there very long, either.” Steinfield made an exaggerated
empty-handed gesture. “The rest you know. People like Kronski have
done all the figuring and put them at around fifty thousand years
old-yesterday!” He waited for a few seconds. “There must be a
Lunarian connection somewhere. The number sounds like too much of a
coincidence to me.”
Hunt frowned for a while and studied the detail of the Farside
hemisphere of the model. “And yet, you must have known about all
this for years,” he said, looking up. “Why the devil did you wait
for us to call you?”
Steinfield showed his hands again and held the pose for a second or
two. “Well, you UNSA people are pretty smart cookies. I figured you
already knew about all this.”
“We should have picked it up sooner, I admit,” Hunt agreed. “But
we’ve been rather busy.”
“Guess so,” Steinfield murmured. “Anyhow, there’s even more to it.
I’ve told you all the consistent things. Now I’ll tell you some of
the funny things. . . .” He broke off as if just struck by a new
thought. “I’ll tell you about the funny things in a second. How
about a cup of coffee?”
“Great.”
Steinfield lit a Bunsen burner, filled a large laboratory beaker
from the nearest tap, and positioned it on a tripod over the flame.
Then he squatted down to rummage in the cupboard beneath the bench
and at last emerged triumphantly with two battered enamel mugs.
“First funny thing: The distribution of samples that we dig up on
Farside that have a history of recent radioactive exposure doesn’t
match the distribution or strength of the activity sources. There
ought to be sources clustered in places where there aren’t.”
“How about the meteorite storm including some, highly active
meteorites?” Hunt suggested.
“No, won’t wash,” Steinfield answered, looking along a shelf of
glass jars and eventually selecting one that contained a
reddish-brown powder and was labeled “Ferric Oxide.” “If there were
meteorites like that, bits of them should still be around. But the
distribution of active elements in the garbage is pretty even-about
normal for most rocks.” He began spooning the powder into the mugs.
Hunt inclined his head apprehensively in the direction of the jar.
“Coffee doesn’t seem to last long around here if you leave it lying
around in coffee jars,” Steinfield explained. He nodded toward a
door that led into the room next-door and bore the sign “RESEARCH
STUDENTS.” Hunt nodded understandingly.
“Vaporized?” Hunt tried.
Again Steinfield shook his head.
“In that case they wouldn’t have been in proximity to the rock long
enough to produce the effects observed.” He opened another jar
marked “Disodium Hydrogen Phosphate.” “Sugar?”
“Second funny thing,” Steinfield continued. “Heat balance. We know
how much mass came down, and from the way it fell, we can figure
its kinetic energy. We also know from statistical sampling how much
energy needed to be dissipated to account for the melting and
structural deformations; also, we know how much energy gets
produced by underground radioactivity and where. Problem: The
equations don’t balance; you’d need more energy to make what
happened happen than there was available. So, where did the extra
come from? The computer models of this are very complex and there
could be errors in them, but that’s the way it looks right now.”
Steinfield allowed Hunt to digest this while he picked up the
beaker with a pair of tongs and proceeded to ifil the mugs. Having
safely completed this operation, he began filling his pipe, stifi
silent.
“Any more?” Hunt asked at last, reaching for his own cigarette
case.
Steinfield nodded affirmatively. “Nearside exceptions. Most of the
Nearside craters fit with the classic model: old. However, there
are some scattered around that don’t fit the pattern; cosmic-ray
dating puts them at approximately the same age as those on Farside.
The usual explanation is that some strays from the recent Farside
bombardment overshot around to the Nearside. . .” He shrugged. “But
there are peculiarities in some instances that don’t really support
that.”
“Like?”
“Like some of the glasses and breccia formations show heating
patterns that aren’t consistent with recent impact . . . I’ll show
you what I mean later.”