---

The fat needle nosed into place, the ports clanged and hissed as the suction junction was made. Abruptly, the scene shifted and we were inside the lock between the two ships. Men in stained dungarees, stripped to the waist and sweating, were hauling heavy canvas-wrapped equipment into the mother ship. To one side two elderly guys were talking swiftly:

"You had difficulty?"

"More than ever. Thank God this is the last shipment."

"How about credits?"

"Exhausted."

"Do you mean that?"

"I do."

"I can't understand it. We had over two millions left."

"We lost all that through indirect purchases and—"

"And what?"

"Bribes, if you must know."

"Bribes?"

"My dear sir, you can't order cyclotrons without making people suspicious. If you so much as mention an atom today, you accuse yourself."

"Then we all stand accused here and now."

"I'm not denying that."

"What a terrible thing it is that the most precious part of our existence should be the most hated."

"You speak of—"

"The atom."

The speaker gazed before him meditatively, then sighed and turned into the shadowy depths of the spaceship.

I said: "All right, that's enough. Cut into the moment just before the black-out occurs. Take it inside the ship."

The integrators quickened and the sound track began its shrill babble again. Quick scenes of the interior of the mother ship flickered across the crystal. A control chamber, roofed with a transparent dome passed repeatedly before us, with the darting figures of men snapping through it. At last the Integrator fixed on that chamber and stopped. The scene was frozen into a still-photograph—a tableau of half a dozen half-naked men poised over the controls, heads tilted back to look through the dome.

Yarr said: "It doesn't take long. Watch closely."

I said: "Shoot."

---

The scene came to life with a blurp.

"—ready on the tension screens?"

"Ready, sir."

"Power checked?"

"Checked and ready, sir."

"Stand by, all. Time?"

"Two minutes to go."

"Good—" The graybeard in the center of the chamber paced with hands clasped behind him, very much like a captain on his bridge. Clearly through the sound mechanism came the thuds of his steps and the background hum of waiting mechanism.

The graybeard said: "Time?"

"One minute forty seconds."

"Gentlemen: In these brief moments I should like to thank you all for your splendid assistance. I speak not so much of your technical work, which speaks for itself, but of your willingness to exile yourselves and even incriminate yourselves along with me—Time?"

"One twenty-five."

"It is a sad thing that our work which is intended to grant the greatest boon imaginable to the Universe should have been driven into secrecy. Limitless power is so vast a concept that even I cannot speculate on the future it will bring to our worlds. In a few minutes, after we have succeeded, all of us will be universal heroes. Now, before our work is done, I want all of you to know that to me you are already heroes—Time?"

"One ten."

"And now, a warning. When we have set up our spacial partition membrane and begun the osmotic transfer of energy from hyperspace to our own there may be effects which I have been unable to predict. Raw energy pervading our space may also pervade our nervous systems and engender various unforeseen conditions. Do not be alarmed. Keep well in mind the fact that the change cannot be anything but for the better—Time?"

"Fifty seconds."

"The advantages? Up to now mathematics and the sciences have merely been substitutes for what man should do for himself. So FitzJohn preached in his first lecture, and so we are about to prove. The logical evolution of energy mechanics is not toward magnification and complex engineering development, but toward simplification—toward the concentration of all those powers within man himself—Time?"

"Twenty seconds."

"Courage, my friends. This is the moment we have worked for these past ten years. Secretly. Criminally. So it has always been with those who have brought man his greatest gifts."

"Ten seconds."

"Stand by, all."

"Ready all, sir."

The seconds ticked off with agonizing slowness. At the moment of zero the workers were galvanized into quick action. It was impossible to follow their motions or understand them, but you could see by the smooth timing and interplay that they were beautifully rehearsed. There was tragedy in those efforts for us who already knew the outcome.

As quickly as they had begun, the workers stopped and peered upward through the crystal dome. Far beyond them, crisp in the velvet blackness, that star gleamed, and as they watched, it winked out.

They started and exclaimed, pointing. The graybeard cried:

"It's impossible!"

"What is it, sir?"

"I—"

And in that moment blackness enveloped the scene.

I said: "Hold it—"

Yarr brought up the lights and the others turned to look at me. I thought for a while, idly watching the shimmering cams and cogs around me. Then I said: "It's a good start. The reason I imagine you gentlemen have been slightly bewildered up to now is that you're busy men with no time for foolishness. Now I'm not so busy and very foolish, so I read detective stories. This is going to be kind of backward detective story."

"All right," Groating said. "Go ahead."

"We've got a few clues. First, the Universe has ended through an attempt to pervade it with energy from hyperspace. Second, the attempt failed for a number of reasons which we can't discover yet. Third, the attempt was made in secrecy. Why?"

The controller said: "Why not? Scientists and all that—"

"I don't mean that kind of secrecy. These men were plainly outside the law, carrying on an illicit experiment. We must find out why energy experiments or atomic experiments were illegal. That will carry us back quite a few decades toward the present."

"But how?"

"Why, we trace the auxiliary cruiser, of course. If we can pick them up when they're purchasing supplies, we'll narrow our backward search considerably. Can you do it, Dr. Yarr?"

"It'll take time."

"Go ahead—we've got a thousand years."

It took exactly two days. In that time I learned a lot about the Prognosticator. They had it worked out beautifully. Seems the future is made up solely of probabilities. The Integrator could push down any one of these possible avenues, but with a wonderful check. The less probable the avenue of future was, the more off-focus it was. If a future event was only remotely possible, it was pictured as a blurred series of actions. On the other hand, the future that was almost-positive in the light of present data, was sharply in focus.

When we went back to the Prog Building two days later, Yarr was almost alive in his excitement. He said: "I really think I've got just the thing you're looking for."

"What's that?"

"I've picked up an actual moment of bribery. It has additional data that should put us directly on the track."

We sat down behind the desk with Yarr at the controls. He had a slip of paper in his hand which he consulted with much muttering as he adjusted co-ordinates. Once more we saw the preliminary off-focus shadows, then the sound blooped on like a hundred Stereo records playing at once. The crystal sharpened abruptly into focus.

The scream and roar of a gigantic foundry blasted our ears. On both sides of the scene towered the steel girder columns of the foundry walls, stretching deep into the background like the grim pillars of a satanic cathedral. Overhead cranes carried enormous blocks of metal with a ponderous gait. Smoke—black, white and fitfully flared with crimson from the furnaces, whirled around the tiny figures.

Two men stood before a gigantic casting. One, a foundryman in soiled overalls, made quick measurements which he called off to the other carefully checking a blueprint. Over the roar of the foundry the dialogue was curt and sharp:

"One hundred three point seven."

"Check."

"Short axis. Fifty-two point five."

"Check."

"Tangent on ovate diameter. Three degrees point oh five two."

"Check."

"What specifications for outer convolutions?"

"Y equals cosine X."

"Then that equation resolves to X equals minus one half Pi."

"Check."

The foundryman climbed down from the casting, folding his three-way gauge. He mopped his face with a bit of waste and eyed the engineer curiously as the latter carefully rolled up the blueprint and slid it into a tube of other rolled sheets. The foundryman said: "I think we did a nice job."

The engineer nodded.

"Only what in blazes do you want it for. Never saw a casting like that."

"I could explain, but you wouldn't understand. Too complicated."

The foundryman flushed. He said: "You theoretical guys are too damned snotty. Just because I know how to drop-forge doesn't mean I can't understand an equation."

"Mebbeso. Let it go at that. I'm ready to ship this casting out at once."

As the engineer turned to leave, rapping the rolled blueprints nervously against his calf, a great pig of iron that had been sailing up from the background swung dangerously toward his head. The foundryman cried out. He leaped forward, seized the engineer by the shoulder and sent him tumbling to the concrete floor. The blueprints went flying.

---

He pulled the engineer to his feet immediately and tried to straighten the dazed man who could only stare at the tons of iron that sailed serenely on. The foundryman picked up the scattered sheets and started to sort them. Abruptly he stopped and examined one of the pages closely. He began to look through the others, but before he could go any further, the blueprints were snatched from his hands.

He said: "What's this casting for?"

The engineer rolled the sheets together with quick, intense motions. He said: "None of your blasted business."

"I think I know. That's one-quarter a cyclotron. You're getting the other parts made up in different foundries, aren't you?"

There was no answer.

"Maybe you've forgotten Stabilization Rule 930."

"I haven't forgotten. You're crazy."

"Want me to call for official inspection?"

The engineer took a breath, then shrugged. He said: "I suppose the only way to convince you is to show you the master drafts. Come on—"

---

They left the foundry and trudged across the broad concrete of a landing field to where the fat needle of the auxiliary ship lay. They mounted the ramp to the side port and entered the ship. Inside, the engineer called: "It's happened again, boys. Let's go!"

The port swung shut behind them. Spacemen drifted up from the surrounding corridors and rooms. They were rangy and tough-looking and the sub-nosed paralyzers glinted casually in their hands as though they'd been cleaning them and merely happened to bring them along. The foundryman looked around for a long time. At last he said: "So it's this way?"

"Yes, it's this way. Sorry."

"I'd like you to meet some of my friends, some day—"

"Perhaps we will."

"They'll have an easier time with you than you're gonna have with me!" He clenched fists and poised himself to spring.

The engineer said: "Hey—wait a minute. Don't lose your head. You did me a good turn back there. I'd like to return the favor. I've got more credit than I know what to do with."

The foundryman gave him a perplexed glance. He relaxed and began to rub his chin dubiously.

He said: "Damn if this isn't a sociable ship. I feel friendlier already—"

The engineer grinned.

I called: "O.K., that's enough. Cut it," and the scene vanished.

"Well?" Yarr asked eagerly.

I said: "We're really in the groove now. Let's check back and locate the Stabilization debates on Rule 930." I turned to the C-S. "What's the latest rule number, sir?"

Groating said: "Seven fifteen."

The controller had already been figuring. He said: "Figuring the same law-production rate that would put Rule 930 about six hundred years from now. Is that right, Mr. Groating?"

The old man nodded and Yarr went back to his keyboard. I'm not going to bother you with what we all went through because a lot of it was very dull. For the benefit of the hermit from the Moon I'll just mention that we hung around the Stability Library until we located the year S. R. 930 was passed. Then we shifted to Stability headquarters and quick-timed through from January 1st until we picked up the debates on the rule.

The reasons for the rule were slightly bewildering on the one hand, and quite understandable on the other. It seems that in the one hundred and fifty years preceding, almost every Earth-wide university had been blown up in the course of an atomic-energy experiment. The blow-ups were bewildering—the rule understandable. I'd like to tell you about that debate because—well, because things happened that touched me.

The Integrator selected a cool, smooth foyer in the Administration Building at Washington. It had a marble floor like milky ice flecked with gold. One side was broken by a vast square window studded with a thousand round-bottle panes that refracted the afternoon sunlight into showers of warm color. In the background were two enormous doors of synthetic oak. Before those doors stood a couple in earnest conversation—a nice-looking boy with a portfolio under his arm, and a stunning girl. The kind with sleek-shingled head and one of those clean-cut faces that look fresh and wind-washed.

The controller said: "Why, that's the foyer to the Seminar Room. They haven't changed it at all in six hundred years."

Groating said: "Stability!" and chuckled.

Yarr said: "The debate is going on inside. I'll shift scene—"

"No—wait," I said. "Let's watch this for a while." I don't know why I wanted to—except that the girl made my pulse run a little faster and I felt like looking at her for a couple of years.

---

She was half crying. She said: "Then, if for no other reason—for my sake."

"For yours!" The boy looked harassed.

She nodded. "You'll sweep away his life work with a few words and a few sheets of paper."

"My own work, too."

"Oh, but won't you understand? You're young. I'm young. Youth loves to shatter the old idols. It feasts on the broken shards of destruction. It destroys the old ideas to make way for its own. But he's not young like us. He has only his past work to live on. If you shatter that, he'll have nothing left but a futile resentment. I'll be pent up with a broken old man who'll destroy me along with himself. Darling, I'm not saying you're wrong—I'm only asking you to wait a little."

She was crying openly now. The boy took her by the arm and led her to the crusted window. She turned her face away from the light—away from him. The boy said: "He was my teacher. I worship him. What I'm doing now may seem like treachery, but it's only treachery to his old age. I'm keeping faith with what he was thirty years ago—with the man who would have done the same thing to his teacher."

She cried: "But are you keeping faith with me? You, who will have all the joy of destroying and none of the tedious sweeping away the pieces. What of my life and all the weary years to come when I must coddle him and soothe him and lead him through the madness of forgetting what you've done to him?"

"You'll spend your life with me. I break no faith with you, Barbara."

She laughed bitterly. "How easily you evade reality. I shall spend my life with you—and in that short sentence, poof!"—she flicked her hand—"you dismiss everything. Where will he live? Alone? With us? Where?"

"That can be arranged."

"You're so stubborn, so pig-headed in your smug, righteous truth-seeking. Steven—for the very last time—please. Wait until he's gone. A few years, that's all. Leave him in peace. Leave us in peace."

He shook his head and started toward the oaken doors. "A few years waiting to salvage the pride of an old man, a few more catastrophies, a few more thousand lives lost—it doesn't add up."

She sagged against the window, silhouetted before the riot of color, and watched him cross to the doors. All the tears seemed drained out of her. She was so limp I thought she would fall to the floor at any instant. And then, as I watched her, I saw her stiffen and I realized that another figure had entered the foyer and was rushing toward the boy. It was an oldish man, bald and with an ageless face of carved ivory. He was tall and terribly thin. His eyes were little pits of embers.

He called: "Steven!"

The boy stopped and turned.

---

"Steven, I want to talk to you."

"It's no use, sir!"

"You're headstrong, Steven. You pit a few years' research against my work of a lifetime. Once I respected you. I thought you would carry on for me as I've carried on for the generations that came before me."

"I am, sir."

"You are not." The old man clutched at the boy's tunic and spoke intensely. "You betray all of us. You will cut short a line of research that promises the salvation of humanity. In five minutes you will wipe out five centuries of work. You owe it to those who slaved before us not to let their sweat go in vain."

The boy said: "I have a debt also to those who may die."

"You think too much of death, too little of life. What if a thousand more are killed—ten thousand—in the end it will be worth it."

"It will never be worth it. There will never be an end. The theory has always been wrong, faultily premised."

"You fool!" the old man cried. "You damned, blasted young fool. You can't go in there!"

"I'm going, sir. Let go."

"I won't let you go in."

The boy pulled his arm free and reached for the doorknob. The old man seized him again and yanked him off balance. The boy muttered angrily, set himself and thrust the old man back. There was a flailing blur of motion and a cry from the girl. She left the window, ran across the room and thrust herself between the two. And in that instant she screamed again and stepped back. The boy sagged gently to the floor, his mouth opened to an O of astonishment. He tried to speak and then relaxed. The girl dropped to her knees alongside him and tried to get his head on her lap. Then she stopped.

That was all. No shot or anything. I caught a glimpse of a metallic barrel in the old man's hand as he hovered frantically over the dead boy. He cried: "I only meant to—I—" and kept on whimpering.

After a while the girl turned her head as though it weighed a ton, and looked up. Her face was suddenly frostbitten. In dull tones she said: "Go away, father."

The old man said: "I only—" His lips continued to twitch, but he made no sound.

The girl picked up the portfolio and got to her feet. Without glancing again at her father, she opened the doors, stepped in and closed them behind her with a soft click. The debating voices broke off at the sight of her. She walked to the head of the table, set the portfolio down, opened it and took out a sheaf of type-script. Then she looked at the amazed men who were seated around the table gaping at her.

She said: "I regret to inform the stabilizers that Mr. Steven Wilder has been unavoidably detained. As his fiancÉe and co-worker, however, I have been delegated to carry on his mission and present his evidence to the committee—" She paused and went rigid, fighting for control.

One of the stabilizers said: "Thank you. Will you give your evidence, Miss ... Miss?"

"Barbara Leeds."

"Thank you, Miss Leeds. Will you continue?"

With the gray ashes of a voice she went on: "We are heartily in favor of S. R. 930 prohibiting any further experimentation in atomic energy dynamics. All such experiments have been based on—almost inspired by the FitzJohn axioms and mathematic. The catastrophic detonations which have resulted must invariably result since the basic premises are incorrect. We shall prove that the backbone of FitzJohn's equations is entirely in error. I speak of

She glanced at the notes, hesitated for an instant, and then continued: "FitzJohn's errors are most easily pointed out if we consider the Leeds Derivations involving transfinite cardinals—"

The tragic voice droned on.

I said: "C-cut."

There was silence.

We sat there feeling bleak and cold, and for no reason at all, the icy sea-green opening bars of Debussy's "La Mer" ran through my head. I thought: "I'm proud to be a human—not because I think or I am, but because I can feel. Because humanity can reach out to us across centuries, from the past or future, from facts or imagination, and touch us—move us."

At last I said: "We're moving along real nice now."

No answer.

I tried again: "Evidently that secret experiment that destroyed existence was based on this FitzJohn's erroneous theory, eh?"

The C-S stirred and said: "What? Oh—Yes, Carmichael, quite right."

In low tones the controller said: "I wish it hadn't happened. He was a nice-looking youngster, that Wilder—promising."

I said: "In the name of heaven, sir, it's not going to happen if we pull ourselves together. If we can locate the very beginning and change it, he'll probably marry the girl and live happily ever after."

"Of course—" The controller was confused. "I hadn't realized."

I said: "We've got to hunt back a lot more and locate this FitzJohn. He seems to be the key man in this puzzle."

---

And how we searched. Boys, it was like working a four-dimensional jig saw, the fourth dimension in this case being time. We located a hundred universities that maintained chairs and departments exclusively devoted to FitzJohn's mathematics and theories. We slipped back a hundred years toward the present and found only fifty and in those fifty were studying the men whose pupils were to fill the chairs a century later.

Another century back and there were only a dozen universities that followed the FitzJohn theories. They filled the scientific literature with trenchant, belligerent articles on FitzJohn, and fought gory battles with his opponents. How we went through the libraries. How many shoulders we looked over. How many pages of equations we snap-photographed from the whirling octahedron for future reference. And finally we worked our way back to Bowdoin College, where FitzJohn himself had taught, where he worked out his revolutionary theories and where he made his first converts. We were on the home stretch.

FitzJohn was a fascinating man. Medium height, medium color, medium build—his body had the rare trick of perfect balance. No matter what he was doing, standing, sitting, walking, he was always exquisitely poised. He was like the sculptor's idealization of the perfect man. FitzJohn never smiled. His face was cut and chiseled, as though from a roughish sandstone; it had the noble dignity of an Egyptian carving. His voice was deep, unimpressive in quality, yet unforgettable for the queer, intense stresses it laid on his words. Altogether he was an enigmatic creature.

He was enigmatic for another reason, too, for although we traced his career at Bowdoin backward and forward for all its forty years, although we watched him teach the scores and scores of disciples who afterward went out into the scholastic world to take up the fight for him—we could never trace FitzJohn back into his youth. It was impossible to pick him up at any point earlier than his first appearance on the physics staff of the college. It seemed as though he were deliberately concealing his identity.

Yarr raged with impotent fury. He said: "It's absolutely aggravating. Here we follow the chain back to less than a half century from today and we're blocked—" He picked up a small desk phone and called upstairs to the data floors. "Hullo, Cullen? Get me all available data on the name FitzJohn. FitzJOHN. What's the matter, you deaf? F-I-T-Z ... That's right. Be quick about it."

I said: "Seems as if FitzJohn didn't want people to know where he came from."

"Well," Yarr said pettishly, "that's impossible. I'll trace him backward second by second, if I have to!"

I said: "That would take a little time, wouldn't it?"

"Yes."

"Maybe a couple of years?"

"What of it? You said we had a thousand."

"I didn't mean you to take me seriously, Dr. Yarr."

The small pneumatic at Yarr's desk whirred and clicked. Out popped a cartridge. Yarr opened it and withdrew a list of figures, and they were appalling. Something like two hundred thousand FitzJohns on the Earth alone. It would take a decade to check the entire series through the Integrator. Yarr threw the figures to the floor in disgust and swiveled around to face us.

"Well?" he asked.

I said: "Seems hopeless to check FitzJohn back second by second. At that rate we might just as well go through all the names on the list."

"What else is there to do?"

I said: "Look, the Prognosticator flirted twice with something interesting when we were conning FitzJohn's career. It was something mentioned all through the future, too."

"I don't recall—" the C-S began.

"It was a lecture, sir," I explained. "FitzJohn's first big lecture when he set out to refute criticism. I think we ought to pick that up and go through it with a fine comb. Something is bound to come out of it."

"Very well."

---

Images blurred across the spinning crystal as Yarr hunted for the scene. I caught fuzzy fragments of a demolished Manhattan City with giant crablike creatures mashing helpless humans, their scarlet chiton glittering. Then an even blurrier series of images. A city of a single stupendous building towering like Babel into the heavens; a catastrophic fire roaring along the Atlantic seaboard; then a sylvan civilization of odd, naked creatures flitting from one giant flower to another. But they were all so far off focus they made my eyes ache. The sound was even worse.

Groating leaned toward me and whispered: "Merely vague possibilities—"

I nodded and then riveted my attention to the crystal, for it held a clear scene. Before us lay an amphitheater. It was modeled on the ancient Greek form, a horseshoe of gleaming white-stone terraces descending to a small square white rostrum. Behind the rostrum and surrounding the uppermost tiers of seats was a simple colonnade. The lovely and yet noble dignity was impressive.

The controller said: "Hel-lo, I don't recognize this."

"Plans are in the architectural offices," Groating said. "It isn't due for construction for another thirty years. We intend placing it at the north end of Central Park—"

It was difficult to hear them. The room was filled with the bellow and roar of shouting from the amphitheater. It was packed from pit to gallery with quick-jerking figures. They climbed across the terraces; they fought up and down the broad aisles; they stood on their seats and waved. Most of all they opened their mouths into gaping black blots and shouted. The hoarse sound rolled like slow, thunderous waves, and there was a faint rhythm struggling to emerge from the chaos.

A figure appeared from behind the columns, walked calmly up to the platform and began arranging cards on the small table. It was FitzJohn, icy and self-possessed, statuesque in his white tunic. He stood alongside the table, carefully sorting his notes, utterly oblivious of the redoubled roar that went up at his appearance. Out of that turmoil came the accented beats of a doggerel rhyme:

When he was finished, FitzJohn straightened and, resting the fingertips of his right hand lightly on top of the table, he gazed out at the rioting—un-smiling, motionless. The pandemonium was reaching unprecedented heights. As the chanting continued, costumed figures appeared on the terrace tops and began fighting down the aisles toward the platform. There were men wearing metal-tubed frame-works representing geometric figures. Cubes, spheres, rhomboids and tesseracts. They hopped and danced outlandishly.

Two young boys began unreeling a long streamer from a drum concealed behind the colonnade. It was of white silk and an endless equation was printed on it that read:

and so on, yard after yard after yard. It didn't exactly make sense, but I understood it to be some kind of cutting reference to FitzJohn's equations.

There were hundreds of others, some surprising and many obscure. Lithe contortionists, made up to represent MÖbius Strips, grasped ankles with their hands and went rolling down the aisles. A dozen girls appeared from nowhere, clad only in black net representing giant Aleph-Nulls, and began an elaborate ballet. Great gas-filled balloons, shaped into weird topological manifolds were dragged in and bounced around.

It was utter insanity and utterly degrading to see how these mad college kids were turning FitzJohn's lecture into a Mardi Gras. They were college kids, of course, crazy youngsters who probably couldn't explain the binomial theorem, but nevertheless were giving their own form of expression to their teachers' antagonism to FitzJohn. I thought vaguely of the days centuries back when a thousand Harvard undergraduates did a very similar thing when Oscar Wilde came to lecture. Undergraduates whose entire reading probably consisted of the Police Gazette.

And all the while they danced and shouted and screamed, FitzJohn stood motionless, fingertips just touching the table, waiting for them to finish. You began with an admiration for his composure. Then suddenly you realized what a breathtaking performance was going on. You glued your eyes to the motionless figure and waited for it to move—and it never did.

What?

You don't think that was so terrific, eh? Well, one of you get up and try it. Stand alongside a table and rest your fingertips lightly on the top—not firmly enough to bear the weight of your arm—but just enough to make contact. Maybe it sounds simple. Just go ahead and try it. I'll bet every credit I ever own no one of you can stand there without moving for sixty seconds. Any takers? I thought not. You begin to get the idea, eh?

They began to get the same idea in the amphitheater. At first the excitement died down out of shame. There's not much fun making a holy show of yourself if your audience doesn't react. They started it up again purely out of defiance, but it didn't last long. The chanting died away, the dancers stopped cavorting, and at last that entire audience of thousands stood silent, uneasily watching FitzJohn. He never moved a muscle.

After what seemed like hours of trying to outstare him, the kids suddenly gave in. Spatters of applause broke out across the terraces. The clapping was taken up and it rose to a thunder of beating palms. No one is as quick to appreciate a great performance as a youngster. These kids sat down in their seats and applauded like mad. FitzJohn never moved until the applause, too, had died down, then he picked up his card and, without preamble—as though nothing at all had happened—he began his lecture.

---

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have been accused of creating my theory of energy-dynamics and my mathematics out of nothing—and my critics cry: 'From nothing comes nothing.' Let me remind you first that man does not create in the sense of inventing what never existed before. Man only discovers. The things we seem to invent, no matter how novel and revolutionary, we merely discover. They have been waiting for us all the time.

"Moreover, I was not the sole discoverer of this theory. No scientist is a lone adventurer, striking out into new fields for himself. The way is always led by those who precede us, and we who seem to discover all, actually do no more than add our bit to an accumulated knowledge.

"To show you how small my own contribution was and how much I inherited from the past, let me tell you that the basic equation of my theory is not even my own. It was discovered some fifty years prior to this day—some ten years before I was born.

"For on the evening of February 9, 2909, in Central Park, on the very site of this amphitheater, my father, suddenly struck with an idea, mentioned an equation to my mother. That equation:

was the inspiration for my own theory. So you can understand just how little I have contributed to the 'invention' of The Tension Energy-Dynamics Equations—"

FitzJohn glanced at the first card and went on: "Let us consider, now, the possible permutations on the factor

I yelled: "That's plenty. Cut!" and before the first word was out of my mouth the controller and the C-S were shouting, too. Yarr blanked out the crystal and brought up the lights. We were all on our feet, looking at each other excitedly. Yarr jumped up so fast his chair went over backward with a crash. We were in a fever because, boys, that day happened to be February 9, 2909, and we had just about two hours until evening.

The controller said: "Can we locate these FitzJohns?"

"In two hours? Don't be silly. We don't even know if they're named FitzJohn today."

"Why not?"

"They may have changed their name—it's getting to be a fad nowadays. The son may have changed his name as a part of that cover-up of his past. Heaven only knows why not—"

"But we've got to split them up—whoever they are."

The C-S said: "Take hold of yourself. How are we going to separate eleven million married people? Didn't you ever hear of Stability?"

"Can't we publish a warning and order everybody out of the park?"

"And let everybody know about the Prog Building?" I said. "You keep forgetting Stability."

"Stability be damned! We can't let them have that conversation—and if they do anyway, we can't let them have that boy!"

Groating was really angry. He said: "You'd better go home and read through the Credo. Even if it meant the salvation of the Universe I would not break up a marriage—nor would I harm the boy."

"Then what do we do?"

"Have patience. We'll think of something."

I said: "Excuse me, sir—I've got an idea."

"Forget ideas," the controller yelled, "we need action."

"This is action."

The C-S said: "Go ahead, Carmichael."

"Well, obviously the important thing is to keep all married couples out of the north sector of Central Park tonight. Suppose we get a special detail of police together at once. Then we beat through the park and get everyone out. We can quarantine it—set up a close cordon around the park and guard it all night."

The controller yelled: "It may be one of the policemen."

"O.K., then we pick the unmarried ones. Furthermore, we give strict orders that all women are to stay away."

The C-S said: "It might work—it'll have to work. We can't let that conversation take place."

I said: "Excuse me, sir, do you happen to be married?"

He grinned: "My wife's in Washington. I'll tell her to stay there."

"And the controller, sir?"

The controller said: "She'll stay home. What about yourself?"

"Me? Strictly bachelor."

Groating laughed. "Unfortunate, but excellent for tonight. Come, let's hurry."

---

We took the pneumatic to headquarters and let me tell you, stuff began to fly, but high! Before we were there ten minutes, three companies were reported ready for duty. It seemed to satisfy the controller, but it didn't satisfy me. I said: "Three's not enough. Make it five."

"Five hundred men? You're mad."

I said: "I wish it could be five thousand. Look, we've knocked our brains out digging through a thousand years for this clue. Now that we've got it I don't want us to muff the chance."

The C-S said: "Make it five."

"But I don't think we've got that many unmarried men in the service."

"Then get all you can. Get enough so they can stand close together in the cordon—close enough so no one can wander through. Look—this isn't a case of us hunting down a crook who knows we're after him. We're trying to pick up a couple who are perfectly innocent—who may wander through the cordon. We're trying to prevent an accident, not a crime."

They got four hundred and ten all told. The whole little regiment was mustered before headquarters and the C-S made a beautifully concocted speech about a criminal and a crime that had to be prevented and hoopus-gadoopus, I forget most of it. Naturally we couldn't let them know about the Prog Building any more than we could the citizens—and I suppose you understand why the secret had to be kept.

You don't, eh? Well, for the benefit of the hermit from the Moon I'll explain that, aside from the important matter of Stability, there's the very human fact that the Prog would be besieged by a million people a day looking for fortunetelling and hot tips on the races. Most important of all, there's the question of death. You can't let a man know when and how he's going to die. You just can't.

There wasn't any sense keeping the news from the papers because everyone around Central Park was going to know something was up. While the C-S was giving instructions, I slipped into a booth and asked for multi-dial. When most of the reporters' faces were on segments of the screen, I said: "Greetings, friendlies!"

They all yelled indignantly because I'd been out of sight for three days.

I said: "No more ho-hum, lads. Carmichael sees all and tells all. Hot-foot it up to the north end of Central Park in an hour or so. Big stuff!"

The Journal said: "Take you three days to find that out?"

"Yep."

The Post said: "Can it, Carmichael. The last time you sent us north, the south end of the Battery collapsed."

"This is no gag. I'm giving it to you straight."

"Yeah?" The Post was belligerent. "I say Gowan!"

"Gowan yourself," the Ledger said. "This side of the opposition is credible."

"You mean gullible."

I said: "The word this time is sensational. Four hundred police on the march. Tramp-tramp-tramp—the beat of the drum—boots—et cetera. Better get moving if you want to tag along."

The News gave me a nasty smile and said: "Brother, for your sake it better be good—because I'm preparing a little sensation of my own to hand over."

I said: "Make it a quick double cross, Newsy. I'm in a hurry," and I clicked off. It's funny how sometimes you can't get along right with wrong people.

---

You know how fast night comes on in February. The blackness gathers in the sky like a bunched cape. Then someone lets it drop and it sinks down over you with swiftly spreading black folds. Those dusky folds were just spreading out toward the corners of the sky when we got to the park. The cops didn't even bother to park their helios. They vaulted out and left them blocking the streets. In less than half a minute, two hundred were beating through the park in a long line, driving everyone out. The rest were forming the skeleton of the cordon.

It took an hour to make sure the park was clear. Somehow, if you tell a hundred citizens to do something, there will always be twenty who'll fight you—not because they really object to doing what they're told, but just out of principle or curiosity or cantankerousness.

The all-clear came at six o'clock, and it was just in time because it was pitch dark. The controller, the C-S and myself stood before the high iron gates that open onto the path leading into the rock gardens. Where we stood we could see the jet masses of foliage standing crisp and still in the chill night. To either side of us stretched the long, wavering lines of police glow lamps. We could see the ring of bright dots drawn around the entire north end of the park like a necklace of glowing pearls.

The silence and the chill waiting was agonizing. Suddenly I said: "Excuse me, sir, but did you tell the police captain to O.K. the reporters?"

The C-S said: "I did, Carmichael—" and that was all. It wasn't so good because I'd hoped we'd have a little talk to ease the tension.

Again there was nothing but the cold night and the waiting. The stars overhead were like bits of radium and so beautiful you wished they were candy so you could eat them. I tried to imagine them slowly blotted out, and I couldn't. It's impossible to visualize the destruction of any lovely thing. Then I tried counting the police lamps around the park. I gave that up before I reached twenty.

At last I said: "Couldn't we go in and walk around a bit, sir?"

The C-S said: "I don't see why not—"

So we started through the gate, but we hadn't walked three steps into the park when there was a shout behind us and the sharp sounds of running feet.

But it was only old Yarr running up to us with a couple of cops following him. Yarr looked like a banshee with his coat flying and an enormous muffler streaming from his neck. He dressed real old-fashioned. He was all out of breath and just gasped while the C-S told the cops it was all right.

Yarr panted: "I ... I—"

"Don't worry, Dr. Yarr, everything is safe so far."

Yarr took an enormous breath, held it for a moment and then let it out with a woosh. In natural tones he said: "I wanted to ask you if you'd hold on to the couple. I'd like to examine them for a check on the Prognosticator."

Gently, the C-S explained: "We're not trying to catch them, Dr. Yarr. We don't know who they are and we may never know. All we want to do is to prevent this conversation."

---

So we forgot about taking a walk through the gardens and there was more cold and more silence and more waiting. I clasped my hands together and I was so chilled and nervous it felt like I had ice water between the palms. A quick streak of red slanted up through the sky, the rocket discharges of the Lunar Transport, and ten seconds later I heard the wham of the take-off echoing from Governor's Island and the follow-up drone. Only that drone kept on sounding long after it should have died away and it was too thin—too small—

I looked up, startled, and there was a helio making lazy circles over the center of the rock gardens. Its silhouette showed clearly against the stars and I could see the bright squares of its cabin windows. Suddenly I realized there was a stretch of lawn in the center of the gardens where a helio could land—where a couple could get out to stretch their legs and take an evening stroll.

I didn't want to act scared, so I just said: "I think we'd better go inside and get that helio out of there."

So we entered the gate and walked briskly toward the gardens, the two cops right at our heels. I managed to keep on walking for about ten steps and then I lost all control. I broke into a run and the others ran right behind me—the controller, the C-S, Yarr and the cops. We went pelting down the gravel path, circled a dry fountain and climbed a flight of steps three at a clip.

The helio was just landing when I got to the edge of the lawn. I yelled: "Keep off! Get out of here!" and started toward them across the frozen turf. My feet pounded, but not much louder than my heart. I guess the whole six of us must have sounded like a herd of buffalo. I was still fifty yards off when dark figures started climbing out of the cabin. I yelled: "Didn't you hear me? Get out of this park!"

And then the Post called: "That you, Carmichael? What goes on?"

Sure—it was the press.

So I stopped running and the others stopped and I turned to the C-S and said: "Sorry about the false alarm, sir. What shall I do with the reporters—have them fly out or can they stay? They think this is a crime hunt."

Groating was a little short of breath. He said: "Let them stay, Carmichael, they can help us look for Dr. Yarr. He seems to have lost himself somewhere in the woods."

I said: "Yes, sir," and walked up to the helio.

The cabin door was open and warm amber light spilled out into the blackness. All the boys were out by this time, getting into their coveralls and stamping around and making the usual newspaper chatter. As I came up, the Post said: "We brung your opposition along, Carmichael—Hogan of the Trib."

The News said: "Now's as good a time as any for the wrasslin' match, eh? You been in training, Carmichael?" His voice had a nasty snigger to it and I thought: "Oh-ho, this Hogan probably scales two twenty and he'll mop me up, but very good—to the great satisfaction, no doubt, of my confrere from the News."

Only when they shoved Hogan forward, he wasn't so big, so I thought: "At a time like this—let's get it over with fast." I took a little sprint through the dark and grabbed Hogan around the chest and dumped him to the ground.

I said: "O.K., opposition, that's—"

Suddenly I realized this Hogan'd been soft—soft but firm, if you get me. I looked down at her, full of astonishment and she looked up at me, full of indignation, and the rest of the crowd roared with laughter.

I said: "I'll be a pie-eyed emu!"

---

And then, my friends, six dozen catastrophes and cataclysms and volcanoes and hurricanes and everything else hit me. The C-S began shouting and then the controller and after a moment, the cops. Only by that time the four of them were on top of me and all over me, so to speak. Little Yarr came tearing up, screaming at Groating and Groating yelled back and Yarr tried to bash my head in with his little fists.

They yanked me to my feet and marched me off while the reporters and this Halley Hogan girl stared. I can't tell you much about what happened after that—the debating and the discussing and the interminable sound and fury, because most of the time I was busy being locked up. All I can tell you is that I was it. Me. I. I was the one man we were trying to stop. I—innocent me. I was X, the mad scientist and Y, the ruthless dictator and Z, the alien planet—all rolled into one. I was the one guy the Earth was looking to stop.

Sure—because you see if you twist "I'll be a pie-eyed emu" enough, you get FitzJohn's equation:

I don't know how my future son is going to figure I was talking mathematics. I guess it'll just be another one of those incidents that turn into legend and get pretty well changed in the process. I mean the way an infant will say "goo" and by the time his pop gets finished telling about it it's become the Preamble to the Credo.

What?

No, I'm not married—yet. In fact, that's why I'm stationed up here editing a two-sheet weekly on this God-forsaken asteroid. Old Groating, he calls it protective promotion. Well, sure, it's a better job than reporting. The C-S said they wouldn't have broken up an existing marriage, but he was going to keep us apart until they can work something out on the Prognosticator.

No—I never saw her again after that time I dumped her on the turf, but, boys, I sure want to. I only got a quick look, but she reminded me of that Barbara Leeds girl, six hundred years from now. That lovely kind with shingled hair and a clean-cut face that looks fresh and wind-washed—

I keep thinking about her and I keep thinking how easy it would be to stow out of here on an Earth-bound freighter—change my name—get a different kind of job. To hell with Groating and to hell with Stability and to hell with a thousand years from now. I've got to see her again—soon.

I keep thinking how I've got to see her again.