Pete, where's the point in letting him blow it? I don't say I think he's the world's greatest, either, but where's the sense in broadcasting it? Butter him up a little. He's got your career in his hands."
"Has he? I've got his reputation in mine. I'm going to show him up. I'm going to strip him."
"How?"
"My business!" muttered Lamont, who at the moment had not the slightest idea as to how.
"But that's ridiculous," said Garrison. "You can't win. He'll just destroy you. Even if he isn't an Einstein or an Oppenheimer really, he's more than either to the world in general. He is the Father of the Electron Pump to Earth's two-billion population and nothing you can possibly do will affect them as long as the Electron Pump is the key to human paradise. While that's true, Hallam can't be touched and you're crazy if you think he can. What the hell, Pete, tell him he's great and eat crow. Don't be another Denison!"
"I tell you what, Henry," said Lamont, in sudden fury. "Why not mind your own business?"
Garrison rose suddenly and left without a word. Lamont had made another enemy; or, at least, lost another friend. The price, however, was right, he finally decided, for one remark of Garrison had set the ball rolling in another direction.
Garrison had said, in essence, ". . . as long as the Electron Pump is the key to human paradise . . . Hallam can't be touched."
With that clanging in his mind, Lamont for the first time turned his attention away from Hallam and placed it on the Electron Pump.
Was the Electron Pump the key to human paradise? Or was there, by Heaven, a catch?
Everything in history had had a catch. What was the catch to the Electron Pump?
Lamont knew enough of the history of para-theory to know that the matter of "a catch" had not gone unexplored. When it was first announced that the basic over-all change in the Electron Pump was the Pumping of electrons from the Universe to the para-Universe, there had not been wanting those who said immediately, "But what will happen when all the electrons have been Pumped?"
This was easily answered. At the largest reasonable rate of Pumping, the electron supply would last for at least a trillion trillion years - and the entire Universe, together, presumably, with the para-Universe, wouldn't last a tiny fraction of that time.
The next objection was more sophisticated. There was no possibility of Pumping all the electrons across. As the electrons were Pumped, the para-Universe would gain a net negative charge, and the Universe a net positive charge. With each year, as this difference in charge grew, it would become more difficult to Pump further electrons against the force of the opposed charge-difference. It was, of course neutral atoms that were actually Pumped but the distortion of the orbital electrons in the process created an effective charge which increased immensely with the radioactive changes that followed.
If the charge-concentration remained at the points of Pumping, the effect on the orbit-distorted atoms being Pumped would stop the entire process almost at once, but of course, there was diffusion to take into account. The charge-concentration diffused outward over the Earth, and the effect on the Pumping process had been calculated with that in mind.
The increased positive charge of the Earth generally forced the positively charged Solar wind to avoid the planet at a greater distance, and the magnetosphere was enlarged. Thanks to the work of McFarland (the real originator of the Great Insight according to Lamont) it could be shown that a definite equilibrium point was reached as the Solar wind swept away more and more of the accumulating positive particles that were repelled from Earth's surface and driven higher into the exosphere. With each increase in Pumping intensity; with each additional Pumping Station constructed, the net positive charge on Earth increased slightly, and the magnetosphere expanded by a few miles. The change, however, was minor, and the positive charge was, in the end, swept away by the Solar wind and spread through the outer reaches of the Solar system.
Even so - even allowing for the most rapid possible diffusion of the charge - the time would come when the local charge-difference between Universe and para-Universe at the points of Pumping would grow large enough to end the process, and that would be a small fraction of the time it would take really to use up all the electrons; roughly, a trillion-trillionth of the time.