by James Blish
"Agreed," Wagoner said, "with reservations. You're right about Mars, but the pyramids were built during the springtime of the Egyptian culture. And doing a thing for the sake of "doing it' is not a definition of ritual; it's a definition of science."
"All right. That doesn't greatly alter my argument. Maybe you'll also agree that the essence of a vital culture is its ability to defend itself. The West has beaten the Soviets for half a century now but as far as I can see, the Bridge is the West's 'Diagram of Power,' its pyramids, or what have you. It shows that we're mighty, but mighty in a non-survival sort of way. All the money and the resources that went into the Bridge are going to be badly needed, and won't be there, when the next Soviet attack comes."
"Correction: it has already come," Wagoner said. "And it has already won. The USSR played the greatest of all von Neumann games far better than we did, because they didn't assume as we did that each side would always choose the best strategy; they played also to wear down the players. In fifty years of unrelenting pressure, they succeeded in converting the West into a system so like the Soviets' as to make direct military action unnecessary; we Sovietized ourselves, and our moves are now exactly predictable.
"So in part I agree with you. What we needed was to sink the energy and the money into the game into social research, since the menace was social. Instead, typically, we put it into a physical research project of unprecedented size. Which was, of course, just what the theory of games said we would do. For a man who's been cut off from Earth for years, Helmuth, you seem to know more about what's going on down there than most of the general populace does."
"Nothing promotes an interest in Earth like being off it," Helmuth said. "And there's plenty of time to read out here." Either the drink was stronger than he had expected which was reasonable, considering that he had been off the stuff for some time now or the senator's calm concurrence in the collapse of Helmuth's entire world had given him another shove toward the abyss; his head was spinning.
Wagoner saw it. He leaned forward suddenly, catching Helmuth flatfooted. "However," he said, "it's' difficult for me to agree that the Bridge serves, or ever did serve, a ritual purpose. The Bridge served several huge practical purposes which are now fulfilled. As a matter of fact, the Bridge, as such, is now a defunct project."
"Defunct?" Helmuth said faintly.
"Quite. Of course, we'll continue to operate it for a while. You can't stop a process of that size on a dime. Besides, one of the reasons why we built the Bridge was because the USSR expected us to; the game said that we should launch another Manhattan District or Project Lincoln at this point, and we hated to disappoint them. One thing we are not going to do this time, however, is to tell them the problem that the project was supposed to solve let alone that it can be solved, and has been.
"So we'll keep the Bridge going, physically and publicly. That'll be just as well, too, for people like Dillon who are emotionally tied up in it, above and beyond their conditioning to it. You're the only person in authority in the whole station who's already lost enough interest in the bridge to make it safe for me to tell you that it's being abandoned."
"But why?"
"Because," Wagoner went on quietly, "the Bridge has now given us confirmation of a theory of stupendous importance so important, in my opinion, that the imminent fall of the West seems like a puny event in comparison. A confirmation, incidentally, which contains in it the seeds of ultimate destruction for the Soviets, whatever they may win for themselves in the next hundred years or so."
"I suppose," Helmuth said, puzzled, "that you mean antigravity?"
For the first time, it was Wagoner's turn to be taken aback. "Man," he said at last, "do you know everything I want to tell you? I hope not, or my conclusions will be mighty unwelcome to both of us. Do you also know what an anti-agathic is?"
"No," Helmuth said. "I don't even recognize the root of the word."
"Well, that's a relief. But surely Charity didn't tell you we had antigravity. I strictly enjoined him not to mention it."
"No. The subject's been on my mind," Helmuth said. "But I certainly don't see why it should be so worldshaking, any more than I see how the Bridge helped to bring it about. I thought it would be developed independently, for the further exploitation of the Bridge. In other words, to put men down there, and short-circuit this remote control operation we have on Jupiter V. And I thought it would step up Bridge operation, not discontinue it."
"Not at all. Nobody in his right mind would want to put men on Jupiter, and besides, gravity isn't the main problem down there. Even eight gravities is perfectly tolerable for short periods of time and anyhow a man in a pressure .suit couldn't get five hundred miles down through that atmosphere before he'd be as buoyed up and weightless as a fish and even more thoroughly at the mercy of the currents."
"And you can't screen out the pressure?"
"We can," Wagoner said, "but only at ruinous cost. Besides, there'd be no point in trying. The Bridge is finished. It's given us information in thousands of different categories, much of it very valuable indeed. But the one job that only the Bridge could do was that of confirming, or throwing out, the Blackett-Dirac equations."
"Which are?"
"They show a relationship between magnetism and the spinning of a massive body that much is the Dirac part of it. The Blackett Equation seemed to show that the same formula also applied to gravity; it says G equals (2CP/BU2), where C is the velocity of light, P is magnetic moment, and U is angular momentum. B is an uncertainty correction, a constant which amounts to 0.25,.
"If the figures we collected on the magnetic field strength of Jupiter forced us to retire the equations, then none of the rest of the information we've gotten from the Bridge would have been worth the money we spent to get it. On the other hand, Jupiter was the only body in the solar system available, to us which was big enough in all relevant respects to make it possible for us to test those equations at all. They involve quantities of infinitesimal orders of magnitudes.
"And the figures showed that Dirac was right. They also show that Blackett was right. Both magnetism and gravity are phenomena of rotation.
"I won't bother to trace the succeeding steps, because I think you can work them out for yourself. It's enough to say that there's a drive generator on board this ship which is the complete and final justification of all the hell you people on the Bridge have been put through. The gadget has a long technical name, The Dillon-Wagoner gravitron polarity generator, a name which I loathe for obvious reasons but the technies who tend it have already nicknamed it the spindizzy, because of what it does to the magnetic moment of any atom, any atom within its field.
"While it's in operation, it absolutely refuses to notice any atom outside its own influence. Furthermore, it will notice no other strain 'or influence which holds good beyond the borders of that field. It's so snooty that it has to be stopped down to almost nothing when it's brought close to a planet, or it won't let you land. But in deep space well, it's impervious to meteors and such trash, of course; it's impervious to gravity; and it hasn't the faintest interest in any legislation about top speed limits. It moves in its own continuum, not in the general frame."
"You're kidding." Helmuth said.
"Am I, now? This ship came to Ganymede directly from Earth. It did it in a little under two hours, counting maneuvering time. That means that most of the way we made about 55,000 miles per second with the spindizzy drawing less than five watts of power out of three ordinary No. 6 dry cells."
Helmuth took a defiant pull at his drink. "This thing really has no top speed at all?" he said. "How can you be sure of that?"
"Well, we can't," Wagoner admitted. After all, one of the unfortunate things about general mathematical formulae is that they don't contain cutoff points to warn you of areas where they don't apply. Even quantum mechanics is somewhat subject to that criticism. However, we expect to know pretty soon just how fast the spindizzy can drive an object. We expect you to tell us."
"I?"
"Yes, you, and Colonel Russell, and Miss Abbott too, I hope." Helmuth looked at the other two; both of them looked at least as stunned as he felt. He could not imagine why. "The coming debacle on Earth makes it absolutely imperative for us the West to get interstellar expeditions started at once. Richardson Observatory, on the Moon, has two likely looking systems mapped already one at Wolf 359, the other at 61 Cygni and there are sure to be others, hundreds of others, where Earthlike planets are highly probable.
"What we're doing, in a nutshell, is evacuating the West not physically, of course, but in essence, in idea. We want to scatter adventurous people, people with a thoroughly indoctrinated love of being free, all over this part of the galaxy, if it can be done.
"Once they're out there, they'll be free to flourish, with no interference from Earth. The Soviets haven't the spindizzy yet, and even after they get it, they won't dare allow it to be used. It's too good and too final an escape route for disaffected comrades.
"What we want you to do, Helmuth . . . now I'm getting to the point, you see . .. is to direct this exodus, with Colonel Russell's help. You've the intelligence and the cast of mind for it. Your analysis of the situation on Earth confirms that, if any more confirmation were needed. And there's no future for you on Earth now."
"You'll have to excuse me for a while," Helmuth said firmly. "I'm in no condition to be reasonable now; it's been more than I could digest in a few moments. And the decision doesn't entirely 'rest with me, either. If I could give you an answer in*. . . let me see . . . about three hours. Will that be soon enough?"
"That'll be fine," the senator said.
For a moment after the door closed behind Helmuth there was silence in the senator's cabin. At last Paige said:
"So it was long life for spacemen you were after, all the time. Long life, by God, for me, and for the likes of me."
Wagoner nodded. "This was the one part of this affair that I couldn't explain' to you back in Hal Gunn's office," he said. "Until you had ridden in this ship, and understood as a spaceman just what kind of a thing we have in it, you wouldn't have believed me; Helmuth does, you see, because he already has the background. In the same way, I didn't go into the question of the anti-agathic with Helmuth, because that's something he's going to have to experience; you two have the background to understand that part of it through explanation alone.
"Now you see why I didn't give a whistle about your spy, Paige. The Soviets can have the Earth. As a matter of fact they will take it before very long, whether we give into them or not. But we are going to scatter the West throughout the stars, scatter it with immortal people carrying immortal ideas. People like you, and Miss Abbott."
Paige looked back to Anne. She was aloofly regarding the empty space just above Wagoner's head, as though still looking at the bewhiskered picture of the Pfitzner
founder which hung in Gunn's office. There was something in her face, however, that Paige could read, He smothered a grin and said: "Why me?"
"Because you're just what we need for the job. I don't mind telling you that your blundering into the Pfitzner project in the first place was an act of Providence from my point of view. When Anne first called your qualifications to my attention, I was almost prepared to believe that they'd been faked. You're going to be liasonman between the Pfitzner side of the project and the Bridge side. We've got the total output to date of both ascomycin and the new anti-agathic salted away in the cargo hold, and Anne's already shown you how to take the stuff and how to administer it to others. After that just as soon as you and Helmuth can work out the details the stars are yours."
"Anne," Paige said. She turned her head slowly toward him. "Are you with this thing?"
"I'm here," she said. "And I'd had a few inklings of what was up before. You were the one who had to be brought in, not I."
Paige thought about it a moment more. Then something both very new and very old occurred to him.
"Senator," he said, "you've gone to an immense amount of trouble to make this whole thing possible but I don't think you plan to go with ns."
"No, Paige, I don't. For one thing, MacHinery and his crew will regard the whole project as treasonous. If it's to be carried out nevertheless, someone has to stay behind and be the goat and after all, the idea was mine, so I'm the logical candidate." He fell silent for a moment Then he added ruminatively: "The government boys have nobody but themselves to thank for this. The whole project would never have been possible so long as the West had a government of laws and not of men, and stuck to it. It was a long while ago that some people, MacHinery's grandfather among them set themselves up to be their own judges of whether' or not a law ought to be obeyed. They had precedents. And now here we are, on the brink of the most enormous breach of our social contract the West has ever had to suffer and the West can't stop it." He smiled suddenly. "I'll have good use for that argument in the court."
Anne was on her feet, her eyes suddenly wet, her lower lip just barely trembling. Evidently, over whatever time she had known Wagoner and had known what he had planned, it had never occurred to her that the young-old senator might stay behind.
"That's no good!" she said in a low voice. "They won't listen, and you know' it. They might easily hang you for it. If they find you guilty of treason, they'll seal you up in the pile waste dump that's the current penalty, isn't it? You cant go back!"
"It's a phony terror. Pile wastes are quick chemical poisons; you don't last long enough to notice that they're also hot," Wagoner said. "And what difference does it make, anyhow? Nothing and nobody can harm me now. The job is done."
Anne put her hands to her face.
"Besides, Anne," Wagoner said, with gentle insistence, "the stars are for young people eternally young people. An eternal oldster would be an anachronism."
"Why did you do it, then?" Paige said. His own voice was none too steady.
"Why?" Wagoner said. "You know the answer to that, Paige. You've known it all your life. I could see it in your face, as soon as I told Helmuth that we were going out to the stars. Supposing you tell me what it is."
Anne swung her blurred eyes on Paige. He thought he knew what she expected to hear him say; they had talked about it often enough, and it was what he once would have said himself. But now another force seemed to him to be the stronger: a special thing, bearing the name of no established dogma, but nevertheless and unmistakably the force to which he had borne allegiance all his life. He in turn could see it in' Wagoner's face now, and he knew he had seen it before in Anne's.
"It's the thing that lures monkeys into cages," he said slowly. "And lures cats into open drawers and up telephone poles. It's driven men to conquer death, and put the stars into our hands. I suppose that I'd call it Curiosity."
Wagoner looked startled. "Is that really what you want to call it?' he said. "Somehow it seems insufficient; I should have given it another name. Perhaps you'll amend it later, somewhere, some day out by Aldebaran."
He stood up and looked at the two for a moment in silence. Then he smiled.
"And now," he said gently, "nunc dimittis... suffer thy servant to depart in peace."
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Jupiter V
The social and economic rewards for such scientific activities do not primarily accrue to the scientist or to the intellectual. Still, that has perhaps been his own moral speciation, a choice of one properly humane activity: to have knowledge of things, not to have things. If he loves and has knowledge, all is well.
WESTON Le BAUM
"AND SO, that's the story," Helmuth said.
Eva remained silent in her chair for a long time.
"One thing I don't understand," she said at last. "Why did you come to me? I'd have thought that you'd find the whole thing terrifying."
"Oh, it's terrifying, all right," Helmuth said, with quiet exultation. "But terror and fright are two different things as I've just discovered. We were both wrong, Evita. I was wrong in thinking that the Bridge was a dead
end. You were wrong in thinking of it as an end in itself."
"I don't understand you."
"I didn't understand myself. My fears of working in person on the Bridge were irrational; they came from dreams. That should have tipped me off right away. There was really never' any chance of anyone's working in person on Jupiter; but I wanted to. It was a death wish, and it came directly out of the goddamned conditioning. I knew, we all knew, that the Bridge couldn't stand forever, but we were conditioned to believe that it had to. Nothing else could justify the awful ordeal of keeping it going even one day. The result: the classical dilemma that leads to madness. It affected you,' too, and your response was just as insane as mine: you wanted to have a child here.
"Now all that's changed. The work the Bridge was doing was worth while after all. I was wrong in calling it a bridge to nowhere. And Eva, you no more saw where it was going than I did, or you'd never have made it the be all and end all of your existence.
"Now, there's a place to go to. In fact, there are places hundreds of places. They'll be Earthlike places. Since the Soviets are about to win the Earth, those places will be more Earthlike than Earth itself, at least for the next century or so!"
She said: "Why are you telling me this? Just to make peace between us?"
"I'm going to take on this job, Evita ... if you'll go along."
She turned swiftly, rising out of the chair with a marvelous fluidity of motion. At the same instant, all the alarm bells in the station went off at once, filling every metal cranny with a jangle of pure horror.
"Posts!" the loudspeaker above Eva's bed roared, in a distorted, gigantic caricature of Charity Dillon's voice. "Peak storm overload! The STD is now passing the Spot. Wind velocity has already topped all previous records, and part 0/the land mass has begun to settle. This is an At overload emergency."
Behind Charity's bellow, they could hear what he was hearing, the winds of Jupiter, a spectrum of continuous, insane shrieking. The Bridge was responding with monstrous groans of agony. There was another sound, too, an almost musical cacophony of sharp, percussive tones, such as a dinosaur might make pushing its way through a forest of huge steel tuning forks. Helmuth had never heard the sound. before, but he knew what it was.
