We passed into a small reception hall, where we were briefly greeted by Arnold Poulsen. As chief computer technician, Poulsen was an important man, answerable only to Hawkwood and seldom appearing in public. I studied him, since Tom had spoken highly of him. He stood before us in a wispy way, uttering conventional words of greeting, looking pleasant enough, but forgetting to smile. Then he disappeared with evident relief, his social moment finished.
We were served a coffdrink while one of the particle physicists, a Scandinavian called Jon Thorgeson, youthful but with a deeply lined face, spoke to us. He was more communicative than Poulsen, whom he vaguely resembled, being ectomorphic and seemingly of no particular age.
Did he recognise me from my previous visit? Certainly he came over and said hello to me in the friendliest way.
Thorgeson briefed us on what we were going to see. In fact, he admitted, we could see very little. The science institution comprised two sorts of people. One was a somewhat monastic unit, where male and female scientists thought about what they were doing or what they might do, free from pressures to produce – in particular the pressure to produce ‘Big Science’. The other unit comprised people actually doing the science. This latter unit was still adjusting the equipment that, it was hoped, might eventually detect Rosewall’s postulated Omega Smudge.
As we were being shown around, Thorgeson explained that their researches were aimed at tackling the mystery of mass in the universe. Rosewall had made an impressive case for the existence of something called a HIGMO, a hidden-symmetry gravitational monopole. The team was running a pilot project at present, on a relatively small ring, since the density of HIGMOs in the universe remained as yet unknown. The ring lay at the rear of the science unit, under a protective shield, we were told.
One of the crowd asked the obvious question of why all this equipment and this team of scientists were shipped to Mars at such enormous expense.
Thorgeson looked offended. ‘It was Rosewell’s perception that you needed no expensive super-collider, just a large ring-shaped tube filled with appropriate superfluid. Whenever a HIGMO passes through this ring, its passage will be detected as a kind of glitch appearing in the superfluid. Any sort of violent activity outside the tube would ruin the experiment.’
I found myself asking how HIGMOs could manage to pass through the ring. He seemed to look hard at me before answering, so that I felt silly.
‘Young lady, HIGMOs can pass clean through Mars without disturbing a thing, or anyone being any the worse for it.’
Someone else asked, ‘Why not build this ring on the Moon?’
‘The Moon – we’re too late for that! Tourist activities, mining activity, the new transcore subway … The whole satellite shakes like a vibrator in a wasps’ nest.’
Turning his gaze on me, he asked, ‘You understand this?’
I nodded. ‘That’s why you’re out here. No wasps’ nests.’
‘Full marks.’ He came and shook my hand, which made me very uncomfortable. ‘That’s why we’re out here. It’s fruitless to pursue the Smudge on Earth or on Luna. Far too much racket. The Omega Smudge is a shy beast.’ He chuckled.
‘And if you capture this Smudge, what then?’ asked one of the group, Helen Panorios, the YEA woman with dyed purple hair and dark complexion.
‘It holds the key to many things. In particular, it will tell us just how the microverse relates to the macroverse, giving us the precise parameters for the dividing line between the small-scale quantum world of atoms and fundamental particles, and the larger-scale classical world of specks of dust upwards to galaxies and so on. I take the view of current ‘hard science’ that these parameters should also tell us how the exterior universe relates to human consciousness. The detailed properties of the universe seem to be deeply related to the very existence of conscious observers – observers maybe like humans, maybe a more effective species which will supersede us. If so, then consciousness is not accidental, but integral. At last we’ll have a clear understanding of all existence.’
‘So you hope,’ ventured a sceptical voice.