Nightfall by Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg Page B

important, I’m absolutely outraged that you’d have hesitated for so much as a moment to bring me your findings. Why did you wait so long?”
    “It was only yesterday that I finished double-checking.”
    “Yesterday! Then you should have been in here yesterday! Do you really mean to say, Beenay, that you seriously considered
suppressing
all this? That you would simply have tossed your results away and said nothing?”
    “No, sir,” said Beenay miserably. “I never actually thought about doing that.”
    “Well, that’s a blessing. Tell me, man, do you think I’m so enamored of my own beautiful theory that I’d want one of my most gifted associates to shield me from the unpleasant news that the theory’s got a flaw in it?”
    “No, sir. Of course not.”
    “Then why didn’t you come running in here with the news the moment you were sure you were right?”
    “Because—because, sir—” Beenay looked as though he wanted to vanish into the carpet. “Because I knew how upset you’d be. Because I thought you might—you might be so upset that your health would be affected. So I held back, I talked to a couple of friends, I thought through my own position on all of this, and I came to see that I really had no choice, I had to tell you that the Theory of Univer—”
    “So you really do believe I love my own theory more than I do the truth, eh?”
    “Oh, no, no, sir!”
    Again Athor smiled, and this time it was no effort at all. “But I do, you know. I’m as human as anybody else, believe it or not. The Theory of Universal Gravitation brought me every scientific honor this planet has to offer. It’s my passport to immortality, Beenay. You know that. And to have to deal with the possibility that the theory’s
wrong
—oh, it’s a powerful shock, Beenay, it goes right through me from front to back. Make no mistake about that. —Of course, I still believe that my theory’s correct.”
    “Sir?” said Beenay, all too obviously aghast. “But I’ve checked and checked and checked again, and—”
    “Oh, your findings are correct too, I’m sure of that. For you and Faro and Yimot
all
to have done it wrong—no, no, I’vealready said I don’t see much chance of that. But what you’ve got here doesn’t necessarily overthrow Universal Gravitation.”
    Beenay blinked a few times. “It doesn’t?”
    “Certainly not,” Athor said, warming to the situation. He felt almost cheerful now. The deathly unreal calm of the first few moments had given way to the very different tranquillity that one feels when one is in pursuit of truth. “What does the Theory of Universal Gravitation say, after all? That every body in the universe exerts a force on all other bodies, proportional to mass and distance. And what did you attempt to do in using Universal Gravitation to compute the orbit of Kalgash? Why, to factor in the gravitational impact that all the various astronomical bodies exert on our world as it travels around Onos. Is that not so?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Well, then, there’s no need to throw the Theory of Universal Gravitation out, at least not at this point. What we need to do, my friend, is simply to rethink our comprehension of the universe, and determine whether we’re ignoring something that should be figured into our calculations—some mysterious factor, that is, which all unbeknownst to us is exerting gravitational force on Kalgash and isn’t being taken into account.”
    Beenay’s eyebrows rose alarmingly. He gaped at Athor in what could only have been a look of total astonishment.
    Then he began to laugh. He smothered it at first by clamping his jaws, but the laughter insisted on escaping anyway, causing him to hunch his shoulders and emit strangled lurching coughs; and then he had to clap both his hands over his mouth to hold back the torrent of merriment.
    Athor watched, flabbergasted.
    “An unknown factor!” Beenay blurted, after a moment. “A dragon in the sky! An invisible