I walked around the half-tube. Her appearance was not what I expected to see. It was not a case of sawing a woman in half. The cross section of her body appeared only as an opaque blankness. When I touched her side I felt something cold and hard. It was as if I had touched eternity.
The laboratory officials were called in for consultation. It was decided that the matter should be hushed, at least until we knew what should be done. There was too much to do now to be bothered with police and reporters. We would not have a warrant issued for Keeshwar. There would be time to deal with him later.
We discovered that Trella could eat and she seemed to be in perfect health. But I knew that she was doomed unless we could restore the parts of her body. Her muscles would atrophy. Inaction is more deadly to the human machine than millions of disease germs.
If it would be possible to locate some day in the future when the wires might be pieced together and the linking of Trella's two halves might be accomplished without rationalizing irrational numbers, our problem would be solved. But the nearest date in the future when this could be done was three years ahead.[1]
But in three years Trella would be dead. We could not wait for the coordinates to adjust themselves. We had to make the coordinates adjustable to our purposes.
A small chronometer located in the atomic energy machine on the quartz tube gave us the exact time the silver wire had been broken.
Even Blake, my servant, offered a suggestion:
"If you could take the earth half of Miss Trella's body to Rihlon, or bring the Rihlon half to earth and bring the two Nows together, would that form a rational triangle?"
I took paper and pencil and tried to figure it out.