(quoted from Starman Jones)
"...we're heading out to a place where space is really flat, not just mildly curved the way itis near a star. Anomalies are always flat, otherwise they couldn't fit together -- be congruent."
She looked puzzled. "Come again?"
"Look, Eldreth, how far did you go in mathematics?"
"Me? I flunked improper fractions. Miss Mimsey was very vexed with me...But you told me that all you went to was a country high school and didn't get to finish at that. Huh?"
"Yes, but I learned from my uncle. He was a great mathematician. Well, he didn't have any theorems named after him -- but a great one just the same, I think." He paused. "I don't know exactly how to tell you; it takes equations. Say! Could you lend me that scarf you're wearing for a minute?"
...
It was a photoprint showing a stylized picture of the solar system....
"Here's Jupiter. to go from Mars to Jupiter you have to go from here to here, don't you?"
"Obviously."
"But suppose I fold it so that Mars is on top of Jupiter? What's to prevent just stepping across?"
"Nothing, I guess. Except that what works for that scarf wouldn't work very well in practice. Would it?"
"No, not that near to a star. But it works fine after you back away from a star quite a distance. You see, that's just what an anomaly is, a place where space is folded back on itself, turning a long distance into no distance at all."
"Then space is warped."
"No, no, no! Look, I just folded your scarf. I didn't stretch it out of shape! I didn't even wrinkle it. Space is the same way; it's crumpled like a piece of waste paper - but it's not warped, just crumpled. Through some extra dimensions, of course."
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