The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov Page B

the Pumping halted."
    "That? Not at all. Quite impossible."
    "Why not?" demanded Lament. "You are the head of the Committee on Technology and the Environment and it is precisely your task to stop the Pumping, or any technological procedure that threatens irreversible harm to the environment. There can be no greater, no more irreversible harm than threatened by Pumping."
    "Certainly. Certainly. If you are right. But it seems that what your story amounts to is that your assumptions are different from the accepted ones. Who's to say which set of assumptions is right?"
    "Sir, the structure I have built explains several things that are left doubtful in the accepted view."
    "Well, then, your colleagues ought to accept your modification and in that case you would scarcely have to come to me, I imagine."
    "Sir, my colleagues will not believe. Their self-interest stands in the way."
    "As your self-interest stands in the way of your believing you might be wrong. . . . Young man, my powers, on paper, are enormous, but I can only succeed when the public is willing to let me. Let me give you a lesson in practical politics."
    He looked at his wristwatch, leaned back and smiled. His offer was not characteristic of him, but an editorial in the Terrestrial Post that morning had referred to him as "a consummate politician, the most skilled in the International Congress" and the glow that that had roused within him still lingered.
    "It is a mistake," he said, "to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not encourage cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines.
    "Now then, young man, don't ask me to stop the Pumping. The economy and comfort of the entire planet depend on it. Tell me, instead, how to keep the Pumping from exploding the Sun."
    Lamont said, "There is no way, Senator. We are dealing with something here that is so basic, we can't play with it We must stop it."
    "Ah, and you can suggest only that we go back to matters as they were before Pumping."
    "We must"
    "In that case, you will need hard and fast proof that you are right."
    "The best proof," said Lament, stiffly, "is to have the Sun explode. I suppose you don't want me to go that far."
    "Not necessary, perhaps. Why can't you get Hallam to back you up?"
    "Because he is a small man who finds himself the Father of the Electron Pump. How can he admit his child will destroy the Earth?"
    "I see what you mean, but he is still the Father of the Electron Pump to the whole world, and only his word would carry sufficient weight in this respect."
    Lament shook his head. "He would never give in. He would rather see the Sun explode."
    The senator said, "Then force his hand. You have a theory but a theory by itself is meaningless. Surely there must be some way of checking it. The-rate of radioactive breakdown of, say, uranium depends on the interactions within the nucleus. Has that rate been changing in a fashion predicted by your theory but not the standard one?"
    Again, Lament shook his head. "Ordinary radioactivity depends on the weak nuclear interaction, and unfortunately, experiments of that sort will yield only borderline evidence. By the time it showed sufficiently to be unmistakable, it would be too late."
    "What else, then?"
    "There are pion interactions of a specific sort that might yield unmistakable data now. Better still there are quark-quark combinations that have produced puzzling