‘We ought to get back to work anyhow.’
‘I’ll help you; we’ll get done faster.’
The Rolling Stone swung on and outward toward Mars; her crew fell into routine habits. Dr Stone was handy at weightless cooking, unusually skillful, in fact, from techniques she had picked up during a year’s internship in the free-fall research clinic in Earth’s station. Meade was not so skilled but very little can be done to ruin breakfast. Her father supervised her hydroponics duties, supplementing thereby the course she had had in Luna City High School. Dr Stone split the care of her least child with his grandmother and used her leisure placidly collating some years of notes for a paper ‘On the Cumulative Effects of Marginal Hypoxia.’
The twins discovered that mathematics could be even more interesting than they had thought and much more difficult — it required even more ‘savvy’ than they thought they had (already a generous estimate) and they were forced to stretch their brains. Their father caught up on the back issues of The Reactomotive World and studied his ship’s manual but still had plenty of time to coach them and quiz them. Pollux, he discovered, was deficient in the ability to visualise a curve on glancing at an equation.
‘I don’t understand it,’ he said. ‘You got good marks in analytical geometry.’
Pollux turned red. ‘What’s biting you?’ his father demanded.
‘Well, Dad, you see it’s this way —’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, I didn’t exactly get good marks in analyt.’
‘Eh? What is this? You both got top marks; I remember clearly.’
‘Well, now, you see — Well, we were awfully busy that semester and, well, it seemed logical… ‘ His voice trailed off.
‘Out with it! Out with it!’
‘Cas took both courses in analyt.’ Pollux blurted out, ‘and I took both courses in history. But I did read the book.’
‘Oh, my!’ Roger Stone sighed. ‘I suppose it’s covered by the statute of limitations by this time. Anyhow, you are finding out the hard way that such offences carry their own punishments. When you need it, you don’t know it worth a hoot.’
‘Yessir.’
‘But an extra hour a day for you, just the same — until you can visualise instantly from the equation a four-cooordinate hyper-surface in a non-Euclidean continuum — standing on your head in a cold shower.’
‘Yessir.’
‘Cas, what course did you fudge? Did you read the book?’
‘Yes, sir. It was medieval European history, sir.’
‘Hmm … You’re equally culpable, but I’m not too much concerned with any course that does not require a slide rule and tables. You coach your brother.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘If you are pinched for time, I’ll give you a hand with those broken-down bicycles, though I shouldn’t.’
The twins pitched into it, hard. At the end of two weeks Roger Stone announced himself satisfied with Pollux’s proficiency in analytical geometry. They moved on to more rarefied heights … the complex logics of matrix algebra, frozen in beautiful arrays… the tensor calculus that unlocks the atom… the wild and wonderful field equations that make Man king of the universe … the crashing, mind-splitting intuition of Forsyte’s Solution that had opened the 21st century and sent mankind another mighty step toward the stars. By the time Mars shone larger in the sky than Earth they had gone beyond the point where their father could reach them; they ploughed on together.
They usually studied together, out of the same book, floating head to head in their bunkroom, one set of feet pointed to celestial south, the other pair to the north. The twins had early gotten into the habit of reading the same book at the same time; as a result either of them could read upside down as easily as in the conventional attitude. While so engaged Pollux said to his brother, ‘You know, Grandpa, some of this stuff makes me think we ought to go into research rather than business. After all, money isn’t everything.’
‘No,’ agreed Castor, ‘there are also stocks, bonds, and patent rights, not to mention real estate and chattels.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘We’ll do both. I’ve finished this page; flip the switch when you’re ready.’