Apparently he had not expected to find me in the room, for as I lunged
he uttered a cry and threw the gun at my face. Then he turned and ran.
I managed to duck in time to receive only a glancing blow on the head.
I started to pursue, when my eyes fell on the translator.
Something terrible was wrong.
Half of the tube had disappeared and, with it, half of Trella's body.
The other half, containing half of the most beautiful woman on the
earth, remained in the laboratory.
My spring toward Keeshwar had spoiled his aim enough to keep the bullet
from striking Trella, but the bullet had struck the small silver wire
that ran from the atomic motor on one side to the atomic motor on the
other. The translation had been only half completed.
Half of Trella's body was on the earth, while the other was on Rihlon,
four light years away!
Her single eye was open and her half-face was frozen in an expression
of terror. She did not move and she was not breathing. There was no
blood. It was a complete suspension of animation.
Suddenly I realized that I was losing precious seconds. Unless
something was done, Trella would die.
I picked up the bit of wire that had been broken off by Keeshwar's
bullet. I lifted it toward the end dangling from the motor.
Then Trella moved! It was not suspended animation, but something
else--something new!
Her eye swung toward me. Her half-head visibly shook. Her half-lips
moved but no sound of her voice reached me. But I understood. She was
telling me not to replace the wire.
She lifted her hand and drew a right-angled triangle on the side of the
tube.
I understood. Trella was alive and she would continue to live, but it
would be impossible to restore her component halves merely by mending
the broken wire.
Trella was linked in time. She was still whole, but half of her body
was visible in one _Now_ and the other half in a _Now_ on Proxima
Centaur, four light years away.
To join the halves of her body, would mean joining the two _Nows_ and
to do that would form a triangle, at least one side of which would be
an irrational number. Unless the riddle of time travel were solved, it
would be impossible to make Trella whole.
I walked around the half-tube. Her appearance was not what I expected
to see. It was not a case of sawing a woman in half. The cross section
of her body appeared only as an opaque blankness. When I touched
her side I felt something cold and hard. It was as if I had touched
eternity.
The laboratory officials were called in for consultation. It was
decided that the matter should be hushed, at least until we knew what
should be done. There was too much to do now to be bothered with police
and reporters. We would not have a warrant issued for Keeshwar. There
would be time to deal with him later.
We discovered that Trella could eat and she seemed to be in perfect
health. But I knew that she was doomed unless we could restore the
parts of her body. Her muscles would atrophy. Inaction is more deadly
to the human machine than millions of disease germs.
If it would be possible to locate some day in the future when the wires
might be pieced together and the linking of Trella's two halves might
be accomplished without rationalizing irrational numbers, our problem
would be solved. But the nearest date in the future when this could be
done was three years ahead.[1]
[Footnote 1: Three years from the time this accident occurred would
make the sides of the triangle between the past event, the present, and
the present on Rihlon (four light years away) equal to the units 3, 4
and 5. Three squared, plus four squared equals five squared.]
But in three years Trella would be dead. We could not wait for the
coordinates to adjust themselves. We had to make the coordinates
adjustable to our purposes.
A small chronometer located in the atomic energy machine on the quartz
tube gave us the exact time the silver wire had been broken.
Even Blake, my servant, offered a suggestion:
"If you could take the earth half of Miss Trella's body to Rihlon, or
bring the Rihlon half to earth and bring the two _Nows_ together, would
that form a rational triangle?"