Analysis drew a finger across his throat.
Tommy and Pete looked at each other, and Tommy's hands were shaking. "I
think," he said, "we'd better find Charlie Karns right now."
* * * * *
Math Section was like a tomb. The machines were silent. In the office at
the end of the room they found an unshaven Charlie gulping a cup of
coffee with a very smug-looking Grdznth. The coffee pot was floating
gently about six feet above the desk. So were the Grdznth and Charlie.
"Charlie!" Tommy howled. "We've been trying to get you for hours! The
operator--"
"I know, I know." Charlie waved a hand disjointedly. "I told her to go
away. I told the rest of the crew to go away, too."
"Then you cracked the differential?"
Charlie tipped an imaginary hat toward the Grdznth. "Spike cracked it,"
he said. "Spike is a sort of Grdznth genius." He tossed the coffee cup
over his shoulder and it ricochetted in graceful slow motion against the
far wall. "Now why don't you go away, too?"
Tommy turned purple. "We've got five months," he said hoarsely. "Do you
hear me? If they aren't going to have their babies in five months, we're
dead men."
Charlie chuckled. "Five months, he says. We figured the babies to come
in about three months--right, Spike? Not that it'll make much difference
to us." Charlie sank slowly down to the desk. He wasn't laughing any
more. "We're never going to see any Grdznth babies. It's going to be a
little too cold for that. The energy factor," he mumbled. "Nobody
thought of that except in passing. Should have, though, long ago. Two
completely independent universes, obviously two energy systems.
Incompatible. We were dealing with mass, space and dimension--but the
energy differential was the important one."
"What about the energy?"
"We're loaded with it. Super-charged. Packed to the breaking point and
way beyond." Charlie scribbled frantically on the desk pad. "Look, it
took energy for them to come through--immense quantities of energy.
Every one that came through upset the balance, distorted our whole
energy pattern. And they knew from the start that the differential was
all on their side--a million of them unbalances four billion of us. All
they needed to overload us completely was time for enough crossings."
"And we gave it to them." Pete sat down slowly, his face green. "Like a
rubber ball with a dent in the side. Push in one side, the other side
pops out. And we're the other side. When?"
"Any day now. Maybe any minute." Charlie spread his hands helplessly.
"Oh, it won't be bad at all. Spike here was telling me. Mean temperature
in only 39 below zero, lots of good clean snow, thousands of nice jagged
mountain peaks. A lovely place, really. Just a little too cold for
Grdznth. They thought Earth was much nicer."
"For them," whispered Tommy.
"For them," Charlie said.
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from "Tiger by the Tail and Other Science
Fiction Stories by Alan E. Nourse" and was first published in
_Galaxy_ October 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without
note.