"It needs work," I admitted.
"Jery Delvin," said the Martian with open irritation, "time is fleeting, and I cannot afford to dally while you play semantic pingpong with my words! Kindly allow me to complete my statement of this situation, or I shall decide by your flippancy that you no longer desire the companionship of your woman!"
That one, I detected by the sudden stiffening of Snow's hand in mine, I didn't need to translate. I shut up.
"This, then," the Martian went on more calmly, "is despite what your scientists say, the center of your universe. If they will but compute the masses, orbits and velocities of all other matter in the universe, they will see that. Or are they yet aware of the universe in its entirety?"
"Not—not quite," I said carefully, not wanting to chance losing Snow. "Our astronomical instruments have a limited sensitivity to light. We see pretty damned far, but there's always something more beyond."
"Very well, then, you'll have to take my word for it. However, if you have properly understood the fact that our dimension exists at the place of Location itself, you will see at once that our only possible point of contact with your universe is at the central, non-moving point."
"I think I see," I said. "If you tried making contact anywhere else, it'd go speeding off from you, so to speak."
"Good. You understand perfectly. What Baxter proposes to do is to break our liaison, thus confining us to our own dimension forever.
"He proposes to do this by detonating a segment of our physical universe, one which coexists with yours. This will produce only the slightest of jolts in our world, but the balance between the two universes is so delicate that even this minor tremor will move us—by moving our contact-material—out of alignment. And we, since we exist in Location, cannot then move ourselves back."
"Would ... uh, would that be so terrible?" I asked nervously. "What do you gain by the contact anyhow?"