THE CRUCIBLE OF TIME BY JOHN BRUNNER

And nobody shared his excitement at the probable implications of his discovery. It seemed to him that the only explanation must be that air was pressing down the water in a pump-tube, so when the weight of water lifted matched the weight of the overlying air, it would rise no further. He had contrived some elegant demonstrations of the theory, using clear glass tubes supplied by one of Iddromane’s associates, but not even Arranth would take them seriously. She believed, as everybody did, that air had neither weight nor—what would follow—limitations to its upward extent. Solid substances had much weight; liquids, rather less, because they incorporated more fire; but air’s must be negligible, because it filled the universe and neither obstructed nor slowed down the planets. And if the stars were fire, and fire could not burn without air—as was proven by covering good dry fuel, after setting it alight, with something impervious—then there must be air around the stars.

“But just suppose,” he argued vainly, “that starfire is different from regular fire—”

“Now you’re asking me to believe something much more ridiculous than that the planets are inhabited!” Arranth would crow in triumph, and that was always where the discussion ended, because he had no counter to that.

So, having unproved his pumps as far as they would go, he was turning his attention to other matters. He was trying to make a connection between fire and mere heat; he was testing everything known to create warmth, especially rubbing, and he was approaching a theory to explain the brightness of the stones that fell from heaven. It was generally accepted that the glowing streaks which nightly crossed the sky were of the same nature as the lumps of hot rock that were sometimes found at the probable point of impact of one of them. Burning rock? Well, rock could be melted, and if air contained more of the principle of fire the higher one went…

It was tolerably logical, that idea. Yet it failed to satisfy Yockerbow, and on the occasions when he had joined Arranth at the observatory on the high hill to the east of Ripar, where there were many good telescopes and files of records extending back nine-score years—it should have been far longer, but a disastrous winter had flooded the pit where earlier records were stored, and they rotted—he always came away disappointed. Some of the astronomers listened to his ideas politely, but in the end they always made it clear that to them he was no more than a lowly artisan, whereas they were refined and erudite scholars.

It was their disrespect which had hardened his view of them, rather than any secure belief that their explanations of the stars were wrong. Essentially, he could not accept the probability of such people being completely right.

And, little by little, he was formulating concepts which he knew made better sense. Suppose he had broached them to the Order of the Jingfired, after insisting on being inducted as Iddromane proposed…?

No, the outcome would have been disastrous. He knew little of the web of intrigue in which the peers held Ripar like a catch of squirmers in a fish-hunter’s basket, but he had the clear impression that mastering its complexities must be like trying to weave a net out of live yarworms. Had he uttered his heretical notions in such august company, means would have been found to replace him prematurely. Radicals, revolutionaries, had no place in the deliberations of the Order.

Yockerbow felt caged and frustrated. What he had expected to flow from the acceptance of his pumps, he could not have said. Certainly, though, it had not been anything like this sense of impotence and bafflement. In a word, he was indescribably disappointed by the reaction of his fellow citizens.

Suddenly he found he was looking forward as keenly as Arranth to the arrival of Barratong. Maybe someone who had traveled half the globe would be more open to new ideas than those who sat here smug behind the defenses he had contrived but paid scant attention to the inventor’s other views.

IV

First there was a pale line of phosphorescence on the pre-dawn horizon, so faint only the keenest-eyed could detect it. Then it resolved into individual points of light, each signifying the presence of a junq festooned as lavishly with glowvines as any palace in Ripar. And at last, just as the sun cleared the horizon, the entire Fleet came into sight of land, and the city’s breath seemed to stop collectively.

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