“Luthis tells me it’s all coming together,” a voice remarked nearby. Vicki had been too engrossed to notice that Wernstecki had stopped by the booth and was looking in. His gaunt features with their intense eyes and pointy nose beneath his shock of frizzy hair did their best to approximate a smile. “He says Farzhin is firing out one theory after another.”
Vicki leaned back in the chair and rubbed her eyes. “And some of the things they’re finding on Earth look as if they might be bearing it out already. We’re heading for some exciting times, Jan. A complete rewrite of the script. It all happened more recently and faster.”
Wernstecki cast an eye quizzically over the screens and notes that Vicki had been working with. Such things were not his specialty, and he didn’t pretend to any great knowledge of them. “But doesn’t it mean that the whole geological time scale would have to be rewritten too? That’s the thing I wonder about when I hear all this.”
“Pretty drastically,” Vicki agreed.
“I thought it was supposed to have been validated over and over.”
“You mean by things like radio-dating?”
“Yes.”
Vicki took a moment to save some items on a screen before answering. “That used to bother me once too,” she said. “Oh, the theory is solid enough—convert one isotope into another at a known rate, and the ratio will tell you how long it’s been going on. But when you get down to the actuality, you run into the problem of contaminants acting to add to or subtract from either or both. That can produce some very different answers. One of the worst can be water, which gets just about everywhere.”
“I thought they made corrections for things like that,” Wernstecki said.
“But to figure out the corrections, you have to know what the right answer is. And that’s where the whole thing got circular. The picture of immense time scales was put together with theories of slow, gradual change already in mind. Radiometric methods came later, and were used to ‘confirm’ what was already ‘known.’ ”
“The agreements were selected?”
Vicki nodded. “The normal practice was to ask someone submitting a sample the range that was expected. Anything falling too far outside it was rejected as bad data. What was left obviously fitted the theory, and so of course it all held together.” Vicki smiled at the expression on Wernstecki’s face. “And then you had the assumption that the initial mix of isotopes in the environment hadn’t changed. But who knows what changes things like this last incident made in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans? That’s one of the things the Varuna and the Surya are measuring.” Vicki concluded, “Anyway, Jan, talk to Luthis. He knows more about it than I do.”
“I will, when I get a chance.” Wernstecki changed the subject by jumping lightly on the floor outside the booth. “Like them?” he asked.
“The AG arrays? I was just thinking before you arrived, it’ll change the look of ships forever. No more whirligigs and flying umbrellas. How are they shaping up technically?”
“Not many snags at all so far. We’ll see how it goes with the heavy-power, rock-cutting stuff when we get to Earth.”
“Lan’s department,” Vicki said.
“Heard from him lately?”
“Not since they found more survivors.” The discovery of migrants in western Asia had been big news aboard the Aztec, and presumably back in Kronia. There were unconfirmed claims of other sightings too.
“So it seems that all the people who thought that going back now was premature were wrong,” Wernstecki said. “We’re just arriving in time to make a real difference.”
“Lan thinks so too,” Vicki said. She was about to add more, when a message window opened on one of the screens to show the face of Commander Reese, the Aztec’s skipper, calling from the Bridge.
“Ms. Delucey.”
“Yes?”
“Ahem . . . I wonder if you could come to the Bridge, please.”
“Well, yes . . .” Reese’s grave expression and tone of voice registered then. “What is it?” Vicki asked.
“There is something I have to tell you. I’d rather it were done face to face, personally.”
Vicki swallowed, feeling her mouth go dry. “Very well,” she managed. “I’ll be there right away.” She cut the connection.