"Miss Kossuth," said the official, "this is Miss Sanders. It seems that you've got something but not too much in common."
"Y-yes," said the girl from the first-arrived Corianis. "I'm Mr. Brunn's secretary. He's Assistant Undersecretary of Commerce."
"I'm Mr. Brunn's secretary, too," said Kathy. She moistened her lips. "Is his wife's name Amelie, and does he have three children-two boys and a girl?"
The girl from the first-arrived Corianis said uneasily, "Yes. This is crazy! Is your Mr. Brunn rather fat, and does he fiddle with his ear when he's dictating?"
"Yes!" said Kathy. She looked appalled. "Does your Mr. Brunn have a picture of a baseball team on his desk?"
"Yes!" said the other girl. "Alton High School. He played second base."
"So did my Mr. Brunn," said Kathy. Then she added, "I-I've seen you before. I-know you. I'm sure of it!" The first-arrived girl said helplessly, "I don't remember you. But at least we aren't doubles!"
Kathy swallowed. "But I remember you. You had the job I've got. You'd resigned to get married, three months ago, and you showed me about the work I was to do. You were going to marry a boy named Al Loomis. You said he was a draftsman."
The first girl went ashen-white. "I m-married him? I- I… But I didn't! W-we had a quarrel and-broke up!… How did you know? I never saw you before! I never told you… How do you know all about my private affairs? How…
The other girl from the other Corianis began to cry. She ran out of the room.
There was silence. Kathy turned unhappily to Bedell. He said encouragingly, "That was fine, Kathy! It clears up several points. You did splendidly!"
The official stirred. He said without hope, "I'm glad somebody's pleased! If you've got a theory, don't tell me. Get it worked out and we'll have the Astrophysical Institute boys look you over and then we'll have whoever should pass on what you think pass on it. I don't want to understand this business, because I don't want to believe it! But there's nobody claiming to be you, so far, so you can leave the Corianis if you choose to."
"No," said Bedell. "I think I'd better stay on the ship. This state of things should be unstable. I want to do some calculating from some books I have with me… But I would like to talk to the Astrophysics people."
"You sound like you think you know what's happened," the official said. "It's all right with me if you stay aboard your ship. We're trying to keep the two sets of people apart, anyhow. Do you know what happens when duplicates see each other?"
"I can guess," said Bedell, "but I'd rather not. Come along, Kathy. Let's get back to the ship."
VIII
The Corianis had vanished between Kholar and Mani-nea. After the fact was discovered, it took a mere few hours to get a space lifeboat out of atmosphere with a spectrotelescope on board to watch for the iron-atom cloud in emptiness which would be a plea for aid, and only two days and a few hours were needed to get the news back to Kholar. On the way back, the mail-ship which took the news may have passed within light-hours of the spot where the Corianis had collided with a celestial scrap-heap. But it was not equipped for search.
By the time the Corianis was four days overdue, a trampship took off from Maninea; it also was equipped with a spectrotelescope. It began, methodically, to make short hops in overdrive along the line the Corianis should have followed. Each time it came out of overdrive it made a search. It searched from three light-days from Maninea and six, and twelve, and so on. It did not really expect to pick up a distress-signal so early. An iron-atom cloud would be relatively small so soon after its presumed formation. But it would enlarge, and the fact that it would also thin out didn't matter.
That first hunting ship from Maninea reached Kholar. No news. It was joined by another ship which had come into port. The two ships spaced themselves some light-minutes apart and headed back for Maninea; they reached it without any discovery. Two other ships had arrived from other worlds in response to the shipping service's request. Four ships headed back for Kholar.
Empty space is dark. The firmament glitters with innumerable stars, of all the colors that light can be; but the total light is faint, and where there is no sun it is very, very lonely. Each of the ships making multi-billion-mile casts through emptiness seemed utterly solitary. A ship came out of overdrive to unstressed space. It located the sun Kholar. It focussed a spectrotelescope upon a five-degree square area of space with Kholar at its center. It turned on the scope. Only stars with strong absorption-lines in their spectra would appear in the scope-field. They were examined separately. If or when one of them showed the lines slightly widened, it would indicate that iron existed between the star and the ship. Then there must be a cloud of iron particles in space -a signal of distress.
A little more than halfway across, a ship from Ghalt- the last ship to join in the search-found the telltale widening of iron-spectrum lines in the light of Kholar itself. It aimed for the cloud and jumped for it. It overleaped. It went back. It found the cloud-and danger-signals clanged inside it. The iron-atom cloud was then two and a half million miles in diameter. The ship sought its center; it found debris floating in space. It measured the iron-vapor cloud and computed its mass. There was too much vaporized metal to have come from a signal-rocket's substance; there was not enough to say that the Corianis itself had broken down to atoms.
The ship began to examine all the debris its radars picked up. It found some rocky and many metallic masses; some were the size of houses. There was a dense cloud of still larger metal lumps. Its parts were in motion, as if it had only recently been jolted by something enormous.
The first ship was joined by a second, which also had found the iron-cloud. Later a third ship drove up and joined the search.
They did not find the Corianis. They did find a mountain-sized mass of metal, on one of whose flanks there was a circular, hollow, glistening scar, as if some incredible blast of heat had burned or boiled away the metal there. Rough estimate suggested that the amount of metal boiled away at this spot might account for the metal-cloud.
It did. An analysis of the cloud's substance disclosed nickel in considerable quantity with the iron. A measurement of the cloud's expansion gave the time of its beginning to expand-its creation.
The iron-cloud did not come from the Corianis' hull or signal-rocket. It was not iron alone; it was a nickel-iron cloud. It was metal vaporized from a mass of metallic debris. It had been vaporized at the time the Corianis had passed through this part of emptiness. Here, then, was where the Corianis had vanished.
But there was no trace of the ship itself, though one or another of the three ships examined every particle of solid stuff within thousands of miles.
The search-ships, though, had done a remarkable job; they'd located the scene of a disaster in space. The ship involved could not be found-but to pinpoint even the place where a ship had been wrecked was more than had ever been accomplished before.
IX
The confusion on Maninea already made for jumpiness. When a mail-ship came in from Kholar and called down for landing-permission, panic began. But this was not a third Corianis; it was an ordinary small mail-ship. It brought new and confidential instructions for the diplomatic party from Kholar.
The skipper of the mail-ship landed. He saw the Corianis, then he saw her duplicate. He did not believe his eyes. He had diplomatic mail for the Minister of State for Kholar. Shaking his head, he asked questions. He learned that there were two Ministers of State for Kholar hereabouts. He did not know to which he should deliver the diplomatic pouch. He tried to find out from lesser officials-from Kholar. There were two Ministers of Commerce. There were two Chairman of the Lower House Committee on Extra-Planetary Affairs. There were two of everybody that had left Kholar. Everybody…