Айзек Азимов - Before The Golden Age

“Yes, yes, I know. But what is a proton made of?”

“That? Oh, it seems to be a neutron closely tied up with a positron— a positive electron that doesn’t weigh much of anything.”

“Then, candidate, what are the fundamental units of matter?”

“What is this, anyhow? Another damned Ph.D. exam? The fundamental particles would be the neutron, with most of the mass and no charge, and the positron and electron, with positive and negative charge respectively, and no mass to speak of. And so what?”

“Very good, Rollo. And now, what is light?”

“T’hell with light! I can think of lots better things to discuss.” He flicked the communicator switch, and the round face of the commissary clerk looked out at him from the view plate. “Send up two—no—four liters of beer! And make sure it’s cold!”

Carter grinned like a ghoul, and slid farther down in his neck. “Make that six liters, will you? But this is serious. What happens when a positron meets an electron?”

“All right,” Doc Mike said wearily. “You get a photon of light coming out of where the two met. Can be most any frequency—usually very high, cosmic or gamma. I wish he’d hurry with that beer! And what’s this all about, anyway?”

“Wait and see—and get ready for a trip. I need the information on those plates, though, and several sets of observations some days apart. Here’s the beer!”

Two weeks later two frightened scientists looked at each other over the final results from the calculating room. The figures were before them. The unknown, which continued to radiate faintly but continuously in its peculiar fashion, was some ten thousand million miles from the Earth, and was coming closer. And unless the gods of mathematics had completely forsaken them, within two years it would hit the Earth, or come so close to it that the latter would be as thoroughly wrecked as though it had sustained a direct hit.

The body was not large—no larger than the Moon—but its manner of radiation was unique. High-frequency light comes from a hot body. And a body that small couldn’t be that hot; it would have cooled off long ago. And if it were that hot, the intensity of the radiation received by the Earth would have been much greater—greater, in fact, than that received from the Sun, in spite of the small size of the unknown and its great distance from the Earth. It just didn’t make sense. And it didn’t make sense to the other astronomers of the solar system. Nothing had appeared in the popular press, nor was it likely to. An iron-clad censorship had been clamped down. The danger was serious enough, and panic would make it worse.

Carter spoke. “We’re going out to take a look, Mike. Or I am, anyway. Would you like to come along?”

“Uh-huh. You need somebody to take care of you. When do we leave?”

“In half an hour. My ship is ready to go. It has a lot of new gadgets on it, too. This should be a good chance to try them out. Let’s go.”

Just half an hour later the rocket blasted free from the snow-covered space port near the observatory. It was an improved experimental model of those used at the time, all of which depended upon the principle discovered and developed by Carter himself, which had made space travel something more than an insane gamble.

Hydrogen gas was fed into the converter, where terrific static and magnetic fields converted it into helium. Immense energy, developed from the loss of mass, appeared in the process, which energy imparted a tremendous velocity to the flaming helium gas which escaped through the rocket jets at the stern of the ship. An acceleration up to ten times that of gravity could be maintained, but five gravities was the usual limit for any length of time. More than that, and the passengers lost consciousness. Five was uncomfortable enough, but men in good training could stand it, if they didn’t attempt to move from their padded and pivoted chairs.

The trip was uneventful. A week later the rocket was circling cautiously around the unknown body. It was about the size of the Moon, but little could be seen of its surface, which appeared to be under a continuous bombardment with some immensely high explosive. The flashes from the explosions, consisting mainly of cosmic, gammas, and UV’s, were evidently the source of the light which had puzzled the observers. Carter and Poggenpohl crouched behind their lead-glass screens and watched.

“Looks like a fluorescent screen being bombarded by electrons, Jimmy. Somewhat larger scale, though. More bombardment on the forward side, too.”

“Yes, there is. It looks as though it were sweeping a path through space as it approaches the Earth. Man that gun, will you, please, and fire a solid shot at it when we go around the rear of it again?”

“O. K. Don’t see what you’re driving at, though. Do you expect a bell to ring, like in a shooting gallery? I’ll signal when I fire, and aim directly at the center when we’re exactly behind it.”

The minute went by, then, “Ready—fired! Watch for it!”

There was no need to watch. Twenty minutes later, when the hundred-pound piece of steel hit the surface of the wandering planet, there was a tremendous flash, dwarfing those which had been observed.

Carter appeared to be pleased, or at least satisfied, and called to the other. “All right, Mike. I’m going to cut the rockets and let the ship take up an orbit around this peculiar object. You take the measurements of distance to the surface and time the orbit, and I’ll measure its diameter. Considering the fate of that piece of steel you sent out of the gun, I don’t think we’ll land this time. It might be unhealthy.”

There followed a period of several hours, during which the only sound was the click of the calculating machine, and Mike’s gasp as he saw the final result. “Good Lord, Jimmy! This cockeyed animal isn’t any bigger than the Moon, and she weighs as much as Jupiter! Are we nuts—or is it?”

Jimmy laughed as he cut in the rockets and swung the ship around for home. “The latter, Mike! It’s demented—completely. We’re no crazier than usual. Gather around and I’ll explain.”

“It’s about time! Now, what have you got up your sleeve, anyway?”

“You remember, when we first saw this thing, I put you through a quiz on matter? I had a hunch then, and I’ve proved it. You described the sort of matter with which we are familiar. Look here. You said that matter was made up of neutrons and positrons, in the last analysis, in the nuclei, and of electrons on the outside. Well, there is another sort of matter possible. What is to prevent an electron from combining closely with a neutron, and forming a negative proton? The possibility was mentioned way back in 1934, and I think the old boy even gave his hypothetical particle a name—an ‘antron,’ I think he called it. Now take some of these antrons, and some extra neutrons, and make a nucleus out of them, and then release enough positrons on the outside to balance the antrons. And one has an atom with a negative atomic number, since the atomic number of an atom, of course, is the number of positive charges on the nucleus.

“And now one makes a whole universe with these minus elements. And one makes oneself out of them, too, and lives in the place, and can’t tell the difference between it and a regular universe. All the physical laws will be the same—but just wait until part of your new universe hits part of a regular universe! Then there’ll be the devil to pay and no pitch hot! Figure it out. What do you think will happen?”

“Uh—let’s see. First the outer electrons in our matter will neutralize the outer positrons in the reverse matter—and there’ll be a hell of a lot of light or other radiation—UV, gamma, cosmic and what not. Then the nuclei will get together. Nothing will happen to either set of neutrons. But the positrons on the protons will neutralize the electrons on the antrons, and there’ll be another burst of radiation and a lot of neutrons left over. So the net result will be a mob of neutrons and a flock of radiation. What do you think? Is that thing out there”—he gestured toward the anomalous planet they were leaving behind—”out of a reverse universe?”