fun. But he tried not to think about that.
He reached for their printout.
"May I see?" he asked.
Hands fluttering wildly, Yimot handed it over. Beenay scanned the rows of figures, calmly at first, then with rising agitation.
He had been pondering, all year long, certain implications of the Theory of Universal Gravitation, which his mentor Athor had brought to such a summit of perfection. It had been Athor's great triumph, the making of his lofty reputation, to work out the orbital motions of Kalgash and all six of its suns according to rational principles of attractive forces.
Beenay, using modern computational equipment, had been calculating some aspects of Kalgash's orbit around Onos, its primary sun, when to his horror he observed that his figures didn't check out properly in terms of the Theory of Universal Gravitation. The theory said that at the beginning of the present year Kalgash should have been here in relation to Onos, when in undeniable fact Kalgash was there.
The deviation was trivial-a matter of a few decimal places- but that wasn't trivial at all, in the larger sense of things. The Theory of Universal Gravitation was so precise that most people preferred to refer to it as the Law of Universal Gravitation. Its mathematical underpinning was considered impeccable.
But a theory that purports to explain the movements of the world through space~ has no room for even small discrepancies. Either it is complete or it is not complete: no middle way was permissible. And a difference of a few decimal places in a shortrange calculation would widen into a vast abyss, Beenay knew, if more ambitious computations were attempted. What good was the whole Theory of Universal Gravitation if the position that it said Kalgash was going to hold in the sky a century from now turned out to be halfway around Onos from the planet's actual location then?
Beenay had gone over his figures until he was sick of reworking them. The result was always the same.
But what was he supposed to believe?
His numbers, or Athor's towering master scheme?
His piddling notions of astronomy, or the great Athor's profound insight into the fundamental structure of the universe?
He imagined himself standing right on top of the dome of the Observatory, calling out, "Listen to me, everybody! Athor's theory is wrong! I've got the figures right here that disprove it!" Which would bring forth such gales of laughter that he'd be blown clear across the continent. Who was he to set himself up against the titanic Athor? Who could possibly believe that a callow assistant professor had toppled the Law of Universal Gravitation?
And yet-and yet- His eyes raced over the printout sheets that Yimot and Faro had prepared. The calculations on the first two pages were unfamiliar to him; he had set up the data for the two students in such a way that the underlying relationships from which the numbers were derived were not at all obvious, and evidently they had approached the problem in a way that any astronomer trying to compute a planetary orbit would regard as quite unorthodox. Which was exactly what Beenay had wanted. The orthodox ways had led him only into catastrophic conclusions; but he had too much information at his own disposal to be able to work in any other mode but the orthodox ones. Faro and Yimot hadn't been hampered in that fashion.
But as he followed along their line of reasoning, Beenay began to notice a discomforting convergence of the numbers. By the third page they had locked in with his own calculations, which he knew by heart by this time.
And from there on, everything followed in an orderly way, step by step by step, to the same dismaying, shattering, inconceivable, totally unacceptable culminating result.
Beenay looked up at the two students, aghast.
"There's no possibility, is there, that you've slipped up somewhere? This string of integrations here, for example-they look pretty tricky-"
"Sir!" Yimot cried, sounding shocked to the core. His face was bright red and his arms waved about as if moving of their own accord.
Faro said, more placidly, "I'm afraid they're correct, sir. They tally frontwards and backwards."
"Yes. I imagine they do," said Beenay dully. He struggled to conceal his anguish. But his hands were shaking so badly that the printout sheets began to flutter in his grasp. He started to put them down on the table before him, but his wrist jerked uncontrollably in a very Yimot-like gesture and sent them scattering all over the floor.
Faro knelt to pick them up. He gave Beenay