The Star Virus

That development had saddened him, but he had permitted it will-lessly, with the kind of lassitude that sometimes overcame him when faced with conflicting interests. Clave rarely visited them anyhow; their activities bored him and he found the atmosphere depressing and uninviting. For a time Redace had stayed to participate in the investigation program drawn up by Sinnt; but the two men did not get on well together. Redace was unimpressed by Sinnt's uncompromising fanaticism, and he failed to hide his repugnance for his treatment of his son, or his distaste for the rambling, dark house. In return, Sinnt resented his criticisms. More and more he absented himself and took to roaming Kell, amusing himself in the scientific clubs that titillated his sense of the absurd. "My dear chap," he told Rodrone, "some of them are absolutely, delightfully whacky."

Then had come the day when, on his return to the house, Sinnt had refused to admit him. Unperturbed, Redace had eventually gone away, neither asking for nor receiving support from Rodrone.

Though Rodrone knew he could have thrown his weight in Redace's favor, he was by now steeped in the atmosphere of Sinnt's outlook. His desertion of a friend had been touched with the sense of wild abandonment that came from total immersion in an unfamiliar situation. There was something inhuman about Sinnt that both attracted and repelled him.

At the same time he felt disturbed by Redace's own attitude. It was unnerving that Redace, with his enviable brilliance of mind, should abandon his interest in the lens so easily where it conflicted with personal values, while he himself, with his fumbling intellect, should be the one to pursue his ambition at any cost. These tormenting doubts had filled his stay in the comfortless house with tension.

Nevertheless Sinnt's program had produced results. They now knew more about the lens than the freebooters could ever have hoped to learn by themselves. Sinnt had arrived at a position where he could form definite theories regarding its nature.

There was a sound behind Rodrone. Foyle, Sinnt's son, stood there.

"Sir," the boy said respectfully, "my father is in his study. He would like to talk to you, if you are ready."

Rodrone nodded and rose, trying not to notice that Foyle's eyes were steadfastly closed. He often walked around like that. Apparently the camera gave sharper vision, and in addition the images from his organic eyes interfered with its full effectiveness. Rodrone wondered if his father would go so far as to remove the real eyes altogether.

In the study, Sinnt greeted him heartily. He was seated at his huge table, which was scattered with piles of books, manuscripts and other papers. As elsewhere in the house there was visible lighting for Rodrone's benefit: dim but adequate.

"Well, old fellow," Sinnt began with his usual directness, "I think the time has come to recapitulate our finds and, er, talk about the future."

He tilted back his head and his camera lenses died as he withdrew into himself to gather his thoughts. "Item: we know that the seeding of light-emitting atoms towards the center of the lens corresponds to the formation of Thiswhirl, our galaxy, at a date some trillion years in the past. However, the dating may not be significant: we have detected movement of the atoms, of such a speed and nature that this 'galactic orrery,' if we may call it that, will have caught up with us and be up to date in something like a hundred years from now. From that we may infer that the lens is not a representation static in time, but that it is meant to cover a whole span of galactic history. Perhaps, given enough centuries, it repeats the birth and death cycle of the galaxy endlessly.

"Item: it has been known for centuries that the scale of electromagnetic radiation—radio waves, X-rays, light waves, gamma rays and so—is only the heaviest and coarsest type of radiation emitted on the atomic level. Below that is a subtler radiation, the so-called Fermann range. These radiations are concerned with 'keying in' each individual atom into the matrix of four-dimensional space, a matter for which electromagnetic radiation is too coarse and without which the atom would vanish from existence. I can say with some pride that I am the first human being to see directly by the light of Fermann radiation." He tapped his shoulder camera meaningfully. "However, our investigation has yielded an unprecedented result: there is present in the lens a third, subsidiary range of an even more subtle order. This radiation is responsible for the projection of the picture dramas in the outer parts of the lens.

"Item: the rim of the lens is lined with an extremely powerful force-field of unknown nature, which in some way acts as a screen for the picture dramas. These dramas are derived from the 'dope' atoms themselves, again in a manner we have not been able to deduce."