Turning his attention to more immediate concerns, Nicklin set out the notepad which would enable late callers to help themselves to books and record the details for him. He gave the counter a final wipe with a duster and, without locking the door, went outside to wait for Zindee.
She must have been watching from her window because she appeared at once, bounding across the intervening grass with her usual display of energy. With her parents’ permission, Nicklin was taking Zindee into town for a sundae, and she had acknowledged the specialness of the occasion by putting on her best sunhat, the pink one with the pictures of Toby the Tortoise speeding around the rim in a manner which no real life chelonian could emulate. Nicklin put on his own hat—a flat cone of reflective gold—as soon as he moved out from under the broad eaves of his shop, and was grateful for the protection it provided. Orbitsville’s sun was always directly overhead, night coming only when it was eclipsed by the next bar of the solar cage, and as a result the heat from it built up steadily throughout the day. To venture out at any time of the day without donning suitable headgear was to invite a severe case of sunstroke, but the period still referred to as “evening” was the riskiest.
“Hi, Jim!” Zindee arrived at his side in a perceptible swirl of air currents. “Know something? I could eat the biggest sundae in the whole world.”
“You’ll have to graft for it,” Nicklin said, putting on a tough voice as he handed over his three books. “I’m going to trust you to deliver those, and each time you drop one you’ll forfeit a scoop of ice cream. Is that clear?”
“Yes, boss.” Zindee gave him a kind of cringing salute and they set off in the direction of the town centre. They crossed the bridge and were walking in the shade of the tall whistle trees which lined the road when Nicklin noticed that the child seemed slightly subdued. Praying that it was nothing to do with Orbitsville’s supposed change of location, he asked what was on her mind.
“I keep thinking about all those weird things they said on TV this morning,” she replied.
He snorted with amusement. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“But it’s scary, Jim. Doesn’t it bother you?”
“About the world having moved?” He gave another snort. “I’m a light sleeper, Zindee—I think I would have noticed something if the world had moved during the night.”
“But what about the stars? They’re all different.”
“How do we know that?” Nicklin, who had never seen a star and whose knowledge of astronomy was sketchy, began to invent new theories of cosmic physics. “I read that astronomers sometimes discover a cluster of a dozen or so really distant galaxies. Then they look a bit harder and find that the so-called cluster is actually just one galaxy. The light coming from it gets bent this way and bent that way as it is travelling towards the wise men. So they run around squawking, getting themselves into a state over discovering eleven galaxies that don’t even exist!”
Zindee frowned. “What has that got to do with… ?”
“It shows that when it comes to stars and the like you just can’t trust your eyes. Light rays can bend. It could be that space… that space…” Nicklin felt a surge of the old heady, guilty elation which often gripped him when he found that what had started off as a rubble of words was cementing itself into a lofty edifice. “…is not homogenous, not the same everywhere. There could be inclusions, anomalous regions where light gets really twisted up, where what you see is all-scrambled. If Orbitsville has drifted into one of those regions the outside universe is bound to look different. It’s only natural.”
“Jim,” Zindee looked up at him with the absurdly solemn face of a thirteen-year-old professor of logic, “to me that sounds like a load of male ox.”
“It explains the facts better than all that stuff about Orbitsville having moved millions of light years during the night.”
“Yeah? And what about all the ships and docks that have disappeared?”
“The anomaly doesn’t confine itself to affecting light,” Nicklin went on, still on a creative high. “It’s a kind of a storm, a spatial tornado which whips interstellar dust particles up to near the speed of light. That increases their mass, you see… builds up their energy… Particles in that state could scour Orbitsville clean in a few seconds, like a giant sandblaster.”
“And what about… ?” Zindee closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. “I wonder if Mr Chickley has got in a fresh supply of chopped walnuts. He didn’t have them last time—remember?—and you can’t make a sundae that’s worth a doodle without chopped walnuts.”
“Very smooth change of subject,” Nicklin said. “Almost imperceptible.”
“I got bored talking about… all that stuff.”
“I told you at the start that it was pretty dull.” Nicklin nudged Zindee with his elbow, putting her off her stride, and she came back at him by shoving hard with her shoulder. They continued walking towards the town centre, their progress slowed by sporadic horseplay and the three small detours needed for the book deliveries. The district was quite typical of Orangefield, with its hushed avenues and masses of ornamental vegetation screening low houses which were roofed with red or green tiles. The scene, Nicklin decided, could have been some privileged part of Earth, except that at this time of the day the sun would have been low in the sky, sinking to the western horizon. He tried to imagine living in an environment in which the sun wandered right across the dome of the heavens during the course of the day, but he only succeeded in conjuring up a queasy sensation, a feeling of balancing on a slowly tilting platform.
“I hear something,” Zindee said. “What do I hear?”
They were still a few minutes’ walk from the town common, but when Nicklin concentrated he became aware of a grumbly, low-frequency agitation of the air, a disturbance which was alien to Orangefield’s sleepy suburbs. “It’s the holy rollers. They didn’t waste much time getting started on the spiel, but they’re not getting any money out of me, and I’ll tell you that for nothing.”
“What’s a spiel?”
“It’s when some character sets out to persuade you that things would be much better if you transferred all the money in your pocket into his pocket.”
To Nicklin’s surprise, Zindee looked up at him in sudden eagerness. “Let’s go and hear what they’re saying.”
“What about your ice cream?”
“It won’t melt.” She moved slightly ahead of him, tugging his arm. “Come on, Jim!”
Nicklin shrugged and compliantly quickened his pace. The sound of amplified speech grew louder as they neared the common, and when the open space came into view he saw that a large tent had been erected at the centre. It seemed to have been intended only for use in rainy weather, because in front of it there was some low staging supporting a platform. On the platform was a tall dark-haired man who was addressing an audience of perhaps four hundred, most of whom were seated on stacking chairs. The remainder were straggled in a rough circle, having chosen to stand although quite a few of the seats had not been taken. Hedging their bets, Nicklin thought approvingly. That way they can hear what’s going on and still make a quick getaway before the collectors try to nab them.