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I’ll actually keep. You can bet on that. Okay? You aren’t angry?”
    “Well—”
    “I’ll get Faro and Yimot out of the way as fast as I can.”
    “You’d better.” As he began to assemble his papers again she said, “What
is
this business with Faro and Yimot that’s so terribly important, anyway?”
    “Lab work. Gravitational studies.”
    “Doesn’t sound all that important to me, I have to say.”
    “I hope it turns out not to be important to anybody,” Beenay replied. “But that’s something I need to find out right now.”
    “I wish I knew what you were talking about.”
    He glanced at his watch and took a deep breath. He could stay here another minute or two, he supposed. “You know I’ve been working lately on the problem of the orbital motion of Kalgash around Onos, don’t you?”
    “Of course.”
    “All right. A couple of weeks ago I turned up an anomaly. My orbital numbers didn’t fit the Theory of Universal Gravitation. So I checked them, naturally, but they came out the same way the second time. And the third. And the fourth. Always the same anomaly, no matter what method of calculation I used.”
    “Oh, Beenay, I’m so very sorry to hear that. You’ve worked so hard on this, I know, and to discover that your conclusions aren’t right—”
    “What if they are, though?”
    “But you said—”
    “I don’t know if my math is right or wrong, at this point. As far as I can tell it is, but it doesn’t seem conceivable that that can be so. I’ve checked and checked and checked, and I get the same result each time, with all sorts of cross-checks built in to tell me that I haven’t made an error in computation. But the result that I’m getting is an impossible one. The only explanation I can come up with is that I’m starting from a cockeyed assumption and doing everything else right from then on, in which case I’m going to come up with the same wrong answer no matter which method of checking my calculations I use. I might just be blind to a fundamental problem at the base of my whole set of postulates. If you start with the wrong figure for planetary mass, for instance, you’ll get the wrong orbit for your planet no matter how accurate the rest of your calculations may be. Are you following me?”
    “So far, yes.”
    “Therefore I’ve given the problem to Faro and Yimot, without really telling them what it’s all about, and asked them to calculate the whole thing from scratch. They’re bright kids. I can count on them to do decent math. And if they end up with the same conclusion I did, even though they’re coming at it from an angle that completely excludes whatever error I might have built into my own line of reasoning, then I’ll have to admit that my figures are right after all.”
    “But they can’t be right, Beenay. Didn’t you say that your findings are contrary to the Universal Law of Gravitation?”
    “What if the Universal Law is wrong, Raissta?”
    “What? What?”
    She stared at him. There was utter bewilderment in her eyes.
    “You see the problem?” Beenay asked. “Why I need to know right away what Yimot and Faro have found?”
    “No,” she said. “No, I don’t understand at all.”
    “We can talk about it later. I promise.”
    “Beenay—” Half in despair.
    “I’ve got to go. But I’ll be back as fast as I can. It’s a promise, Raissta! A promise!”

[5]
    Siferra paused only long enough to snatch a pick and a brush from the equipment tent, which had been knocked askew by the sandstorm but was still reasonably intact. Then she went scrambling up the side of the Hill of Thombo, with Balik ponderously hauling himself right behind her. Young Eilis 18 had appeared from the shelter by the cliff now, and he stood below, staring up at them. Thuvvik and his corps of workmen were a little farther back, watching, scratching their heads in puzzlement.
    “Watch out,” Siferra called to Balik, when she had reached the beginning of the open gouge in