Free Destroyer of Worlds by E. C. Tubb Page B

of the central mass, perhaps, but Maddox didn’t think so. Manton had no alternative answer.
    ‘It could have been trapped sometime in the past. Given enough time other objects beside ourselves must have entered this pocket universe. That could have been a lump of stellar debris at one time, a small planetoid or a large meteor.’
    ‘Trapped,’ said Maddox. ‘How? Why? If it entered, then why didn’t it leave?’
    ‘There could be many reasons,’ said Manton, precisely. ‘It could have had a low relative velocity. It could have bisected this space very near the central mass and have been caught by its gravitational attraction. Or —’
    Maddox snapped, ‘Saha! Have the Computer check on those possibilities.’
    ‘Carl?’ Manton frowned. ‘Is something on your mind?’
    ‘Never take the obvious for granted, Eric. You were one of the first to teach me that. Just because an answer appears to be the logical solution doesn’t mean that it is correct. Saha?’
    ‘The possibilities mentioned by Professor Manton are mutually conflicting.’ Nelson Saha cleared his throat as he studied the display. ‘Assuming the relative masses to be the same as at present observed the difference in relative velocity would have had to be small for the intruder to be trapped into a stable orbit. But if it had been so low then it would have been drawn by gravitational attraction into the main body.’
    ‘In other words,’ said Maddox, grimly, ‘If the intruder was moving slow enough to be trapped then it wouldn’t have been moving fast enough to avoid destruction. So much for logical answers, Eric. Want to try again?’
    Manton said, slowly, ‘There’s another answer, but we don’t know enough yet about local conditions to be sure if it is correct. I hope that it isn’t.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘This could be a closed-system, Carl. A miniature universe with his own laws and own energy-levels which have little relation to those with which we are familiar. In that case —’ He paused then said, bleakly, ‘It could be that everything entering this space is trapped. We could go on and on but all we’d be doing is to follow the interior of this space around and around. If that is the case, then we are caught — trapped for eternity!’
    *
    Ted Bain adjusted the microscope, stared through the eyepiece, made a further adjustment and, after another examination, leaned back from the instrument. He was frowning, twin lines graven deep between his eyes, the corners of his mouth downturned a little as if he had looked at something unpleasant.
    ‘Doctor?’ Nurse Khan halted at his side. She was trim and neat in her uniform, olive skin enhanced by the stark whiteness of her sleeve. ‘You look perturbed, is something wrong?’
    ‘I’m not sure.’
    ‘Not to be sure is to be aware of life,’ she smiled. ‘Only the dead can be certain of the absence of change.’
    ‘Which is an apparent contradiction as you know. If dead, there can be no certainty.’
    ‘True,’ admitted the girl. ‘And with only one hand how can there be clapping?’
    Bain shook his head. At times he found the girl impossible. Young, attractive, Marla Khan seemed to take a delight in firing abstruse quotations at him, many of which he was fairly certain she invented on the spot, but she was, he had to admit, a superb master of her trade and for that he could tolerate much.
    And he liked her. Liked her, perhaps, a little too much. ‘Marla —’
    ‘Ted?’ He had broken the coldly formal manner of professional address and she reminded him of it with the use of his given name and a smile. ‘Were you going to invite me to join you after duty? I’ve a recording of Gus Easton’s Lunar Approach, remember it? The one with the simulated rocket blast and the sub-audible voices? If you want, you could come to my quarters and listen to it.’
    ‘Thank you, Marla, but no.’
    ‘Don’t you like good music?’
    ‘Good music, yes.’ He softened his rejection. ‘You know