began to descend in literal slow motion. He fell only two and a half feet the first second, and five feet more the one after, and twelve and a half after that.… It took him over four seconds to drop forty-five feet into the water, and the splash that arose when he struck the surface rose four yards and subsided with a lunatic deliberation.
Watching, Babs could not keep her businesslike demeanor. She was bursting with the joyous knowledge that she was on the moon, seeing the impossible and looking at fame.
They sipped at drinks—but the liquid rose much too swiftly in the straws—and Cochrane reflected that the drink in Babs’ glass would cost Dabney’s father-in-law as much as Babs earned in a week back home, and his own was costing no less.
Presently a written note came from Holden:
“Jed: send West and Jamison right away to Dabney’s lunar laboratory to get details of discovery from man named Jones. Get moon-jeep and driver from hotel. I will want you in an hour.—Bill.”
“I’ll be back,” said Cochrane. “Wait.”
He left the table and found West and Jamison in Bell’s room, all three in conference over a bottle. West and Jamison were Cochrane’s scientific team for the yet unformulated task he was to perform. West was the popularizing specialist. He could make a television audience believe that it understood all the seven dimensions required for some branches of wave-mechanics theory. His explanation did not stick, of course. One didn’t remember them. But they were singularly convincing in cultural episodes on television productions. Jamison was the prophecy expert. He could extrapolate anything into anything else, and make you believe that a one-week drop in the birthdate on Kamchatka was the beginning of a trend that would leave the Earth depopulated in exactly four hundred and seventy-three years. They were good men for a television producer to have on call. Now, instructed, they went out to be briefed by somebody who undoubtedly knew more than both of them put together, but whom they would regard with tolerant suspicion.
Bell, left behind, said cagily:
“This script I’ve got to do, now—Will that laboratory be the set? Where is it? In the dome?”
“It’s not in the dome,” Cochrane told him. “West and Jamison took a moon-jeep to get to it. I don’t know what the set will be. I don’t know anything, yet. I’m waiting to be told about the job, myself.”
“If I’ve got to cook up a story-line,” observed Bell, “I have to know the set. Who’ll act? You know how amateurs can ham up any script! How about a part for Babs? Nice kid!”
Cochrane found himself annoyed, without knowing why.
“We just have to wait until we know what our job is,” he said curtly, and turned to go.
Bell said:
“One more thing. If you’re planning to use a news cameraman up here—don’t! I used to be a cameraman before I got crazy and started to write. Let me do the camera-work. I’ve got a better idea of using a camera to tell a story now, than—”
“Hold it,” said Cochrane. “We’re not up here to film-tape a show. Our job is psychiatry—craziness.”
To a self-respecting producer, a psychiatric production would seem craziness. A script-writer might have trouble writing out a psychiatrist’s prescription, or he might not. But producing it would be out of all rationality! No camera, the patient would be the star, and most lines would be ad libbed. Cochrane viewed such a production with extreme distaste. But of course, if a man wanted only to be famous, it might be handled as a straight public-relations job. In any case, though, it would amount to flattery in three dimensions and Cochrane would rather have no part in it. But he had to arrange the whole thing.
He went back to the table and rejoined Babs. She confided that she’d been talking to Johnny Simms’ wife. She was nice! But homesick. Cochrane sat down and thought morbid thoughts. Then he realized that he was irritated because Babs didn’t notice. He finished his drink and ordered another.
Half an hour later, Holden found them. He had in tow a sad-looking youngish man with a remarkably narrow forehead and an expression of deep anxiety. Cochrane winced. A neurotic type if there ever was one!
“Jed,” said Holden heartily, “here’s Mr. Dabney. Mr. Dabney, Jed Cochrane is here as a specialist in public-relations set-ups. He’ll take charge of this affair. Your father-in-law sent him up here to see that you are done justice to!”
Dabney seemed to think earnestly before he spoke.
“It is not for myself,” he explained in an anxious tone. “It is my work! That is important! After all, this is a fundamental scientific discovery! But nobody pays any attention! It is extremely important! Extremely! Science itself is held back by the lack of attention paid to my discovery!”
“Which,” Holden assured him, “is about to be changed. It’s a matter of public relations. Jed’s a specialist. He’ll take over.”
The sad-faced young man held up his hand for attention. He thought. Visibly. Then he said worriedly:
“I would take you over to my laboratory, but I promised my wife I would call her in half an hour from now. Johnny Simms’ wife just reminded me. My wife is back on Earth. So you will have to go to the laboratory without me and have Mr. Jones show you the proof of my work. A very intelligent man, Jones—in a subordinate way, of course. Yes. I will get you a jeep and you can go there at once, and when you come back you can tell me what you plan. But you understand that it is not for myself that I want credit! It is my discovery! It is terribly important! It is vital! It must not be overlooked!”
Holden escorted him away, while Cochrane carefully controlled his features. After a few moments Holden came back, his face sagging.
“This your drink, Jed?” he asked dispiritedly. “I need it!” He picked up the glass and emptied it. “The history of that case would be interesting, if one could really get to the bottom of it! Come along!” His tone was dreariness itself. “I’ve got a jeep waiting for us.”
Babs stood up, her eyes shining.
“May I come, Mr. Cochrane?”
Cochrane waved her along. Holden tried to stalk gloomily, but nobody can stalk in one-sixth gravity. He reeled, and then depressedly accommodated himself to condi
tions on the moon.
There was an airlock with a smaller edition of the moon-jeep that had brought them from the ship to the city. It was a brightly-polished metal body, raised some ten feet off the ground on outrageously large wheels. It was very similar to the straddle-trucks used in lumberyards on Earth. It would straddle boulders in its path. It could go anywhere in spite of dust and detritus, and its metal body was air-tight and held air for breathing, even out on the moon’s surface.
They climbed in. There was the sound of pumping, which grew fainter. The outer lock-door opened. The moon-jeep rolled outside.
Babs stared with passionate rapture out of a shielded port. There were impossibly jagged stones, preposterously steep cliffs. There had been no weather to remove the sharp edge of anything in a hundred million years. The awkward-seeming vehicle trundled over the lava sea toward the rampart of mighty mountains towering over Lunar City. It reached a steep ascent. It climbed. And the way was remarkably rough and the vehicle springless, but it was nevertheless a cushioned ride. A bump cannot be harsh in light gravity. The vehicle rode as if on wings.
“All right,” said Cochrane. “Tell me the worst. What’s the trouble with him? Is he the result of six generations of keeping the money in the family? Or is he a freak?”
Holden groaned a little.
“He’s practically a stock model of a rich young man without brains enough for a job in the family firm, and too much money for anything else. Fortunately for his family, he didn’t react like Johnny Simms—though they’re good friends. A hundred years ago, Dabney’d have gone in for the arts. But it’s hard to fool yourself that way now. Fifty years ago he’d have gone in for left-wing sociology. But we really are doing the best that can be done with too many people and not enough world. So he went in for science. It’s non-competitive. Incapacity doesn’t show up. But he has stumbled on something. It sounds really important. It must have been an accident! The only trouble is that it doesn’t mean a thing! Yet because he’s accomplished more than he ever expected to, he’s frustrated because it’s not appreciated! What a joke!”
Cochrane said cynically:
“You paint a dark picture, Bill. Are you trying to make this thing into a challenge?”
“You can’t make a man famous for discovering something that doesn’t matter,” said Holden hopelessly. “And this is that!”
“Nothing’s impossible to public relations if you spend enough money,” Cochrane assured him. “What’s this useless triumph of his?”
The jeep bounced over a small cliff and fell gently for half a second and rolled on. Babs beamed.
“He’s found,” said Holden discouragedly, “a way to send messages faster than light. It’s a detour around Einstein’s stuff—not denying it, but evading it. Right now it takes not quite two seconds for a message to go from the moon to Earth. That’s at the speed of light. Dabney has proof—we’ll see it—that he can cut that down some ninety-five per cent. Only it can’t be used for Earth-moon communication, because both ends have to be in a vacuum. It could be used to the space platform, but—what’s the difference? It’s a real discovery for which there’s no possible use. There’s no place to send messages to!”
Cochrane’s eyes grew bright and hard. There were some three thousand million suns in the immediate locality of Earth—and more only a relatively short distance way—and it had not mattered to anybody. The situation did not seem likely to change. But—The moon-jeep climbed and climbed. It was a mile above the bay of the lava sea and the dust-heaps that were a city. It looked like ten miles, because of the curve of the horizon. The mountains all about looked like a madman’s dream.
“But he wants appreciation!” said Holden angrily. “People on Earth almost trampling on each other for lack of room, and people like me trying to keep them sane when they’ve every reason for despair—and he wants appreciation!”
Cochrane grinned. He whistled softly.
“Never underestimate a genius, Bill,” he said kindly. “I refer modestly to myself. In two weeks your patient—I’ll guarantee it—will be acclaimed the hope, the blessing, the greatest man in all the history of humanity! It’ll be phoney, of course, but we’ll have Marilyn Winters—Little Aphrodite herself—making passes at him in hopes of a publicity break! It’s a natural!”
“How’ll you do it?” demanded Holden.
The moon-jeep turned in its crazy, bumping progress. A flat area had been blasted in rock which had been unchanged since the beginning of time. Here there was a human structure. Typically, it was a dust-heap leaning against a cliff. There was an airlock and another jeep waited outside, and there were eccentric metal devices on the flat space, shielded from direct sunshine and with cables running to them from the airlock door.
“How?” repeated Cochrane. “I’ll get the details here. Let’s go! How do we manage?”
It was a matter, he discovered, of vacuum-suits, and they were tricky to get into and felt horrible when one was in. Struggling, Cochrane thought to say:
“You can wait here in the jeep, Babs—”
But she was already climbing into a suit very much oversized for her, with the look of high excitement that Cochrane had forgotten anybody could wear.
They got out of a tiny airlock that held just one person at a time. They started for the laboratory. And suddenly Cochrane saw Babs staring upward through the dark, almost-opaque glass that a space-suit-helmet needs in the moon’s daytime if its occupant isn’t to be fried by sunlight. Cochrane automatically glanced up too.
He saw Earth. It hung almost in mid-sky. It was huge. It was gigantic. It was colossal. It was four times the diameter of the moon as seen from Earth, and it covered sixteen times as much of the sky. Its continents were plain to see, and its seas, and the ice-caps at its poles gleamed whitely, and over all of it there was a faintly bluish haze which was like a glamour; a fey and eerie veiling which made Earth a sight to draw at one’s heart-strings.
Behind it and all about it there was the background of space, so thickly jeweled with stars that there seemed no room for another tiny gem.
Cochrane looked. He said nothing. Holden stumbled on to the airlock. He remembered to hold the door open for Babs.
And then there was the interior of the laboratory. It was not wholly familiar even to Cochrane, who had used sets on the Dikkipatti Hour of most of the locations in which human dramas can unfold. This was a physics laboratory, pure and simple. The air smelled of ozone and spilled acid and oil and food and tobacco-smoke and other items. West and Jamison were already here, their space-suits removed. They sat before beer at a table with innumerable diagrams scattered about. There was a deep-browed man rather impatiently turning to face his new visitors.
Holden clumsily unfastened the face-plate of his helmet and gloomily explained his mission. He introduced Cochrane and Babs, verifying in the process that the dark man was the Jones he had come to see. A physics laboratory high in the fastnesses of the Lunar Apennines is an odd place for a psychiatrist to introduce himself on professional business. But Holden only explained unhappily that Dabney had sent them to learn about his discovery and arrange for a public-relations job to make it known.
Cochrane saw Jones’ expression flicker sarcastically just once during Holden’s explanation. Otherwise he was poker-faced.
“I was explaining the discovery to these two,” he observed.
“Shoot it,” said Cochrane to West. It was reasonable to ask West for an explanation, because he would translate everything into televisable terms.
West said briskly—exactly as if before a television camera—that Mr. Dabney had started from the well-known fact that the properties of space are modified by energy fields. Magnetic and gravitational and electrostatic fields rotate polarized light or bend light or do this or that as the case may be. But all previous modifications of the constants of space had been in essentially spherical fields. All previous fields had extended in all directions, increasing in intensity as the square of the distance�
��
“Cut,” said Cochrane.
West automatically abandoned his professional delivery. He placidly re-addressed himself to his beer.
“How about it, Jones?” asked Cochrane. “Dabney’s got a variation? What is it?”
“It’s a field of force that doesn’t spread out. You set up two plates and establish this field between them,” said Jones curtly. “It’s circularly polarized and it doesn’t expand. It’s like a searchlight beam or a microwave beam, and it stays the same size like a pipe. In that field—or pipe—radiation travels faster than it does outside. The properties of space are changed between the plates. Therefore the speed of all radiation. That’s all.”
Cochrane meditatively seated himself. He approved of this Jones, whose eyebrows practically met in the middle of his forehead. He was not more polite than politeness required. He did not express employer-like rapture at the mention of his employer’s name.
“But what can be done with it?” asked Cochrane practically.
“Nothing,” said Jones succinctly. “It changes the properties of space, but that’s all. Can you think of any use for a faster-than-light radiation-pipe? I can’t.”
Cochrane cocked an eye at Jamison, who could extrapolate at the drop of an equation. But Jamison shook his head.
“Communication between planets,” he said morosely, “when we get to them. Chats between sweethearts on Earth and Pluto. Broadcasts to the stars when we find that another one’s set up a similar plate and is ready to chat with us. There’s nothing else.”
Cochrane waved his hand. It is good policy to put a specialist in his place, occasionally.
“Demonstration?” he asked Jones.
“There are plates across the crater out yonder,” said Jones without emotion. “Twenty miles clear reach. I can send a message across and get it relayed twice and back through two angles in about five per cent of the time radiation ought to take.”
Cochrane said with benign cynicism:
“Jamison, you work by guessing where you can go. Jones works by guessing where he is. But this is a public relations job. I don’t know where we are or where we can go, but I know where we want to take this thing.”
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 87