"At first, we thought this had no connection with the spaceship
insulation problem we are under contract to work out, and we agreed to
keep this effect a Team secret until we could find out if it had
commercial possibilities. But now, I find that it has a direct
connection with the collapsed-matter problem. When the electron loses
its negative charge and reverts to a neutrino, there is a definite
accretion of interatomic binding-force, and the molecule, or the
crystalline lattice or whatever tends to contract, and when the neutrino
becomes a photon, the nucleus of the atom contracts."
* * * * *
Heym ben-Hillel was sitting oblivious to everything but his young
colleague's words, a slice of the flesh of the unclean beast impaled on
his fork and halfway to his mouth.
"Yes! Certainly!" he exclaimed. "That would explain so many things I
have wondered about: And of course, there are other forces at work
which, in the course of nature, balance that effect--"
"But can the process be controlled?" Suzanne Maillard wanted to know.
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