Isaac Asimov - Nightfall (novel)

So Universal Gravitation wasn’t quite right, was it?

No! No, that was impossible! Every atom of common sense in him protested at the thought. The concept of Universal Gravitation was fundamental to any comprehension of the structure of the universe, Athor was certain. Athor knew. It was too clean, too logical, too beautiful, to be wrong.

Take Universal Gravitation away, and the entire logic of the cosmos dissolved into chaos.

Inconceivable. Unimaginable.

But these figures—this damnable printout of Beenay’s—

“I can see you’re angry, sir.” Beenay, chattering again! “And I want to tell you, I can quite understand it—the way this must hit you—anyone would be angry, having his life’s work jeopardized this way—”

“Beenay—”

“Just let me say, sir, that I’d give anything not to have had to bring you this today. I know you’re furious with me for coming in here with this, but I can only say that I thought long and hard before I did. What I really wanted to do was burn everything and forget I ever got started on any of this. I’m appalled that I found what I did, and appalled that I was the one who—”

“Beenay,” Athor said again, in his most ominous voice.

“Sir?”

“I am furious with you, yes. But not for the reason you think.”

“Sir?”

“Number one, I’m annoyed at the way you’ve been babbling at me, when all I want to do is sit here and quietly work through the implications of these papers you’ve just tossed at me. Number two, and much more important, I’m absolutely outraged that you’d have hesitated for so much as a moment to bring me your findings. Why did you wait so long?”

“It was only yesterday that I finished double-checking.”

“Yesterday! Then you should have been in here yesterday! Do you really mean to say, Beenay, that you seriously considered suppressing all this? That you would simply have tossed your results away and said nothing?”

“No, sir,” said Beenay miserably. “I never actually thought about doing that.”

“Well, that’s a blessing. Tell me, man, do you think I’m so enamored of my own beautiful theory that I’d want one of my most gifted associates to shield me from the unpleasant news that the theory’s got a flaw in it?”

“No, sir. Of course not.”

“Then why didn’t you come running in here with the news the moment you were sure you were right?”

“Because—because, sir—” Beenay looked as though he wanted to vanish into the carpet. “Because I knew how upset you’d be. Because I thought you might—you might be so upset that your health would be affected. So I held back, I talked to a couple of friends, I thought through my own position on all of this, and I came to see that I really had no choice, I had to tell you that the Theory of Univer—”

“So you really do believe I love my own theory more than I do the truth, eh?”

“Oh, no, no, sir!”

Again Athor smiled, and this time it was no effort at all. “But I do, you know. I’m as human as anybody else, believe it or not. The Theory of Universal Gravitation brought me every scientific honor this planet has to offer. It’s my passport to immortality, Beenay. You know that. And to have to deal with the possibility that the theory’s wrong —oh, it’s a powerful shock, Beenay, it goes right through me from front to back. Make no mistake about that.—Of course, I still believe that my theory’s correct.”

“Sir?” said Beenay, all too obviously aghast. “But I’ve checked and checked and checked again, and—”

“Oh, your findings are correct too, I’m sure of that. For you and Faro and Yimot all to have done it wrong—no, no, I’ve already said I don’t see much chance of that. But what you’ve got here doesn’t necessarily overthrow Universal Gravitation.”

Beenay blinked a few times. “It doesn’t?”

“Certainly not,” Athor said, warming to the situation. He felt almost cheerful now. The deathly unreal calm of the first few moments had given way to the very different tranquillity that one feels when one is in pursuit of truth. “What does the Theory of Universal Gravitation say, after all? That every body in the universe exerts a force on all other bodies, proportional to mass and distance. And what did you attempt to do in using Universal Gravitation to compute the orbit of Kalgash? Why, to factor in the gravitational impact that all the various astronomical bodies exert on our world as it travels around Onos. Is that not so?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then, there’s no need to throw the Theory of Universal Gravitation out, at least not at this point. What we need to do, my friend, is simply to rethink our comprehension of the universe, and determine whether we’re ignoring something that should be figured into our calculations—some mysterious factor, that is, which all unbeknownst to us is exerting gravitational force on Kalgash and isn’t being taken into account.”

Beenay’s eyebrows rose alarmingly. He gaped at Athor in what could only have been a look of total astonishment.

Then he began to laugh. He smothered it at first by clamping his jaws, but the laughter insisted on escaping anyway, causing him to hunch his shoulders and emit strangled lurching coughs; and then he had to clap both his hands over his mouth to hold back the torrent of merriment.

Athor watched, flabbergasted.

“An unknown factor!” Beenay blurted, after a moment. “A dragon in the sky! An invisible giant!”

“Dragons? Giants? What are you talking about, boy?”

“Yesterday evening—Theremon 762—oh, sir, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry—” Beenay struggled to regain his self-control. Muscles writhed in his face; he blinked violently and caught his breath; he turned away for an instant, and when he turned back he was almost himself again. Shamefacedly he said, “I had a couple of drinks with Theremon 762 yesterday evening—the newspaper columnist, you know—and told him something about what I’d found, and how uneasy I was about bringing my findings to you.”

“You went to a newspaperman? ”

“A very trustworthy one. A close friend.”

“They’re all scoundrels, Beenay. Believe me.”

“Not this one, sir. I know him, and I know he’d never do anything to hurt me or offend me. In fact Theremon gave me some excellent advice, by which I mean he said I absolutely had to come here, which is why I did. But also—trying to offer me some hope, you see, some consolation—he said the same thing you did, that maybe there was an ‘unknown factor’—his exact phrase, an unknown factor—that was confusing our understanding of Kalgash’s orbit. And I laughed and told him that it was useless to drag unknown factors into the situation, that it was too easy a solution. I suggested—sarcastically, of course—that if we allowed any such hypothesis, then we might as well tell ourselves that it was an invisible giant that was pushing Kalgash out of orbit, or the breath of a giant dragon. And now here you are, sir, taking the same line of reasoning—not a layman like Theremon, but the greatest astronomer in the world!—Do you see how foolish I feel, sir?”

“I think I do,” said Athor. All this was becoming a little trying. He ran his hand through his imposing white mane and gave Beenay a look of mingled irritation and compassion. “You were right to tell your friend that inventing fantasies to solve a problem isn’t very useful. But the random suggestions of laymen aren’t always without merit. For all we know, there is some unknown factor at work on Kalgash’s orbit. We need at least to consider that possibility before we toss the theory overboard. I think what we need to do here is to make use of Thargola’s Sword. You know what that is, Beenay?”