As the ship slipped into the not-quite-space through which the ultradrive propelled it, Leicher began to consolidate the material he had already gathered.
* * * *
Commander Benedict wrote in the log:
Fifty-four days out from Sol. Alpha Centauri has long since faded back into its pre-blowup state, since we have far outdistanced the light from its explosion. It now looks as it did two years ago. It—
“Pardon me, Commander,” Leicher interrupted, “But I have something interesting to show you.”
Benedict took his fingers off the keys and turned around in his chair. “What is it, Doctor?”
Leicher frowned at the papers in his hands. “I’ve been doing some work on the probability of that explosion happening just as it did, and I’ve come up with some rather frightening figures. As I said before, the probability was small. A little calculation has given us some information which makes it even smaller. For instance: with a possibleerror of plus or minus two seconds Alpha Centauri A began to explode the instant we came out of ultradrive!
“Now, the probability of that occurring comes out so small that it should happen only once in ten to the four hundred sixty-seventh seconds.”
It was Commander Benedict’s turn to frown. “So?”
“Commander, the entire universe is only about ten to the seventeenth seconds old. But to give you an idea, let’s say that the chances of its happening are once in millions of trillions of years!”
Benedict blinked. The number, he realized, was totally beyond his comprehension—or anyone else’s.
“Well, so what? Now it has happened that one time. That simply means that it will almost certainly never happen again!”
“True. But, Commander, when you buck odds like that and win, the thing to do is look for some factor that is cheating in your favor. If you took a pair of dice and started throwing sevens, one right after another—for the next couple of thousand years—you’d begin to suspect they were loaded.”
Benedict said nothing; he just waited expectantly.
“There is only one thing that could have done it. Our ship.” Leicher said it quietly, without emphasis.
“What we know about the hyperspace, or superspace, or whatever it is we move through in ultradrive is almost nothing. Coming out of it so near to a star might set up some sort of shock wave in normal space which would completely disrupt that star’s internal balance, resulting in the liberation of unimaginably vast amounts of energy, causing that star to go nova. We can only assume that we ourselves were the fuze that set off that nova.”
Benedict stood up slowly. When he spoke, his voice was a choking whisper. “You mean the sun—Sol—might.…”
Leicher nodded. “I don’t say that it definitely would. But the probability is that we were the cause of the destruction of Alpha Centauri A, and therefore might cause the destruction of Sol in the same way.”
Benedict’s voice was steady again. “That means that we can’t go back again, doesn’t it? Even if we’re not positive, we can’t take the chance.”
“Not necessarily. We can get fairly close before we cut out the drive, and come in the rest of the way at sub-light speed. It’ll take longer, and we’ll have to go on half or one-third rations, but we can do it!”
“How far away?”
“I don’t know what the minimum distance is, but I do know how we can gage a distance. Remember, neither Alpha Centauri B or C were detonated. We’ll have to cut our drive at least as far away from Sol as they are from A.”
“I see.” The commander was silent for a moment, then: “Very well, Dr. Leicher. If that’s the safest way, that’s the only way.”
Benedict issued the orders, while Leicher figured the exact point at which they must cut out the drive, and how long the trip would take. The rations would have to be cut down accordingly.
Commander Benedict’s mind whirled around the monstrousness of the whole thing like some dizzy bee around a flower. What if there had been planets around Centauri A? What if they had been inhabited? Had he, all unwittingly, killed entire races of living, intelligent beings?
But, how could he have known? The drive had never been tested before. It couldn’t be tested inside the Solar System—it was too fast. He and his crew had been volunteers, knowing that they might die when the drive went on.
Suddenly, Benedict gasped and slammed his fist down on the desk before him.
Leicher looked up. “What’s the matter, Commander?”
“Suppose,” came the answer, “Just suppose, that we have the same effect on a star when we go into ultradrive as we do when we come out of it?”
Leicher was silent for a moment, stunned by the possibility. There was nothing to say, anyway. They could only wait.…
* * * *
A little more than half a light year from Sol, when the ship reached the point where its occupants could see the light that had left their home sun more than seven months before, they watched it become suddenly, horribly brighter. A hundred thousand times brighter!
SUITE MENTALE (1956)
Overture—Adagio Misterioso
The neurosurgeon peeled the thin surgical gloves from his hands as the nurse blotted the perspiration from his forehead for the last time after the long, grueling hours.
“They’re waiting outside for you, Doctor,” she said quietly.
The neurosurgeon nodded wordlessly. Behind him, three assistants were still finishing up the operation, attending to the little finishing touches that did not require the brilliant hand of the specialist. Such things as suturing up a scalp, and applying bandages.
The nurse took the sterile mask—no longer sterile now—while the doctor washed and dried his hands.
“Where are they?” he asked finally. “Out in the hall, I suppose?”
She nodded. “You’ll probably have to push them out of the way to get out of Surgery.”
* * * *
Her prediction was almost perfect. The group of men in conservative business suits, wearing conservative ties, and holding conservative, soft, felt hats in their hands were standing just outside the door. Dr. Mallon glanced at the five of them, letting his eyes stop on the face of the tallest. “He may live,” the doctor said briefly.
“You don’t sound very optimistic, Dr. Mallon,” said the FBI man.
Mallon shook his head. “Frankly, I’m not. He was shot laterally, just above the right temple, with what looks to me like a .357 magnum pistol slug. It’s in there—” He gestured back toward the room he had just left. “—you can have it, if you want. It passed completely through the brain, lodging on the other side of the head, just inside the skull. What kept him alive, I’ll never know, but I can guarantee that he might as well be dead; it was a rather nasty way to lobotomize a man, but it was effective, I can assure you.”
The Federal agent frowned puzzledly. “Lobotomized? Like those operations they do on psychotics?”
“Similar,” said Mallon. “But no psychotic was ever butchered up like this; and what I had to do to him to save his life didn’t help anything.”
The men looked at each other, then the big one said: “I’m sure you did the best you could, Dr. Mallon.”
The neurosurgeon rubbed the back of his hand