"There you are, boys," I wheezed. "One sun as per specification.
Completely under control. Lomack, if your fingers were fast enough we
could use it for a blinker. All you have to do is control the speeds
the right way."
* * * * *
Listless had established equilibrium by now, and threw over the box
to automatic. He went back to the store room and brought out the last
case. We sat down and drank to my health. Several times. And to my
brain. Often.
"How'd you figure it?" asked Murphy when the back pounding was over.
"Boys," I said in a superior tone, "it's really very simple." Murphy
threw the opener at me, so I got down to business.
"You both know the rudiments of Einstein, don't you?" I asked. They
nodded in agreement.
"Well, you know the theory of space warp. Not the way the plates work
but the fundamental proposition. Gravity does not exist as such. I mean
there is no actual attraction between the sun and the planets. The sun
is of such tremendous mass that it warps space elliptically around
it in such a way that any body of a given mass and speed just has to
travel a certain way. Instead of speaking of orbits, you might say,
that, like marbles, the planets fall into certain grooves and there
they stay."