Pattern A taking approximately half an hour.
10 centimetres
3.15 p.m.
Pattern A taking approximately half an hour.
1 centimetre
3.45 p.m.
Complete penetration of ionosphere over a period of three hours roughly.
10 centimetres
7.0 p.m.
Pattern A taking approximately half an hour.
No transmissions from 7.30 p.m. to 9.0 p.m.
1 metre
9.0 p.m.
Pattern A taking half an hour.
10 centimetres
9.30 p.m.
Pattern A taking half an hour.
‘It certainly looks horribly systematic when it’s all put together like that,” said Leicester.
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“I’m afraid I’m not getting this’ — Parkinson.
“Nor am I,” admitted McNeil.
Kingsley spoke slowly.
“As far as I’m aware, these events can be explained very simply on one hypothesis, but I warn you it’s an entirely preposterous hypothesis.”
“Chris, will you please stop trying to be dramatic, and tell us in simple words what this preposterous hypothesis is?”
“Very well. In one breath — that on any wave-length from a few centimetres upwards our own transmissions automatically produce a rise of ionization which continues to the saturation point.”
“It simply isn’t possible.” Leicester shook his head.
“I didn’t say it was possible,” answered Kingsley. “I said it explained the facts. And it does. It explains the whole of my table.”
“I can half see what you’re driving at,” remarked McNeil.
“Am I to suppose that the ionization falls as soon as you cease transmission?”
“Yes. When we stop transmission the ionizing agent is cut off, whatever it may be — perhaps Bill’s electrical discharges. Then the ionization falls very rapidly. You see the ionization we’re dealing with is abnormally low in the atmosphere, where the gas density is large enough to give an extremely rapid rate of formation of negative oxygen ions. So the ionization dries up very quickly as soon as it isn’t being renewed.”
“Let’s go into this in a bit more detail,” Marlowe began, speaking out of a haze of aniseed smoke. “It seems to me that this hypothetical ionizing agency must have pretty good judgement. Suppose we switch on a ten- centimetre transmission. Then according to your idea, Chris, the agency, whatever it is, drives the ionization up until the ten-centimetre waves remain trapped inside the Earth’s atmosphere. And — here’s my point — the ionization goes no higher than that. It’s all got to be very nicely adjusted. The agency has to know just how far to go and no further.”
“Which doesn’t make it seem very plausible,” said Weichart.
“And there are other difficulties. Why were we able to go on so long with the twenty-five centimetre communication? That lasted for quite a number of days, not for only half an hour. And why doesn’t the same thing happen — your pattern A as you call it — when we use a one-centimetre wave-length?”
“Bloody bad philosophy,” grunted Alexandrov. “Waste of breath. Hypothesis judged by prediction. Only sound method.”
Leicester glanced at his watch.
“It’s well over an hour since our last transmission. If Chris is right we ought to get his pattern A, if we switch on again at ten centimetres, that is to say, and possibly at one metre also. Let’s try.”
Leicester and about half a dozen others went off to the lab. Half an hour later they were back.
“Still complete reflection at one metre. Pattern A on ten centimetres,” Leicester announced.
“Which looks as if it supports Chris.”
“I’m not sure that it does,” remarked Weichart. “Why didn’t the one metre give pattern A?”
“I might make some suggestions, but in a way they’re even more fantastic, so I won’t bother with ’em just for the moment. The fact is, and I insist it is a fact, that whenever we have switched on our ten-centimetre transmitter there has always been a sharp rise of atmospheric ionization, and whenever we switched off there has been a decline of ionization. Does anyone deny that?”
“I don’t deny that what has happened so far agrees with what you say,” Weichart argued. “I agree that no denial is possible there. It’s when it comes to inferring a causal connexion between our transmissions and the fluctuations of ionization that I dig my toes in.”
“You mean, Dave, that what we found this afternoon and this evening was coincidence?’ asked Marlowe.
“That’s what I mean. I grant you that the odds against such a series of coincidences are pretty big, but Kingsley’s causal connexion seems to me an out-and-out impossibility. What I feel is that the improbable can happen but the impossible cannot.”
“Impossible is too strong,” insisted Kingsley. “And I’m sure that Weichart couldn’t really defend his use of the word. What we’re faced with is a choice between two improbabilities — I said that my hypothesis seemed improbable when I first trotted it out. Moreover I agree with what Alexis said earlier on, that the only way to test a hypothesis is by its predictions. It’s about three-quarters of an hour since Harry Leicester did his last transmission. I’m going to suggest that he goes right now and does another ten-centimetre transmission.”
Leicester groaned. “Not again!”
“I predict,” went on Kingsley, “that my pattern A will be repeated. What I’d like to know is what Weichart predicts.”
Weichart didn’t quite like the turn of the argument, and he attempted to hedge. Marlowe laughed.
“He’s pinching you, Dave! You’ve got to stand up and take it. If you’re right about it being coincidence before, you’ve got to agree that Kingsley’s present prediction is very unlikely to be right.”
“Of course it’s unlikely, but it might happen that way all the same.”
“Come off it, Dave! What do you predict? Where d’you put your money?”
And Weichart was forced to admit that he put his money on Kingsley’s prediction being wrong.
“All right. Let’s go and see,” said Leicester.
While the company were filing out, Ann Halsey said to Parkinson:
“Will you help me to make more coffee, Mr Parkinson? They’ll be wanting some when they get back.”
As they busied themselves, she went on:
“Did you ever hear such a lot of talk? I used to think that scientists were of the strong silent type, but never did I hear such a gibble-gabble. What is it that Omar Khayyam says about the doctors and saints?”
“I believe it goes something like this,” answered Parkinson:
“Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about, but evermore
Came out by the same door as in I went.”
“It isn’t so much the volume of talk that surprises me,” he laughed. “We get plenty of that in politics. It’s the number of mistakes they’ve made, how often things have turned out differently to what they’ve expected.”
When the party reassembled it was obvious at a glance how things had gone. Marlowe took a cup of coffee from Parkinson.
“Thanks. Well, that’s that. Chris was right and Dave was wrong. Now I suppose we must get down to trying
