There’s something you seem to have forgotten,” he said, experiencing a pang of mingled triumph and joy as the new thought was born in his mind. “You’re doing this to keep Mary and me apart, but when it’s all over I’ll be a ghost – just as she is – and then we’ll be together. What do you think of that?”
“I think you must be as moronic as you look,” Haggle said contemptuously. “Have you learned nothing in the past hour? Why do you think I went to all the trouble of bringing you up to the roof? Answer me that.”
“I…’ Barney struggled unsuccessfully against a wave of mental confusion. “Can you give me a clue?”
“What name did I give my new particle?”
“Ah… the maryon.”
“And what is the name of the young lady down in my laboratory?”
“Mary, of course, but I don’t see…’ Barney lapsed into silence, teetering on the edge of a philosophical chasm which abruptly yawned before him.
“I named the whole class of particle after her, you oaf.” Haggle’s eyes bulged with excitement as he glared down at his victim. “Human ghosts and my large-volume particles are one and the same thing! It may be that all the matter in the universe is made up of greatly condensed maryons – that concept could reconcile the religious and scientific views of creation, but it’s outside the scope of my researches. It was enough for me to prove that a ghost is a particle with the properties we discussed earlier, because it explains so much about psychic phenomena.
“Maryons can pass through thin partitions, but not thick walls – that’s why ghosts are most often found in very old buildings, although if the human body has chains or ropes around it at the time of death they can hold the ghost in place, too. A maryon has very little rest mass, but if it gets speeded up or agitated for some reason, perhaps because of anguish, its mass increases and it is less able to penetrate walls. That explains why ghosts are usually unhappy, and the increase in mass also accounts for most poltergeist phenomena. A massive high-speed ghost could easily knock over a vase.”
Haggle squatted down beside Barney, his face twitching in scientific fervour. “Now do you see why I brought you up to the roof to die? You yourself worked out that the pressure of the solar wind would be enough to sweep a ghost, or maryon, away into interstellar space. That’s why the world isn’t crowded with ghosts; that’s why vampires are so careful to avoid sunlight. And that’s why, young Seacombe, you won’t be able to try coming between Mary and me again.
“As soon as you die you’ll be on a one-way excursion out of the solar system. Have a nice trip!”
Haggle rounded off his discourse by giving vent to a maniacal giggle. Barney, all other recourse denied to him, tried to spit in the little man’s gloating face and discovered that the paralysis had now spread to his lips and tongue. He was unable even to swear. He had time for one searing stab of regret over having failed Mary, for having doomed her to an eternity closeted in an underground prison with a monster like Haggle…
Then he died.
On his way up through the stratosphere and the various radiation belts surrounding the Earth, Barney noticed quite a large number of other ghosts of many shapes and sizes, all being carried in the same direction by the inexorable pressure of the solar wind. The sun, mother of all life, was heartlessly driving away its young. Events had been proceeding at a bewildering pace, but his training in the science disciplines had not quite deserted Barney and he was quick to notice that he was travelling much slower than the rest of the ghostly multitude. They were whipping past him at accelerations he guessed would soon take them close to the speed of light, while he was progressing at a fairly moderate pace which gave him plenty of time to look around.
I’m a massive ghost, he deduced. And if Haggle is right, it’s because of the heartache I feel over…
At that moment the cratered sphere of the moon swung into his field of vision and, aided by his spectral senses, Barney saw the satellite’s conical shadow extending and tapering out into space behind it. He was approaching the moon’s orbit with increasing speed, and until that moment had no idea he was capable of some independent motion, but a kind of instinct took over, he darted sideways on a vectoring course, and before he knew it had come to rest in the calm and pressure-free volume of space which was the shadow of the moon.
With the brilliant disk of the sun screened from his view, Barney found he could see with great clarity, and the first thing he noticed was that his immediate vicinity was quite thickly populated with other ghosts. He rotated himself into the attitude they had all adopted – feet towards the moon – and examined his neighbours with some interest. There were myriads of spirits in a variety of costumes which spanned ages and cultures. Many of them were congregated in large groups, but some were flitting about in restless isolation. Very much aware that he had been extremely lucky to escape being blown away into the reaches of interstellar space, Barney paused for a moment to collect his thoughts and then approached a chubby, benign-looking man – clad in Victorian tails, a stand-up collar and top hat – who was regarding him from the fringes of a nearby group.
“Allow me to welcome you to the afterlife and to congratulate you on your quick thinking,” the portly gentleman said. “My name is Joshua Simms.”
“Quick thinking?” Barney began to feel he had lost the power of thought altogether. “I’m sorry, but I…”
Simms smiled approvingly. “Oh, yes – you were very quick. Most fledgling souls get swept away into infinity before they know what is happening to them, but you were perspicacious enough to realize that the shadow of the moon is a sanctuary, and you got into it just in time. Physicist, are you?”
“Yes. How did you guess?”
“We get two main classes of people in here, apart from those who are lucky enough to be carried in by accident,” Simms said, waving expansively at the surrounding ghost population. “Astronomers and physicists – people whose professional training enables them to appreciate the advantages of this select volume of space. We think of ourselves as a kind of élite, although in recent years there has been an unfortunate influx of spirits whose only qualification is that when they were corporate they read that fantastic rubbish scribbled by Bertie Wells and his followers.” Simms lowered his voice to a confidential level. “Naturally, nobody bothers with them.”
“Naturally.” Barney struggled to assimilate the flow of new data. “So it’s all true – a ghost is akin to a large-volume particle.”
“Of course! Though we’re not elementary particles, needless to say. We have highly complex structures.”
“But if space is full of ghosts why haven’t astronomers detected them?”
“They have, but they don’t realize it,” Simms said scornfully. The very low mass of a ghost leads to a very large shift in any radiation which strikes its surface and is scattered by it. All short wave radiation, such as light and infrared, is scattered at radio frequencies – so ghosts are a major source of cosmic radio noise.”
“This is all too much for me,” Barney said feebly as radical new ideas about the nature of reality swarmed in his mind.
Simms nodded sympathetically. “It’s obvious that you have been illused by Fate, my friend. You are very massive for a ghost, which means you are burdened with regrets. Did you, by any chance, commit suicide?”