The Complete Stories (Page 149)

He seemed half reluctant, but Sheerin leaned back and said, ‘Go ahead! I’m listening.’

‘Well, then, supposing there were other suns in the universe.’ He broke off a little bashfully. ‘I mean suns that are so far away that they’re too dim to see. It sounds as if I’ve been reading some of that fantastic fiction, I suppose.’

‘Not necessarily. Still, isn’t that possibility eliminated by the fact that, according to the Law of Gravitation, they would make themselves evident by their attractive forces?’

‘Not if they were far enough off,’ rejoined Beenay, ‘really far off — maybe as much as four light years, or even more. We’d never be able to detect perturbations then, because they’d be too small. Say that there were a lot of suns that far off; a dozen or two, maybe.’

Theremon whistled melodiously. ‘What an idea for a good Sunday supplement article. Two dozen suns in a universe eight light years across. Wow! That would shrink our world into insignificance. The readers would eat it up.’

‘Only an idea,’ said Beenay with a grin, ‘but you see the point. During an eclipse, these dozen suns would become visible because there’d be no real sunlight to drown them out. Since they’re so far off, they’d appear small, like so many little marbles. Of course the Cultists talk of millions of Stars, but that’s probably exaggeration. There just isn’t any place in the universe you could put a million suns — unless they touch one another.’

Sheerin had listened with gradually increasing interest. ‘You’ve hit something there, Beenay. And exaggeration is just exactly what would happen. Our minds, as you probably know, can’t grasp directly any number higher than five; above that there is only the concept of "many". A dozen would become a million just like that. A damn good idea!’

‘And I’ve got another cute little notion,’ Beenay said. ‘Have you ever thought what a simple problem gravitation would be if only you had a sufficiently simple system? Supposing you had a universe in which there was a planet with only one sun. The planet would travel in a perfect ellipse and the exact nature of the gravitational force would be so evident it could be accepted as an axiom. Astronomers on such a world would start off with gravity probably before they even invented the telescope. Naked-eye observation would be enough.’

‘But would such a system be dynamically stable?’ questioned Sheerin doubtfully.

‘Sure! They call it the "one-and-one" case. It’s been worked out mathematically, but it’s the philosophical implications that interest me.’

‘It’s nice to think about,’ admitted Sheerin, ‘as a pretty abstraction — like a perfect gas, or absolute zero.’

‘Of course,’ continued Beenay, ‘there’s the catch that life would be impossible on such a planet. It wouldn’t get enough heat and light, and if it rotated there would be total Darkness half of each day. You couldn’t expect life — which is fundamentally dependent upon light — to develop under those conditions. Besides — ‘

Sheerin’s chair went over backward as he sprang to his feet in a rude interruption. ‘Aton’s brought out the lights.’

Beenay said, ‘Huh,’ turned to stare, and then grinned halfway around his head in open relief.

There were half a dozen foot-long, inch-thick rods cradled in Aton’s arms. He glared over them at the assembled staff members.

‘Get back to work, all of you. Sheerin, come here and help me!’

Sheerin trotted to the older man’s side and, one by one, in utter silence, the two adjusted the rods in makeshift metal holders suspended from the walls.

With the air of one carrying through the most sacred item of a religious ritual, Sheerin scraped a large, clumsy match into spluttering life and passed it to Aton, who carried the flame to the upper end of one of the rods.

It hesitated there awhile, playing futilely about the tip, until a sudden, crackling flare cast Aton’s lined face into yellow highlights. He withdrew the match and a spontaneous cheer rattled the window.

The rod was topped by six inches of wavering flame! Methodically, the other rods were lighted, until six independent fires turned the rear of the room yellow.

The light was dim, dimmer even than the tenuous sunlight. The flames reeled crazily, giving birth to drunken, swaying shadows. The torches smoked devilishly and smelled like a bad day in the kitchen. But they emitted yellow light.

There was something about yellow light, after four hours of somber, dimming Beta. Even Latimer had lifted his eyes from his book and stared in wonder.

Sheerin warmed his hands at the nearest, regardless of the soot that gathered upon them in a fine, gray powder, and muttered ecstatically to himself. ‘Beautiful! Beautiful! I never realized before what a wonderful color yellow is.’

But Theremon regarded the torches suspiciously. He wrinkled his nose at the rancid odor and said, ‘What are those things?’

‘Wood,’ said Sheerin shortly.

‘Oh, no, they’re not. They aren’t burning. The top inch is charred and the flame just keeps shooting up out of nothing.’

‘That’s the beauty of it. This is a really efficient artificial-light mechanism. We made a few hundred of them, but most went to the Hideout, of course. You see’ — he turned and wiped his blackened hands upon his handkerchief — ‘you take the pithy core of coarse water reeds, dry them thoroughly, and soak them in animal grease. Then you set fire to it and the grease burns, little by little. These torches will burn for almost half an hour without stopping. Ingenious, isn’t it? It was developed by one of our own young men at Saro University.’

After the momentary sensation, the dome had quieted. Latimer had carried his chair directly beneath a torch and continued reading, lips moving in the monotonous recital of invocations to the Stars. Beenay had drifted away to his cameras once more, and Theremon seized the opportunity to add to his notes on the article he was going to write for the Saro City Chronicle the next day — a procedure he had been following for the last two hours in a perfectly methodical, perfectly conscientious and, as he was well aware, perfectly meaningless fashion. But, as the gleam of amusement in Sheerin’s eyes indicated, careful note-taking occupied his mind with something other than the fact that the sky was gradually turning a horrible deep purple-red, as if it were one gigantic, freshly peeled beet; and so it fulfilled its purpose.