I said: "Good heavens!"
"You're overwhelmed by the detail work," Groating smiled, "but not by the lack of logic. It is possible to obtain all possible data on the orchard in question and integrate the factors into an accurate prophecy not only as to the theft, but as to the time and place of theft. Apply this example to our own Universe and you can understand the working of the Prognosis Building. We have eight floors of data analyzers. The sifted factors are fed into the Integrators and—presto, prophecy!"
I said: "Presto, my poor head!"
"You'll get used to it in time."
I said: "The pictures?"
Groating said: "The solution of a mathematical problem can take any one of a number of forms. For Prognosis we have naturally selected a picturization of the events themselves. Any major step in government that is contemplated is prepared in data form and fed into the Integrator. The effect of that step on the world line is observed. If it is beneficial, we take that step; if not, we abandon it and search for another—"
I said: "And the picture I saw this afternoon?"
Groating sobered. He said: "Up until today, Mr. Carmichael, we have not been able to integrate closer to the present than a week in the future—or deeper into the future than a few hundred years. Wiggon's new data technique has enabled us to push to the end of our existence, and it is perilously close. You saw the obliteration of our Universe take place less than a thousand years from now. This is something we must prevent at once."
"Why all the excitement? Surely something will happen during the next ten centuries to avoid it."
"What will happen?" Groating shook his bead. "I don't think you understand our problem. On the one hand you have the theory of our society. Stability. You yourself have quoted the Credo. A society which must maintain its Stability at the price of instability is Chaos. Keep that in mind. On the other hand we cannot wait while our existence progresses rapidly toward extinction. The closer it draws to that point, the more violent the change will have to be to alter it.
"Think of the progress of a snowball that starts at the top of a mountain and rolls down the slopes, growing in bulk until it smashes an entire house at the bottom. The mere push of a finger is sufficient to alter its future when it starts—a push of a finger will save a house. But if you wait until the snowball gathers momentum you will need violent efforts to throw the tons of snow off the course."
I said: "Those pictures I saw were the snowball hitting our house. You want to start pushing the finger now—"
Groating nodded. "Our problem now is to sift the billions of factors stored in the Prog Building and discover which of them is that tiny snowball."
The controller, who bad been silent in a state of wild suppression all the while, suddenly spoke up. "I tell you it's impossible, Mr. Groating. How can you dig the one significant factor out of all those billions?"
Groating said: "It will have to be done."
"But there's an easier way," the controller cried. "I've been suggesting it all along. Let's attempt the trial and error method. We instigate a series of changes at once and see whether or not the future line is shifted. Sooner or later we're bound to strike something."
"Impossible," Groating said. 'You're suggesting the end of Stability. No civilization is worth saving if it must buy salvation at the price of its principles."
I said: "Sir, I'd like to make a suggestion."
They looked at me. The C-S nodded.
"It seems to me that you're both on the wrong track. You're searching for a factor from the present. You ought to start in the future."
"How's that?"
"It's like if I said old maids were responsible for more clover. You'd start investigating the old maids. You ought to start with the clover and work backwards."
"Just what are you trying to say, Mr. Carmichael?"
"I'm talking about a posteriori reasoning. Look, sir, a fella by the name of Darwin was trying to explain the balance of nature. He wanted to show the chain of cause and effect. He said in so many words that the number of old maids in a town governed the growth of clover, but if you want to find out how, you've got to work it out a posteriori, from effect to cause. Like this: Only bumblebees can fertilize clover. The more bumblebees, the more clover. Field mice attack bumblebee nests, so the more field mice, the less clover. Cats attack mice. The more cats, the more clover. Old maids keep cats. The more old maids . . . the more clover. Q. E. D."
"And now," Groating laughed, "construe."
"Seems to me you ought to start with the catastrophe and follow the chain of causation, link by link, back to the source. Why not use the Prognosticator backwards until you locate the moment when the snowball first started rolling?"
There was a very long silence while they thought it over. The controller looked slightly bewildered and he kept muttering: Cats-clover-old maids—But I could see the C-S was really hit. He went to the window and stood looking out, as motionless as a statue. I remember staring past his square shoulder and watching the shadows of the helios flicking noiselessly across the facade of the Judiciary Building opposite us.
It was all so unreal—this frantic desperation over an event a thousand years in the future; but that's Stability. It's strictly the long view. Old Cyrus Brennerhaven of the Morning Globe had a sign over his desk that read: If you take care of the tomorrows, the todays will take care of themselves.
Finally Groating said: "Mr. Carmichael, I think we'd better go back to the Prog Building—"
Sure I felt proud. We left the office and went down the hall toward the pneumatics and I kept thinking: "I've given an idea to the Chief Stabilizer. He's taken a suggestion from me!" A couple of secretaries had rushed down the hall ahead of us when they saw us come out, and when we got to the tubes, three capsules were waiting for us. What's more, the C-S and the controller stood around and waited for me while I contacted my city editor and gave him the official release. The editor was a little sore about my disappearance, but I had a perfect alibi. I was still looking for Hogan. That, my friends, was emphatically that.
At the Prog Building we bustled through the main offices and back up the curved stairs. On the way the C-S said he didn't think we ought to tell Yarr, the little old coot I'd hoodwinked, the real truth. It would be just as well, he said, to let Yarr go on thinking I was a confidential secretary.
So we came again to that fantastic clockwork room with its myriad whirling cams and the revolving crystal and the hypnotic bam-bam of the motors. Yarr met us at the door and escorted us to the viewing desk with his peculiar absent-minded subservience. The room was darkened again, and once more we watched the cloud of blackness seep across the face of the Universe. The sight chilled me more than ever, now that I knew what it meant.
Groating turned to me and said: "Well, Mr. Carmichael, any suggestions?"
I said: "The first thing we ought to find out is just what that spaceship has to do with the black cloud . . . don't you think so?"
"Why yes, I do." Groating turned to Yarr and said: "Give us a close-up of the spaceship and switch in sound. Give us the integration at normal speed."
Yarr said: "It would take a week to run the whole thing off. Any special moment you want, sir?"
I had a hunch. "Give us the moment when the auxiliary ship arrives."
Yarr turned back to his switchboard. We had a close-up of a great round port. The sound mechanism clicked on, running at high speed with a peculiar wheetledy-woodledey-weedledy garble of shrill noises. Suddenly the cruiser shot into view. Yarr slowed everything down to normal speed.
The fat needle nosed into place, the ports clanged and hissed as the suction junction was made. Abruptly, the scene shifted and we were inside the lock between the two ships. Men in stained dungarees, stripped to the waist and sweating, were hauling heavy canvas-wrapped equipment into the mother ship. To one side two elderly guys were talking swiftly:
"You had difficulty?"
"More than ever. Thank God this is the last shipment."
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"How about credits?"
"Exhausted."
"Do you mean that?"
"I do."
"I can't understand it. We had over two millions left."
"We lost all that through indirect purchases and—"
"And what?"
"Bribes, if you must know."
"Bribes?"
"My dear sir, you can't order cyclotrons without making people suspicious. If you so much as mention an atom today, you accuse yourself."
"Then we all stand accused here and now."
"I'm not denying that."
"What a terrible thing it is that the most precious part of our existence should be the most hated."
"You speak of—"
"The atom."
The speaker gazed before him meditatively, then sighed and turned into the shadowy depths of the spaceship.
I said: "All right, that's enough. Cut into the moment just before the black-out occurs. Take it inside the ship."
The integrators quickened and the sound track began its babble again. Quick scenes of the interior of the mother ship flickered across the crystal. A control chamber, roofed with a transparent dome passed repeatedly before us, with the darting figures of men snapping through it. At last the Integrator fixed on that chamber and stopped. The scene was frozen into a still photograph—a tableau of half a dozen half-naked men poised over the controls, heads tilted back to look through the dome.
Yarr said: "It doesn't take long. Watch closely."
I said: "Shoot."
The scene came to life with a blurp.
"—ready on the tension screens?"
"Ready, sir."
"Power checked?"
"Checked and ready, sir."
"Stand by, all. Time?"
"Two minutes to go."
"Good—" The graybeard in the center of the chamber paced with hands clasped behind him, very much like a captain on his bridge. Clearly through the sound mechanism came the thuds of his steps and the background hum of waiting mechanism.
The graybeard said: "Time?"
"One minute forty seconds."
"Gentlemen: In these brief moments I should like to thank you all for your splendid assistance. I speak not so much of your technical work, which speaks for itself, but of your willingness to exile yourselves and even incriminate yourselves along with me—Time?"
"One twenty-five."
"It is a sad thing that our work which is intended to grant the greatest boon imaginable to the Universe should have been driven into secrecy. Limitless power is so vast a concept that even I cannot speculate on the future it will bring to our worlds. In a few minutes, after we have succeeded, all of us will be universal heroes. Now, before our work is done, I want all of you to know that to me you are already heroes—Time?"
"One ten."
"And now, a warning. When we have set up our spacial partition membrane and begun the osmotic transfer of energy from gyperspace to our own there may be effects which I have been unable to predict. Raw energy pervading our space may also pervade our nervous systems and engender various unforeseen conditions. Do not be alarmed. Keep well in mind the fact that the change cannot be anything but for the better—Time?"
"Fifty seconds."
"The advantages? Up to now mathematics and the sciences have merely been substitutes for what man should do for himself. So FitzJohn preached in his first lecture, and so we are about to prove. The logical evolution of energy mechanics is not toward magnification and complex engineering development, but toward simplification-toward the concentration of all those powers within man himself—Time?"
"Twenty seconds."
"Courage, my friends. This is the moment we have worked for these past ten years. Secretly. Criminally. So it has always been with those who have brought man his greatest gifts."
"Ten seconds.
"Stand by, all."
"Ready all, sir."
The seconds ticked off with agonizing slowness. At the moment of zero the workers were galvanized into quick action. It was impossible to follow their motions or understand them, but you could see by the smooth timing and interplay that they were beautifully rehearsed. There was tragedy in those efforts for us who already knew the outcome.
As quickly as they had begun, the workers stopped and peered upward through the crystal dome. Far beyond them, crisp in the velvet blackness, that star gleamed, and as they watched, it winked out.
They started and exclaimed, pointing. The graybeard cried:
"It's impossible!"
"What is it, sir?"
"I—"
And in that moment blackness enveloped the scene.
I said: "Hold it—"
Yarr brought up the lights and the others turned to look at me. I thought for a while, idly watching the shimmering cams and cogs around me. Then I said: "It's a good start. The reason I imagine you gentlemen have been slightly bewildered up to now is that you're busy men with no time for foolishness. Now I'm not so busy and very foolish, so I read detective stories. This is going to be a kind of backward detective story."
"All right," Groating said. "Go ahead."
"We've got a few clues. First, the Universe has ended through an attempt to pervade it with energy from hyperspace. Second, the attempt failed for a number of reasons which we can't discover yet. Third, the attempt was made in secrecy. Why?"
The controller said: "Why not? Scientists and all that—"
"I don't mean that kind of secrecy. These men were plainly outside the law, carrying on an illicit experiment. We must find out why energy experiments or atomic experiments were illegal. That will carry us back quite a few decades toward the present."
"But how?"
"Why, we trace the auxiliary cruiser, of course. If we can pick them up when they're purchasing supplies, we'll narrow our backward search considerably. Can you do it, Dr. Yarr?"
"It'll take time."
"Go ahead—we've got a thousand years."
It took exactly two days. In that time I learned a lot about the Prognosticator. They had it worked out beautifully. Seems the future is made up solely of probabilities. The Integrator could push down any one of these possible avenues, but with a wonderful check. The less probable the avenue of future was, the more off-focus it was. If a future event was only remotely possible, it was pictured as a blurred series of actions. On the other hand, the future that was almost positive in the light of present data, was sharply in focus.
When we went back to the Prog Building two days later, Yarr was almost alive in his excitement. He said: "I really think I've got just the thing you're looking for."
"What's that?"
"I've picked up an actual moment of bribery. It has additional data that should put us directly on the track."
We sat down behind the desk with Yarr at the controls. He had a slip of paper in his hand which he consulted with much muttering as he adjusted co-ordinates. Once more we saw the preliminary off-focus shadows, then the sound blooped on like a hundred stereo records playing at once. The crystal sharpened abruptly into focus.
The scream and roar of a gigantic foundry blasted our ears. On both sides of the scene towered the steel girder columns of the foundry walls, stretching deep into the background like the grim pillars of a Satanic cathedral. Overhead cranes carried enormous blocks of metal with a ponderous gait. Smoke-black, white and fitfully flared with crimson from the furnaces, whirled around the tiny figures.
Two men stood before a gigantic casting. One, a foundryman in soiled overalls, made quick measurements which be called off to the other carefully checking a blueprint. Over the roar of the foundry the dialogue was curt and sharp:
"One hundred three point seven."
"Check."
"Short axis. Fifty-two point five."
"Check."
"Tangent on ovate diameter. Three degrees point oh five two."
"Check!"
"What specifications for outer convolutions?"
"Y equal
s cosine X."
"Then that equation resolves to X equals minus one half pi."
"Check."
The foundryman climbed down from the casting, folding his three-way gauge. He mopped his face with a bit of waste and eyed the engineer curiously as the latter carefully rolled up the blueprint and slid it into a tube of other rolled sheets. The foundryman said: "I think we did a nice job."
The engineer nodded.
"Only what in blazes do you want it for? Never saw a casting like that."
"I could explain, but you wouldn't understand. Too complicated."
The foundryman flushed. He said: "You theoretical guys are too damned snotty. Just because I know how to drop-forge doesn't mean I can't understand an equation."
"Mebbeso. Let it go at that. I'm ready to ship this casting out at once."
As the engineer turned to leave, rapping the rolled blueprints nervously against his calf, a great pig of iron that had been sailing up from the background swung dangerously toward his head. The foundryman cried out. He leaped forward, seized the engineer by the shoulder and sent him tumbling to the concrete floor. The blueprints went flying.
He pulled the engineer to his feet immediately and tried to straighten the dazed man who could only stare at the tons of iron that sailed serenely on. The foundryman picked up the scattered sheets and started to sort them. Abruptly he stopped and examined one of the pages closely. He began to look through the others, but before he could go any further, the blueprints were snatched from his hands.
He said: "What's this casting for?"
The engineer rolled the sheets together with quick, intense motions. He said: "None of your blasted business."
"I think I know. That's one-quarter a cyclotron. You're getting the other parts made up in different foundries, aren't you?
There was no answer.
"Maybe you've forgotten Stabilization Rule 930."
"I haven't forgotten. You're crazy."
"Want me to call for official inspection?"
The engineer took a breath, then shrugged. He said: "I suppose the only way to convince you is to show you the master drafts. Come on—"