Number fields in fibers: the geometrically abelian case with rational critical values

Let X be an algebraic curve over \({\mathbb {Q}}\) and \({t\in {\mathbb {Q}}(X)}\) a non-constant rational function such that \({{\mathbb {Q}}(X)\ne {\mathbb {Q}}(t)}\). For every \({ n \in {\mathbb {Z}}}\) pick \({P_ n \in X(\bar{{\mathbb {Q}}})}\) such that \({t(P_n)=n}\). We conjecture that, for large N, among the number fields \({\mathbb {Q}}(P_1), \ldots , {\mathbb {Q}}(P_N)\) there are at least cN distinct. We prove this conjecture in the special case when \(\bar{{\mathbb {Q}}}(X)/\bar{{\mathbb {Q}}}(t)\) is an abelian field extension and the critical values of t are all rational. This implies, in particular, that our conjecture follows from a more famous conjecture of Schinzel.