Page:Fantastic v08n11 1959-11.djvu/49
It is conceivable, though vastly improbable, that at some given instant, all the molecules (or, more modestly, significantly more than fifty percent) might be moving west. It is a little like the chance of getting thirteen hearts at bridge or a "pat" royal flush at poker—though of course vastly more unlikely than that. The point is that the possibility, however remote, is a real one.
You see, Di, miracles are possible though we might have to wait more than the lifetimes of a thousand universes to see one. Yet, the miracle might come this moment, conceivably. You might unpin that charming half-moon silver brooch at your throat and hold it out, and if all the molecules immediately beneath it chanced to be moving upward at that instant, it would be struck from your hand high into the air! Or across the corridor into my hand, if that chanced to be the whim of the molecule flock. (Here, incidentally, is where Maxwell's demon comes in. The British physicist Clerk Maxwell, simply to illustrate a point about the Second Law of Thermodynamics, hypothesized an invisible spirit with the ability to direct the motion of individual particles.)
Similarly, at some instant all the molecules in the Folly might chance to be in Chamber A when the knife edge comes down. In that case, we would surely know it, for the pressure reading would be twice unity—two—in Chamber A and zero—a vacuum—in Chamber B.
Naturally, I am not looking for any such horrendously spectacular result. The. most I hope for is a reading that shows a barely significant difference. Even at that I am like a roulette player waiting for black to turn up a hundred times running (really a million or a billion times), I am like a bridge player hoping to be dealt thirteen hearts in every hand for, say, three weeks of play.
I am like a gambler tirelessly casting a billion billion dice—the Folly my box—in the hope of one day throwing a billion billion sixes. Note, Di, that I try not to change dice, I try to shake the same molecules each time—that is why the Folly is hermetically sealed. I don't imagine that like an old deck of cards the molecules will develop markings with use and become "readers"—though that is an attractive notion—but I coddle in my mind the ridiculous