James Hogan - Entoverse

“I got to know some Russians when the Pseudowar happened. Mikolai Sobroskin was one. Ever come across him?”

“Oh, yes. He is foreign minister now.”

“That’s him.”

“You will be basing there in PAC?” Grobyanin asked.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“We, too. So maybe we see you there later. Excuse now. I must join my friends together.”

“See you around,” Hunt said, nodding. He leaned back again as the Russian moved away, smiling faintly as he recalled why Sobroskin had said Hunt would never have been a success in Russia. “You have too many good ideas,” Sobroskin had said. “You know what you used to get there for a good idea? At least five years.”

Then another voice sounded suddenly from nearby, turning heads in the vicinity. “Vic!” It was Gina’s. “What on earth are you doing here?” Hunt had to force himself to hold a straight face until he had gone through the motions of looking up and about.

“I could say the same about you-except that ‘earth’ is hardly appropriate.”

“You show up in the most unexpected places.”

“Who are you with?” Hunt asked loudly as she came across to his table.

“Just me,” she answered, letting her voice fall to a more natural level. “I’m on a free-lance job. It’s unreal… How about you?”

“Oh, I don’t get any spare time to go gallivanting around. Regular UNSA assignment.” Hunt extended a hand to indicate the far side of the table. “Sit down and tell me all about it. When did you come on board?”

“Less than half an hour ago. I shuttled up from Vandenberg.”

Gina settled herself in the chair opposite, and smiled warmly, just like an old friend. “It’s an interesting bunch we’ve got here,” she said, waving her hand.

“How do you mean?” Hunt asked.

“Did you know there’s a bunch of kids here, going on a summer vacation from a school in Florida?”

“I didn’t know they were from Florida.”

“And there’s a marketing group from Disney World, going to check out the tourism. Some Russians to help sort out the Jevlenese.”

“I just met one of them.”

“Even a holy man from Tibet or somewhere, who’s heard the call of Jevlenese mysticism and came aboard this morning with some of his disciples.”

“Tax problems?”

“Who knows?” she shrugged. “And directors from a corporation in Denver going to see about Jevlen for their next-year sales conference, a whole mix of ologists, a group making a movie, and a South American real-estate millionaire who’s decided that Jevlen is where he wants to retire.”

Hunt set his glass down and looked at her curiously. “You’ve only just arrived on board. How do you know so much already?”

“I took your advice and asked.”

“Asked who?”

“VISAR. Apparently it doesn’t occur to very many Earthpeople. VISAR thinks it’s because we assume furtiveness everywhere.”

Hunt had to smile, It would have come to her so naturally that he should have guessed-as naturally as calling Caldwell and saying she needed help with a book.

Gina finished her drink. “How’d I do?” she asked in a lowered voice.

“Terrific. I’m sure you’ve got another profession waiting if you find you’ve got tired of books.”

“Is anyone still interested in us, do you think?”

Hunt shook his head. “We can just be natural now. If anyone gets curious later about how you got mixed up with the UNSA group, there were enough witnesses. So, forget any more Mata Hari stuff. Have you had lunch?”

“I’m still too excited about this whole business to have much of an appetite,” Gina answered. “But this ship is fantastic! What do you think the chances would be of getting to see more of it while we’re here?”

“Oh, pretty good, I should think.” Hunt raised his voice slightly. “VISAR, could you take us on a tour around the Vishnu?”

“Be my guests,” the machine replied.

They stood amidst stupefying constructions of gleaming metallic shapes, walls of light, and what looked like clean-cut massifs, as big as buildings, of internally glowing crystal. It was all too devoid of even a hint of anything recognizable for Hunt to form any coherent questions for VISAR of what it meant.

“You seem… impressed,” Gina said, finding a tactful word to describe the look on Hunt’s face.

His frown switched to a faint grin. “It is a bit much for one afternoon, isn’t it?” he agreed. “This is all a long way past the ship from Minerva that we found on Ganymede. That was from the same era as the Shapieron. We thought it was pretty spectacular at the time. But compared to this it was like the boiler room of a tramp steamer.”

“They produce some kind of ‘stress wave,’ or something, don’t they?” Gina said. “A bubble of bent space-time around the ship. That’s what moves through space, carrying the ship with it. Since the ship is at rest relative to the space inside the bubble, the usual speed limits don’t apply.”

“That’s right. The rules for space propagating through space are different.” Hunt shook his head wonderingly. “Is there anything you don’t get interested in?”

“I told you, journalists are curious, like scientists.”

Hunt nodded. “The Shapieron used a system that constrained superdense masses to move in closed paths at relativistic speeds, which generated high rates of change of gravitic potential and created a matter-annihilation zone that powered the stress field. The equipment to do it was colossal, but I don’t see anything like it here. But there has to be something like it to get us out past Pluto, where the entry port will be projected for transfer to Jevlen. VISAR, how has it changed?”

“That’s all done remotely now,” VISAR replied. “The stress wave is generated by small converters located around the extremities of the ship and coupling into the Thurien i-space grid. The ship itself can be quite compact. Remember the one that landed in Alaska?”

“I take it this is the kind of thing you’re finding out more about at Goddard,” Gina said to Hunt.

“Trying to, anyway. There’s a lot of it. Half the problem is getting the information organized.”

“Have there been any big surprises so far-I mean, apart from the ones we’ve read about? You know: the universe is bigger than we thought, smaller than we thought; parallel universes are real; Einstein was wrong. Anything like that?”

Hunt looked around from the rail he was leaning on. “Well, it’s funny you should mention Einstein,” he said.

“You mean he was wrong?”

“Not wrong, exactly… but unnecessarily complicated, like Ptolemy’s planetary orbits. It all works out a lot more simply and still agrees with the same experimental results if you take the velocity that matters as being not that with respect to the observer at all, but with respect to the traversed gravitational field. The distortions of space that Einstein was forced to postulate turn out to be simply compensations for the breakdown of the inverse square law at high speeds, caused by the finite propagation speed of gravity. If you allow for that, then practically everything in relativity can be deduced by classical methods.”

Gina stared at him as if unable to decide whether he was joking or being serious. “You mean everybody missed it?”

“Yes,” Hunt answered, nodding. “Take the business with Mercury’s perihelion, for instance. You know about that?”

“I thought that Einstein’s answer works; Newton’s doesn’t.”

“So do most people,” Hunt agreed. He looked away and snorted. “But all the prestige and money for practically the last century has come for building more spectacular gadgets, not for going over the basics of physics. Do you know what VISAR found while it was browsing through some old European archives?”