Massey was beginning to look intrigued. He raised a hand to stop Clifford from racing ahead any further for the moment.
“Just a sec, Brad, let’s get this straight. A k-particle is something that has bits you can see and bits you can’t. Right?”
“Right.”
“All the particles that we know are k-particles.”
“Right.”
“But you figure there are things that nobody can see at all . . . these things you’ve called ‘hi-particles.’ ”
“Right.”
“And two hi’s can come together to make a k, and since you can see k’s, you’d see a particle suddenly pop outa nowhere. Is that right?”
“Right.”
“Okay . . .” Massey inclined his head and collected his thoughts for a moment. “Now—in idiot language—just go over that last bit again, willya?” He wasn’t being deliberately sarcastic; it was just his way of speaking.
“A hi can interact with a k to produce another k, or maybe several k’s. When that happens, what you see is a sudden change taking place in an observable particle, without any apparent cause.”
“A spontaneous event,” Edwards commented, nodding slowly. “An explanation for the decay of radioactive nuclei and the like, perhaps.”
Clifford began warming slightly. Maybe he wasn’t wasting his time after all.
“Precisely so,” he replied. “The statistics that come out of it fit perfectly with the observed frequencies of quantum mechanical tunneling effects, energy-level transitions of the electron, and a whole list of other probabilistic phenomena at the atomistic scale. It gives us a common explanation for all of them. They’re not inexplicable any more; they only look that way in lo-order spacetime.”
“Mmm . . .” Edwards looked down again at the paper lying in front of him. The administrator in him still wanted to put a swift end to the whole business, but the scientist in him was becoming intrigued. If only this discussion could have taken place at some other time, a time free of the dictates of harsher realities. He looked up at Clifford and noted for the first time the pleading earnestness burning from those bright, youthful eves. Clifford could be no more than in his mid to late twenties—the age at which Newton and Einstein had been at their peak. This generation would have much to answer for when the day finally came to count the cost of it all.
“You said that there is a second possible way in which hi- and k-particles can interact.”
“Yes,” Clifford confirmed. “They can also interact to produce hi-order entities only.” He looked at Massey. “That means that a hi plus a k can make just hi’s. You’d see the k to start with, then suddenly you wouldn’t see anything at all.”
“Spontaneous particle extinction,” Edwards supplied.
“I’ll be damned,” said Massey.
“The two effects of creation and extinction are symmetrical,” Clifford offered. “In loose terms you could say that a particle exists only for a finite time in the observable universe. It appears out of nowhere, persists for a while, then either vanishes, or decays into other particles, which eventually vanish anyway. The length of time that any one particle will exist is indeterminate, but the statistical average for large numbers of them can be calculated accurately. For some, such as those involved in familiar high-energy decay processes, lifetimes can be very short; for radioactive decays, seconds to millions of years; for the so-called stable particles, like the proton and electron, billions of years.”
“You mean the stable particles aren’t truly stable at all?” Edwards raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Not permanently?”
“Right.”
Silence reigned for a short while as the room digested the flow of information. Edwards looked pensive. Miles Corrigan continued to remain silent, but his sharp eyes missed nothing. He smoothed a wrinkle in his expensively tailored suit and glanced at his watch, giving the impression of being bored and impatient. Massey spoke next.
“You see, like I said, it’s all pure academic stuff. Harmless.” He shrugged and showed his empty palms. “Maybe this once there’s no reason for us not to have Washington check it out. I vote we clear it.”
“Maybe isn’t good enough, Walt,” Edwards cautioned. “We have to be sure. For one thing, I need to be certain of the scientific accuracy of it all first. Wouldn’t do to go wasting Washington’s time with a theory that turned out to be only half worked out; that wouldn’t do ACRE’s image any good at all. There are a couple of points that bother me already.”