Did he sabotage experiments? Did he steal someone else’s research?”
Europa stared out of the window. “No, nothing illegal. If he had done that, he wouldn’t have been so feared. Instead, he decimated within the proper channels.” She hugged herself. “To understand my father’s potency, you’d have to know the academic world.”
Decker said, “I’ve heard its moral accountability falls somewhere between politics and Hollywood.”
“You’ve got it.” Europa gave him a beleaguered smile. “In academia, to be associated with the right people is all-important. And Dad was the right person to know. His stamp of approval added prestige to anything it touched. He was on the board of many scientific organizations and peer-review journals. A good word from him could immediately advance a career just as a well-placed barb could set it back ten years. During his scientific years, Dad doled out much more criticism than praise. He had brought down many a promising career with a single, snide comment. Presenting a paper to Emil Euler Ganz was an ordeal akin to being placed on the rack. A few of Dad’s remaining colleagues have enlightened me as to how truly sadistic he was, taking pleasure in smashing someone’s life’s work.”
Decker formulated his question. “Of all the people your father … offended—”
“Ruined.”
“Is there any specific person that sticks in your mind?”
“No. My older colleagues might be able to help you.”
“I’ll ask around,” Decker said.
“Approaching my father’s colleagues might be akin to entering the enemy camp.” She smiled. “Maybe not now that he’s dead. I’m sure they got their revenge witnessing my father’s downfall in cosmology. Since Emil Euler Ganz had become an object of derision, Dad’s enemies could discredit his previous criticism of their past work.”
She seemed bitter. Decker asked, “When you entered the field, did they hold your father’s behavior against you?”
She thought for a moment. “I’m sure a few did. Mostly, people felt sorry for me. As a girl, I had been abandoned by him. As a scientist, I was now saddled with this embarrassing nutcase called Father Jupiter. In reality, even before Jupiter my father had lost his scientific luster.”
“Why was that?”
“He was espousing some way-out theories even before he took his famous hike. Now, the few times I’ve spoken to him, his mind was as scientifically sharp as ever. But we kept our conversation on neutral ground, never talking about his postulations.” She got up and poured herself another cup of coffee. “Which are not as crackpot now as they were then.”
Decker asked, “What kind of crackpot theories did he hold?”
Europa returned to her desk. “It’s a long story as well as a complicated one.”
“I’ve got time. Try me.”
“How’s your working knowledge of physics?”
“I know Newton had three laws of motion.”
“That’s a start.”
“Actually someone at the Order clued me into that one.”
“Who?”
“Someone named Bob.”
“Ah …” Recognition. “Tall, thin … I think now he sports a beard.”
“Goatee.” Decker tried to hide his surprise. “Does he have a last name?”
“Changes with the wind. When I knew him, it was Robert Ross.”
Decker wrote it down in his notes. “Where do you know him from?”
“From Southwest. We were fellow students—actually dated for a couple of months. He was a fanatic admirer of Emil Ganz the scientist. With my father gone, I was his sole link to the great man. But when Dad was resurrected as Jupiter, Bob went directly to the source. At one time, he had a working brain. By now I’m sure it’s mush.”
“He impressed me as being sharp. But what do I know?”
Europa shrugged. “Maybe.”
Decker regarded her with a swift glance. She wasn’t as separate from the Order as Decker had thought. She had kept in contact with her father via phone, she had dated one of the members, and had been best friends with her father’s woman. Also, she remembered Pluto, albeit not fondly. And this was what she admitted to. Who knew what she wasn’t telling him. He said, “Explain your dad’s whacked-out theories.”
She sighed heavily. “Dad had developed some far-out theories about teleportation and time machines into alternative universes—a combination of H. G. Wells and Beam me up, Scotty.” Again, a sigh. “Not that this bears any relevancy to your investigation.”
“Actually, it may be very relevant,” Decker answered. “Maybe he chose to end his life because he believed that he was transporting himself to a better place with a time machine.”
“Even so, why would that be relevant to the police?”
“Because we have to make sure no one tries to follow in your father’s footsteps. I don’t want another Heaven’s Gate—not anywhere and certainly not in my district.”
“How can you guarantee that?”
“With adults, we can’t. Kids are another story.”
“I see your point.” She held up a finger. “So you are viewing this as a suicide.”
“Everything’s open,” Decker said without emotion. “Especially since your father had enemies.”
“That he did.”
“Getting back to your dad’s theories … did any of them have any scientific bases?”
“Of course. Before my father vanished, he’d been working on superluminal loopholes—things that could scientifically account for instantaneous time travel, backward-in-time travel and faster-than-light travel.”
Decker raised his brow. “Okay.”
“Not a science fiction reader, Lieutenant?”
Decker smiled, “I liked it when Han Solo did that warp speed thing on the Millennium Falcon.” He leaned forward. “What travels faster than light?”
“Undiscovered subatomic particles called tachyons—”
“Undiscovered?”
“They’re out there. We just haven’t found them yet. Also photons coming from the same electromagnetic wave. Subatomic particles called kaons travel backward in time. With them, we see the result of the event before the actual event takes place.”
“I don’t follow you,” Decker said. “I was taught that nothing travels as fast as light. Are you saying that’s not true?”
“I believe you mean that you were taught that nothing travels as fast as electromagnetic radiation. Visible light is only one small part of the spectrum. You’ve got UV waves, microwaves, radiowaves, infrared waves … any of this ring a bell?”
“No.”
She tapped a pencil on the surface of her desk. “All right. I’ll try to sum up twentieth-century physics in a couple of paragraphs.”
“I’m taking notes.”
“Stop me if I lose you.” She finished the dregs of her coffee. “For years, physics was based on Newton’s three laws of motion. The second law deals with the orbits of heavenly bodies. The fact that some of the orbits didn’t comply with Newton’s mathematics bothered no one. They just added a fudge factor, an arbitrary number that makes the math fit the physics.”
“You can do that?”