“But why?”
“Because,” Wagoner went on quietly, “the Bridge has now given us confirmation of a theory of stupendous importance so important, in my opinion, that the imminent fall of the West seems like a puny event in comparison. A confirmation, incidentally, which contains in it the seeds of ultimate destruction for the Soviets, whatever they may win for themselves in the next fifty years or so.”
“I suppose,” Helmuth said, puzzled, “that you mean antigravity?”
For the first time, it was Wagoner’s turn to be taken aback.
“Man,” he said at last, “do you know everything I want to tell you? I hope not, or my conclusions will be mighty suspicious.
Surely Charity didn’t tell you we had antigravity; I strictly enjoined him not to mention it.”
“No, the subject’s been on my mind,” Helmuth said. “But I certainly don’t see why it should be so world-shaking, any more than I see how the Bridge helped to bring it about.
I thought it had been developed independently, for the further exploitation of the Bridge, and would step up Bridge operation, not discontinue it.”
“Not at all. Of course, the Bridge has given us information in thousands of different categories, much of it very valuable indeed. But the one job that only the Bridge could do was that of confirming, or throwing out, the Blackett-Dirac equations.”
“Which are?”
“A relationship between magnetism and the spinning of a massive bodythat much is the Dirac part of it. The Blackett Equation seemed to show that the same formula also applied to gravity. If the figures we collected on the magnetic field strength of Jupiter forced us to retire the Dirac equations, then none of the rest of the information we’ve gotten from the Bridge would have been worth the money we spent to get it. On the other hand, Jupiter was the only body in the solar system available to us which was big enough in all relevant respects to make it possible for us to test those equations at all. They involve quantities of enormous orders of magnitudes.