“Yes. Yes indeed.”
Libby smiled politely. “We might as well quit wasting mass on the main drive.” He sounded the warner, then cut the drive. “Now we can return to normal conditions.” He started to disconnect his gadget.
Lazarus said hastily, “Hold it, Andy! We aren’t even outside the orbit of Mercury yet. Why put on the brakes?”
‘Why, this won’t stop us. We have acquired velocity; we will keep it.”
Lazarus pulled at his cheek and stared. “Ordinarily I would agree with you. First Law of Motion. But with this pseudospeed I’m not so sure. We got it for nothing and we haven’t paid for it-in energy, I mean. You seem to have declared a holiday with respect to inertia; when the holiday is over, won’t all that free speed go back where it came from?”
“I don’t think so,” Libby answered. “Our velocity isn’t ‘pseudo’ anything; it’s as real as velocity can be. You are attempting to apply verbal anthropomorphic logic to a field in which it is not pertinent. You would not expect us to be transported instantaneously back to the lower gravitational potential from which we started, would you?”
“Back to where you hooked in your space drive? No, we’ve moved.”
“And we’ll keep on moving. Our newly acquired gravitational potential energy of greater height above the Sun is no more real than our present kinetic energy of velocity. They both exist.”
Lazarus looked baffled. The expression did not suit him. ‘~I guess you’ve got me, Andy. No matter how I slice it, we seemed to have picked up energy from somewhere. But where? When I went to school, they taught me to honor the Flag, vote the straight party ticket, and believe in the law of conservation of energy. Seems like you’ve violated it. How about it?”
“Don’t worry about it,” suggested Libby. “The so-called law of conservation of energy was merely a working hypothesis, unproved and unprovable, used to describe gross phenomena. Its terms apply only to the older, dynamic concept of the world. In a plenum conceived as a static grid of relationships, a ‘violation’ of that ‘law’ is nothing more startling than a discontinuous function, to be noted and described. That’s what I did. I saw a discontinuity in the mathematical model of the aspect of mass-energy called inertia. I applied it. The mathematical model turned out to be similar to the real world. That was the only hazard, really-one never knows that a mathematical model is similar to the real world until you try it.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure, you can’t tell the taste till you bite it-but, Andy, I still don’t see what caused it!” He turned toward Ford. “Do you, Slayton?”
Ford shook his head. “No. I would like to know … but I doubt if I could understand it.”
“You and me both. Well, Andy?”
Now Libby looked baffled. ‘But, Lazarus, causality has nothing to do with the real plenum. A fact simply is. Causality is merely an oldfashioned-postulate of a pre-scientific philosophy.”
“I guess,” Lazarus said slowly, “I’m oldfashioned.”
Libby said nothing. He disconnected his apparatus.
The disc of black continued to shrink. When it had shrunk to about one sixth its greatest diameter, it changed suddenly from black to shining white, as the ship’s distance from the Sun again was great enough to permit the receptors to manage the load.
Lazarus tried to work out in his head the kinetic energy of the ship-one half the square of the velocity of light (minus a pinch, he corrected) times the mighty tonnage of -the New Frontiers. The answer did not comfort him, whether he called it ergs or apples.
Chapter 8
“FIRST THINGS FIRST,” interrupted Barstow. “I’m as fascinated by the amazing scientific aspects of our present situation as any of you, but we’ve got work to do. We’ve got to plan a pattern for daily living at once. So let’s table mathematical physics and talk about organization.”
He was not speaking to the trustees but to his own personal lieutenants, the key people in helping him put over the complex maneuvers which had made their escape possible-Ralph Schultz, Eve Barstow, Mary Sperling, Justin Foote, Clive Johnson, about a dozen others.
Lazarus and Libby were there. Lazarus had left Slayton Ford to guard the control room, with orders to turn away all visitors and, above all, not to let anyone touch the controls. It was a make-work job, it being Lazarus’ notion of temporary occupational therapy. He bad sensed in Ford a mental condition that he did not like. Ford seemed to have withdrawn into himself. He answered when spoken to, but that was all. It worried Lazarus.
“We need an executive,” Barstow went on, “someone who, for the time being will have very broad powers to give orders and have them carried out. He’ll have to make decisions, organize us, assign duties and responsibilities, get the internal economy of the ship working. It’s a big job and I would like to have our brethren hold an election and do it democratically. That’ll have to wait; somebody has to give orders now. We’re wasting food and the ship is-well, I wish you could have seen the ***’fre$ier*** I tried to use today.”
“Zaccur …
“Yes, Eve?”
“It seems to me that the thing to do is to put it up to the trustees. We haven’t any authority; we were just an emergency group for something that is finished now.”
“Ahrruniph-” It was Justin Foote, in tones as dry and formal as his face. “I differ somewhat from our sister. The trustees are not conversant with the full background; it would take time we can ill afford to put them into the picture, as it were, before they would be able to judge the matter. Furthermore, being one of the trustees myself, I am able to say without bias that the trustees, as an organized group, can have no jurisdiction because legally they no longer exist.”
Lazarus looked interested. “How do you figure that, Justin?”
“Thusly: the board of trustees were the custodians of a foundation which existed as a part of and in relation to a society. The trustees were never a government; their sole duties had to do with relations between the Families and the rest of that society. With the ending of relationship between the Families and terrestrial society, the board of trustees, ipso facto, ceases to exist. it is one with history. Now we in this ship are not yet a society, we are an anarchistic group. This present assemblage has as much-or as little-authority to initiate a society as has any part group.
Latarus cheered and clapped. “Justin,” he applauded, “that is the neatest piece of verbal juggling I’ve heard in a century. Let’s get together sometime and have a go at solipsism.”
Justin Foote looked pained. “Obviously-” he began.
“Nope! Not another word! You’ve convinced me, don’t spoil it. If that’s how it is, let’s get busy and pick a bull moose. How about you, Zack? You look like the logical candidate.”
Barstow shook his head. “I know my limitations. I’m an engineer, not a political executive; the Families were just a hobby with me. We need an expert in social administration.”
When Barstow had convinced them that he meant it, other names were proposed and their qualifications debated at length. In a group as large as the Families there were many who had specialized in political science, many who had served in public office with credit.
Lazarus listened; he knew four of the candidates. At last he got Eve Barstow aside and whispered with her. She looked startled, then thoughtful, finally nodded.
She asked for the floor. “I have a candidate to propose,” she began in her always gentle tones, “who might not ordinarily occur to you, but who is incomparably better fitted, by temperament, training, and experience, to do this job than is anyone as yet proposed. For civil administrator of the ship I nominate Slayton Ford.”