Chapter Twenty-Seven

A communal groan went up as Dr. Huth finished his remarks. The scientist looked over the throng of researchers whom he supervised, a sea of lab coats. Oh, so put upon, he thought. The way they rolled their eyes and let their jaws fall open in horror.
"This is asking too much," the stout man standing before him said. Above his beard, Dr. Wisehart's face was deeply flushed, the dark eyes full of genuine anger.
It seemed even his closest associates, his academic peers, were appalled at his request.
Huth opened his arms in a helpless gesture. "If it was up to me, I wouldn't put you through it. I know how tired you all must be."
"Does FIVE?" Wisehart demanded.
"FIVE doesn't care," someone farther back in the crowd shouted.
"Not about anything but results," another scientist said.
"Look," Huth said, trying to quiet this uprising from his most skilled and most important workers, "we are on the verge of a great undertaking. We have to follow orders. We have a duty to fulfill. We have to trust FIVE. The building has been sealed. No one will be allowed to leave until we have completed the job."
The protests were even louder.
"There are plans in progress that you aren't aware of," Huth told them.
"So fill us in," Wisehart said.
With what appeared to be great reluctance, the research director of the Totality Concept proceeded. "I have received information on the most recent developments that none of you are privy to. Because of these developments, it is imperative that we alter the existing schedule."
"You'll have to be more forthcoming than that," Wisehart said.
"As many of you know, we have been running continuous simulations on a duplicate of the satellite's flight control system. A precautionary measure. Unacceptable failures started to show up about an hour ago."
"That's not our fault," someone yelled. "We pulled both units off the shelf."
"That is correct. Omnico built them," Huth said. "No one is blaming you for the problem. But we have to do something about it before the Shadow World satellite goes into orbit. That means we have to beat the scheduled launch."
"What you're asking of us is impossible," Wisehart said. "We need more time to align the power grids and stagger the energy transfers, or we'll end up permanently blacking out half the planet."
"Believe me, I understand the danger," Huth replied. "You don't have more time. It's as simple as that. This has to be done or we will lose the satellite. The fourth opening of the passageway has been bumped forward by six hours." He looked at the wall clock. "I make that 538 a.m."
"But Dr. Huth"
"We are wasting precious minutes," the research director said. "Stop your whining and get on with it!"
With that, Huth stepped down from the dais and waded through the packed conference room.
As he looked from face to face, he grew more and more confident that the decision to go alone and tell no one about it had been correct. He couldn't trust any of them. Not with something as important as this. If he had given the information to a select few, even old colleagues like Wisehart, they would have wanted to bring others along, wives, children, lovers. They would have insisted. Perhaps even tried to blackmail him into getting their way. The word was certain to get out, and when that happened the whole complex would fly into a panic and the situation would no longer be containable. FIVE would promptly step in and stop him.
And that would be that.
When he'd really thought about it, about which of his peers deserved to come along, he came to the conclusion that all were unworthy of the gift. So he decided not to share it with any of them. After all, the passageway was his creation. It was only fitting that he be one of the last to use it. There was a possibility, though remote, that FIVE would get another shot at opening the rift, but by the time that happened he'd be long gone on the other side.
In the same vein of not letting the cat out of the bag, Huth had decided that it would be a bad idea to start mat-transing expensive scientific equipment onto the passageway jump pad, or worse, packing it into an ATV and then materializing that on the pad.
That would fall into the area of a dead giveaway. The only instruments he was taking along fit easily into the side pockets of his lab coata microcomputer, wafer thin and the size of a playing card, and an equally small electron microscope. He patted his pockets to make sure they were there as he weaved his way through the crowded halls.
Out of necessity, he was leaving the bulk of Earth's technology behind. It wasn't such a great tragedy, after all. There were advantages to being self-contained. Huth planned on becoming Shadow World's only philosopher of science, on roaming the pristine landscape, working with his mind, with his skills of observation, as had the earliest practitioners of his art. Like them, he carried in his head the scientific method, a tool powerful enough to attack any problem. Unlike them, he had the Twenty-Five Theories, which linked all available knowledge.
The bulkhead door leading to the jump area was mobbed with scientists. Most of them had nothing better to do than stand around and wring their hands. There were excess scientists, too. Pushing his way through the mass of lab coats, he entered the bulkhead door. He stopped in the middle of the metal catwalk and looked down, watching the army of technicians, hard at work. Hundreds of them. From tiers of scaffolds, they serviced the canyon of electronics that enabled the rift to open.
He crossed the catwalk and stepped onto the concrete platform. Between the plate above his head and the plate under his feet, the passage would form. And then it would be time for a fond farewell.
"Dr. Huth," a feminine voice said at his back.
He pointedly ignored the interruption.
"Dr. Huth?"
Irritated, he whirled.
The petite brunette took a step back, eyes wide. "This just came back from DNA retyping," she told him. "You said you wanted to have it as soon as it was processed." She held up a stoppered glass tube. In it was a single, intensely blue human eye.
"Yes, yes," he said, taking it from her just to shut her up. "You can go, now." He slipped the tube into his pocket and immediately forgot about it.