Page:Astounding Science Fiction (1950-01).djvu/14

 "That puts Jupiter right in our backyard. It's 'so close the light gets here in nothing flat."

Arnold gazed up at the planet riding so serenely among the stars. There were Vega and Altair over in the west, with Cygnus flying close behind, and the great square of Pegasus wheeling upward in the north, precisely as he had seen them a thousand times before. Could it be possible that some catastrophe from Outside had warped their little corner of space until the giant Jupiter had been brought to what would once have been an arm's length, so close you might have reached out and seized it between your thumb and forefinger like a cherry? As a boy he had loved to read tales of time travel and flights to other planets, and the feeling that something transcendental was lurking around the corner had never entirely left him. In their seminars they talked of world lines and a space of n dimensions but did any of them really believe it? Now perhaps it was here at last. He shivered in the damp night air. The ocean breeze blowing in through the dome certainly felt real enough.

Mechanically he began helping Stoddard put the telescope to bed for the night, replacing the cap on the objective and swinging the telescope over the polar axis, where he clamped it in declination.

"What do you say we go down in the darkroom for a smoke?" said Stoddard, when everything was shipshape. "I'd like to take a look at those figures of yours myself."

The darkroom in the basement below was a welcome relief from the windy dome. Stoddard threw off his jacket, pulled a stool up to the bench that ran down one side of the room, and began stoking his pipe from a can of tobacco in one of the drawers. Not until this operation was completed to his entire satisfaction, and the bowl glowing brightly, did he turn his attention to Arnold's reduction. Then with exasperating deliberation he started checking off the figures, pausing occasionally between puffs to compare them with those in the Ephemeris. Arnold leaned against the wall watching him nervously.

"Well, I can't seem to find anything wrong," he admitted grudgingly, "but, of course, that doesn't mean it's right, either."

Taking careful aim, he blew a smoke ring at the girl on the calendar over the sink, watching it swirl around her plunging neckline with moody satisfaction. "A dozen times in my life I've got results almost as crazy as this one. Every time I couldn't help saying to myself, ‘Stoddard, maybe you've discovered something at last. Maybe you've stumbled onto something big.' So far I've never made a single scientific discovery.

"Now you take this observation tonight. Sure, it would be exciting to suppose the solar system has shrunk to the size of a dime, but first I want to be absolutely sure there 14