The Venus Belt

Author:L. Neil Smith [Smith, L. Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Libertarian, Heinlein, space, action, guns, pallas, adventure
Publisher: Phoenix Pick
Published: 2012-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

“Karyl? Karyl Hetzer?” I had to try several frequencies before he answered.

“Win Bear, Private Eye—and Koko!” He shut his torch off and hopped three dozen feet to the ground, kangarooing over to meet us. “Introduce me to your friend.” He shook manipulators with Lucy, patted Koko’s head (to her annoyance), and clapped me on the shoulder.

“Whatcha doin’ refittin’ th’ old Duckie, Karyl?” Lucy inquired. “I’da thought she’d be sellin’ fer scrap.”

In my suitsereen, Karyl’s bearded image grimaced. “Practicing entrepreneurship, Lucy. She’ll do fine, running stasified food to Titan. And it’s Prometheus, unauthorized graffiti to the contrary.”

“Prometheus,” Koko mused, “wasn’t that supposed to be—”

“Th’ System’s first starship!” snorted Lucy. “There’s a project Deejay an’ Ooloorie won’t do much braggin’ on. Got three-quarters into construction when a little problematic glitch they were sure of solvin’ failed t’unravel on schedule.”

Karyl chuckled. “They finally towed her out of Earth orbit, and she’s been squatting here gathering micropits ever since. Cost the backers a pretty piece of change. I picked her up for a song—and that a quarter-tone off key.”

Koko’s image was a portrait of chagrin. “Yeah. Uncle Olongo was one of those backers—now he’ll have to wait a few more years to reach the stars.”

“How come?” The little ship certainly looked unprepossessing, something like an upended onion, loose cablery and stanchions sprouting from the top.

“Well,” began Lucy, and it was clear by her tone that she was unlimbering for a lecture. I regretted the pair of innocent words that had started her. “Theoretically, Winnie, two, as they say, is a ridiculous number. Zero’s fine, an’ even one ain’t strainin’ things. But shucks, wherever there’s two of anything, there oughta be more—somewheres between n an’ infinity.”

“That’s interesting,” I lied. “Like Loch Ness monsters—there has to be a herd of them or nothing. But what’s that got to do with a used starship?”

“Unused—that’s th’ point. Winnie, when the United States got discovered, it created problems: suddenly there was two universes—an’ there oughta be either one or some silly number with a lotta zeros. Get it?”

“I admit I’ve always wondered why they hadn’t discovered more alternate probability worlds. It’d be pretty interesting, wouldn’t it?”

“Now yer talkin’. They have run across at least one more, an’ mighty strange, at that. See, in theory, all these universes laid out end t’end—accordin’ t’their well, sort of likelihood—oughta form a big multidimensional bell curve. Statistics, unnerstand?”

“Go on,” I dodged, hoping for something in the next few paragraphs I did unnerstand.

“Well, each universe got created when some event, major or minor—they don’t really know how big a change it takes—caused it t’diverge from th’ universe it started out identical with.”

“Sure. Like Gallatin winning the Whiskey Rebellion caused this universe to diverge from the one Karyl and I were born in.”

“Or losing the Rebellion caused yours to diverge,” offered Koko.

Karyl laughed out loud.

“Whatever,” said Lucy, ducking a swell fight. “Anyhow, ‘way at th’ end of th’ curve, there’s this teensy little continuum where th’ very first event sorta fizzled out ‘fore it got started.

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