Felix thought with regret that it was a mistake for a retired artist to attempt a comeback. But Cliff’s next words made him realize he had been hasty. “It was Thorgsen’s idea — ”
“Thorgsen? Your boss?”
“Yes. He had been telling her about the outstations, particularly the ones on Pluto, of course, but he mentioned Mars and the rest, I suppose. They don’t get much recreation, other than canned shows and reading.” Hamilton knew what he meant, although he had never thought much about it. With the exception of the tourist cities on Luna there was nothing to attract human beings to the other planets, save for exploration and research. The devoted few who put up with the unearthly hardships necessarily lived a monklike existence. Luna was a special case, naturally; being practically in Earth’s front yard and an easy jump, it was as popular for romantic holidays as Southpole had once been.
“She got the idea, or Thorgsen suggested it to her, of getting together a diversified travelling troupe to play a circuit of all the outposts.”
“It doesn’t sound commercial.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Thorgsen took the matter up for subsidy. He argued that, if research and exploration were necessary, then morale of the personnel involved was a government matter, in spite of the longstanding policy against government participation in the entertainment business, luxury business, or fine arts.”
Hamilton whistled. “Nice going! Why, that principle was almost as rock solid as civil rights.”
“Yes, but it was a matter of constitution. And the Planners are no fools. They don’t necessarily follow precedent. Look at this job we’re on.”
“Yes, surely. Matter of fact, that was what I dropped in to see you about. I wanted to see how you were getting along.” At the time of this conversation Hamilton was feeling his way into the whole picture of the Great Research. Carruthers had given him no fixed instructions, but had told him to spend a few weeks sizing up the problem.
The phase of the research occupying Monroe-Alpha’s attention-Thorgsen’s project, the Grand Eidouraniun-was much further advanced than any other aspect of the whole project, since it had been conceived originally as a separate matter before the Great Research, which included it, had been thought of. Monroe-Alpha had come into it rather late, but Hamilton had assumed that his friend would be the dominant figure in it. This, Monroe-Alpha maintained, was not true.
“Hargrave is much more fitted for this sort of work than I am. I take my directions from him-myself, and about sixty others.”
“How come? I thought you were tops in the numbers racket.”
“I have my specialty and Hargrave knows how to make the best use of it. You apparently have no idea of how diversified and specialized mathematics is, Felix. I remember a congress I attended last year-more than a thousand present, but there weren’t more than a dozen men there I could really talk to, or understand.”
“Hmmm…What does Thorgsen do?”
“Well, naturally, he isn’t much use in design-he’s an astrophysicist, or, more properly, a cosmic metrician. But he keeps in touch and his suggestions are always practical.”
“I see. Well-got everything you want?”
“Yes,” admitted Monroe-Alpha, “unless you should happen to have concealed, somewhere about your person, a hyper-sphere, a hypersurface, and some four-dimensional liquid, suitable for fine lubrication.”
“Thanks. You can hand me back my leg now. I see I’ve been wrong again-you are acquiring a sense of humor.”
“I am quite serious about it,” Cliff answered without cracking a smile, “even though I haven’t the slightest idea where I could find such nor how I could manipulate it if I did.”
“For why? Give.”
“I would like to set up a four-dimensional integrator to integrate from the solid surface of a four-dimensional cam. It would greatly shorten our work if we could do such a thing. The irony of it is that I can describe the thing I want to build, in mathematical symbology, quite nicely. It would do work, which we now have to do with ordinary ball-and-plane integrators and ordinary three-dimensional cams, in one operation whereas the system we use calls for an endless series of operations. It’s a little maddening-the theory is so neat and the results are so unsatisfactory.”