A Slight Miscalculation

A Slight Miscalculation

By Ben Bova

Moneygrinder was leaning back in the plush desk chair, trying to look both interested and noncommittal at the same time, which was difficult to do, because he never could follow Nathan when the mathematician was trying to explain his work.

“Then it’s a thimple matter of transposing the progression,” Nathan was lisping, talking too fast because he was excited as he scribbled equations on the fuschsia-colored chalkboard with nerve-ripping seuaks of the yellow chalk.

“You thee?” Nathan said at last, standing beside the chalkboard. It was totally covered with his barely legible numbers and symbols. A pall of yellow chalk dust hovered about him.

“Um…” said Moneygrinder. “Your conclusion, then…?”

“It’s perfectly clear,” Nathan said. “If you have any reasonable data base at all, you can not only predict when an earthquake will hit and where, but you can altho predict its intensity.”

Moneygrinder’s eyes narrowed. “You’re sure?”

“I’ve gone over it with the CalTech geophysicists. They agree with the theory.”

“Hmm.” Moneygrinder tapped his desktop with his pudgy fingers. “I know this is a little outside your area of interest, Nathan, but…, ah, can you really predict actual earthquakes? Or is this all theoretical?”

“Sure you can predict earthquakes,” Nathan said, grinning like Francis, the movie star. “Like next Thursday’s.”

“Next Thursday’s?”

A slight miscalculation. Photo by Elena

“Yeth. There’s going to be a major earthquake next Thursday.”

“Where?”

“Right here. Along the Fault.”

Nathan tossed his stubby piece of chalk into the air nonchalantly, but missed the catch and it fell to the carpeted floor.

Moneygrinder, slightly paler than the chalk, asked, “A major quake, you say?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did… did the CalTech people make this prediction?”

“No, I did. They don’t agree. They claim I’ve got an inverted gamma factor in the fourteenth set of equations. I’ve got the computer checking it right now.”

Some of the color returned to Moneygrinder’s flabby cheeks. “Oh… oh, I see. Well, let me know what the computer says”.

“Sure.”