“And so?”

“If it is the basic fabric that is being penetrated, sir, then the presence of matter, dense or not, can have only a secondary influence. The rate of penetration is greater in a vacuum than in dense mass, but not very much greater. The rate of penetration in outer space may be great in Earthly terms but it is only a small fraction of the speed of light.”

“Which means?”

“That the alien fabric is not dissipating as quickly as we think, but is piling up, so to speak, within the Solar system to a much greater concentration than we have been assuming.”

“I see,” said the senator, nodding his head. “And how long then will it be before the space within the Solar system is brought to equilibrium? Less than, 10⁸⁰ years, I imagine.”

“Far less, sir. Less than 10¹⁰ years, I think. Perhaps fifty billion years, give or take a couple of billion.”

“Not much in comparison, but enough, eh? No immediate cause for alarm, eh?”

“But I’m afraid that is immediate cause for alarm, sir. Damage will be done long before equilibrium is reached. Because of the Pumping, the strong nuclear interaction is growing steadily stronger in our Universe at every moment.”

“Enough stronger to measure?”

“Perhaps not, sir.”

“Not even after twenty years of Pumping?”

“Perhaps not, sir.”

“Then why worry?”

“Because, sir, upon the strength of the strong nuclear interaction rests the rate at which hydrogen fuses to helium in the core of the Sun. If the interaction strengthens even unnoticeably, the rate of hydrogen fusion in the Sun will increase markedly. The Sun maintains the balance between radiation and gravitation with great delicacy and to upset that balance in favor of radiation, as we are now doing—”

“Yes?”

“—will cause an enormous explosion. Under our laws of nature, it is impossible for a star as small as the Sun to become a supernova. Under the altered laws, it may not be. I doubt that we would have warning. The Sun would build up to a vast explosion and in eight minutes after that you and I will be dead and the Earth will quickly vaporize into an expanding puff of vapor.”

“And nothing can be done?”

“If it is too late to avoid upsetting the equilibrium, nothing. If it is not yet too late, then we must stop Pumping.”

The senator cleared his throat. “Before I agreed to see you, young man, I inquired as to your background since you were not personally known to me. Among those I queried was Dr. Hallam. You know him, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir.” A corner of Lament’s mouth twitched but his voice held even. “I know him well.”

“He tells me,” said the senator, glancing at a paper on his desk, “that you are a troublemaking idiot of doubtful sanity and he demands that I refuse to see you.”

Lament said in a voice he strove to keep calm. “Are those his words, sir?”

“His exact words.”

“Then why have you agreed to see me, sir?”

“Ordinarily, if I received something like this from Hallam, I wouldn’t have seen you. My time is valuable and heaven knows I see more troublemaking idiots of doubtful sanity than bears thinking of, even among those who come to me with the highest recommendations. In this one case, though, I didn’t like Hallam’s ‘demand.’ You don’t make demands of a senator and Hallam had better learn that.”

“Then you will help me, sir?”

“Help you do what?”

“Why—arrange to have the Pumping halted.”

“That? Not at all. Quite impossible.”

“Why not?” demanded Lament. “You are the head of the Committee on Technology and the Environment and it is precisely your task to stop the Pumping, or any technological procedure that threatens irreversible harm to the environment. There can be no greater, no more irreversible harm than threatened by Pumping.”

“Certainly. Certainly. If you are right. But it seems that what your story amounts to is that your assumptions are different from the accepted ones. Who’s to say which set of assumptions is right?”

“Sir, the structure I have built explains several things that are left doubtful in the accepted view.”

“Well, then, your colleagues ought to accept your modification and in that case you would scarcely have to come to me, I imagine.”

“Sir, my colleagues will not believe. Their self-interest stands in the way.”

“As your self-interest stands in the way of your believing you might be wrong.... Young man, my powers, on paper, are enormous, but I can only succeed when the public is willing to let me. Let me give you a lesson in practical politics.”

He looked at his wristwatch, leaned back and smiled. His offer was not characteristic of him, but an editorial in the Terrestrial Post that morning had referred to him as “a consummate politician, the most skilled in the International Congress” and the glow that that had roused within him still lingered.

“It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not encourage cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines.

“Now then, young man, don’t ask me to stop the Pumping. The economy and comfort of the entire planet depend on it. Tell me, instead, how to keep the Pumping from exploding the Sun.”

Lamont said, “There is no way, Senator. We are dealing with something here that is so basic, we can’t play with it. We must stop it.”

“Ah, and you can suggest only that we go back to matters as they were before Pumping.”

“We must.”

“In that case, you will need hard and fast proof that you are right.”

“The best proof,” said Lament, stiffly, “is to have the Sun explode. I suppose you don’t want me to go that far.”

“Not necessary, perhaps. Why can’t you get Hallam to back you up?”

“Because he is a small man who finds himself the Father of the Electron Pump. How can he admit his child will destroy the Earth?”

“I see what you mean, but he is still the Father of the Electron Pump to the whole world, and only his word would carry sufficient weight in this respect.”

Lament shook his head. “He would never give in. He would rather see the Sun explode.”

The senator said, “Then force his hand. You have a theory but a theory by itself is meaningless. Surely there must be some way of checking it. The rate of radioactive breakdown of, say, uranium depends on the interactions within the nucleus. Has that rate been changing in a fashion predicted by your theory but not the standard one?”

Again, Lament shook his head. “Ordinary radioactivity depends on the weak nuclear interaction, and unfortunately, experiments of that sort will yield only borderline evidence. By the time it showed sufficiently to be unmistakable, it would be too late.”

“What else, then?”

“There are pion interactions of a specific sort that might yield unmistakable data now. Better still there are quark-quark combinations that have produced puzzling results recently that I am sure I can explain—”

“Well, there you are.”

“Yes, but in order to obtain that data. I must make use of a large proton synchrotron on the Moon, sir, and no time on that will be available for years—I’ve checked—unless someone pulls the strings.”

“Meaning me?”

“Meaning you, Senator.”

“Not as long as Dr. Hallam says this about you, son.” And Senator Burt’s gnarled finger tapped the piece of paper in front of him. “I can’t get out on that limb.”