"Exactly," said Allenby. "Maybe whatever made--or makes--the holes comes
right down the center of the street here. Maybe that's why they built
the village this way--to make room for--"
"For what?" Randolph asked unhappily, shifting his feet.
"I don't know," Allenby said. He looked thoughtfully at the chief. "That
circular motion he made--could he have been describing something that
went around and around the planet? Something like--oh, no!" Allenby's
eyes glazed. "I wouldn't believe it in a million years."
His gaze went to the far end of the street, to the high sand dune that
rose there. The chief seemed to be waiting for something to happen.
"I'm going to crawl," Randolph stated. He got to his hands and knees and
began to creep across the center of the avenue.
The chief let him go.
The sand dune at the end of the street suddenly erupted. A forty-foot
spout of dust shot straight out from the sloping side, as if a bullet
had emerged. Powdered sand hazed the air, yellowed it almost the full
length of the avenue. Grains of sand stung the skin and rattled minutely
on the houses.
WhoooSSSHHHHH!
Randolph dropped flat on his belly. He didn't have to continue his trip.
He had made other arrangements.
* * * * *
That night in the ship, while we all sat around, still shaking our heads
every once in a while, Allenby talked with Earth. He sat there, wearing
the headphones, trying to make himself understood above the godawful
static.
"... an exceedingly small body," he repeated wearily to his unbelieving
audience, "about four inches in diameter. It travels at a mean distance
of four feet above the surface of the planet, at a velocity yet to be
calculated. Its unique nature results in many hitherto unobserved--I
might say even unimagined--phenomena." He stared blankly in front of him
for a moment, then delivered the understatement of his life. "The
discovery may necessitate a re-examination of many of our basic
postulates in the physical sciences."
The headphones squawked.
Patiently, Allenby assured Earth that he was entirely serious, and
reiterated the results of his observations. I suppose that he, an
astronomer, was twice as flabbergasted as the rest of us. On the other
hand, perhaps he was better equipped to adjust to the evidence.
"Evidently," he said, "when the body was formed, it traveled at such
fantastic velocity as to enable it to--" his voice was almost a
whisper--"to punch holes in things."
The headphones squawked.
"In rocks," Allenby said, "in mountains, in anything that got in its
way. And now the holes form a large portion of its fixed orbit."
_Squawk._
"Its mass must be on the order of--"
_Squawk._
"--process of making the holes slowed it, so that now it travels just
fast enough--"
_Squawk._
"--maintain its orbit and penetrate occasional objects such as--"
_Squawk._
"--and sand dunes--"
_Squawk._
"My God, I _know_ it's a mathematical monstrosity," Allenby snarled.
"_I_ didn't put it there!"
_Squawk._