were silent. In the office atthe end of the room they found an unshaven Charlie gulping a cup ofcoffee with a very smug-looking Grdznth. The coffee pot was floatinggently about six feet above the desk. So were the Grdznth and Charlie.
"Charlie!" Tommy howled. "We've been trying to get you for hours! Theoperator--"
"I know, I know." Charlie waved a hand disjointedly. "I told her to goaway. I told the rest of the crew to go away, too."
"Then you cracked the differential?"
Charlie tipped an imaginary hat toward the Grdznth. "Spike cracked it,"he said. "Spike is a sort of Grdznth genius." He tossed the coffee cupover his shoulder and it ricochetted in graceful slow motion against thefar wall. "Now why don't you go away, too?"
Tommy turned purple. "We've got five months," he said hoarsely. "Do youhear me? If they aren't going to have their babies in five months, we'redead men."
Charlie chuckled. "Five months, he says. We figured the babies to comein about three months--right, Spike? Not that it'll make much differenceto us." Charlie sank slowly down to the desk. He wasn't laughing anymore. "We're never going to see any Grdznth babies. It's going to be alittle too cold for that. The energy factor," he mumbled. "Nobodythought of that except in passing. Should have, though, long ago. Twocompletely independent universes, obviously two energy systems.Incompatible. We were dealing with mass, space and dimension--but theenergy differential was the important one."
"What about the energy?"
"We're loaded with it. Super-charged. Packed to the breaking point andway beyond." Charlie scribbled frantically on the desk pad. "Look, ittook energy for them to come through--immense quantities of energy.Every one that came through upset the balance, distorted our wholeenergy pattern. And they knew from the start that the differential wasall on their side--a million of them unbalances four billion of us. Allthey needed to overload us completely was time for enough crossings."
"And we gave it to them." Pete sat down slowly, his face green. "Like arubber ball with a dent in the side. Push in one side, the other sidepops out. And we're the other side. When?"
"Any day now. Maybe any minute." Charlie spread his hands helplessly."Oh, it won't be bad at all. Spike here was telling me. Mean temperaturein only 39 below zero, lots of good clean snow, thousands of nice jaggedmountain peaks. A lovely place, really. Just a little too cold forGrdznth. They thought Earth was much nicer."
"For them," whispered Tommy.
"For them," Charlie said.
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from "Tiger by the Tail and Other Science Fiction Stories by Alan E. Nourse" and was first published in _Galaxy_ October 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
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