The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nothing Equation, by Tom Godwin

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Title: The Nothing Equation

Author: Tom Godwin

Release Date: May 27, 2008 [EBook #25628]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_The space ships were miracles of power and precision;
the men who manned them, rich in endurance and courage.
Every detail had been checked and double checked; every
detail except--_

THE NOTHING EQUATION

By TOM GODWIN

[Illustration]

The cruiser vanished back into hyperspace and he was alone in the
observation bubble, ten thousand light-years beyond the galaxy's
outermost sun. He looked out the windows at the gigantic sea of
emptiness around him and wondered again what the danger had been that
had so terrified the men before him.

Of one thing he was already certain; he would find that nothing was
waiting outside the bubble to kill him. The first bubble attendant had
committed suicide and the second was a mindless maniac on the Earthbound
cruiser but it must have been something inside the bubble that had
caused it. Or else they had imagined it all.

He went across the small room, his magnetized soles loud on the thin
metal floor in the bubble's silence. He sat down in the single chair,
his weight very slight in the feeble artificial gravity, and reviewed
the known facts.

The bubble was a project of Earth's Galactic Observation Bureau,
positioned there to gather data from observations that could not be made
from within the galaxy. Since metallic mass affected the hypersensitive
instruments the bubble had been made as small and light as possible. It
was for that reason that it could accommodate only one attendant.

The Bureau had selected Horne as the bubble's first attendant and the
cruiser left him there for his six months' period of duty. When it made
its scheduled return with his replacement he was found dead from a
tremen