Asimov's Mysteries

'You listen. I've waited ten years. You have the jobs in space and I have to teach school on Earth, but

I'm a better man than any of you or all of you.'

'Granted-' began Talliaferro.

'And I don't want your condescension, either. Mandel witnessed it. I suppose you've heard of Mandel. Well, he's chairman of the astronautics division at the Convention and I demonstrated mass transference for him. It was a crude device and it burned out after one use but- Are you listening?'

'We're listening,' said Ryger coldly. 'For what that counts.'

'He'll let me talk about it my way. You bet he will. No warning. No advertisement. I'm going to spring it at them like a bombshell. When I give them the fundamental relationships involved it will break up the

Convention. They'll scatter to their home labs to check on me and builddevices. And they'll find it works.

I made a five mousedisappear at one spot in my lab and appear in another. Mandelwitnessed it.'

He stared at them, glaring first at one face, then at another. He said, 'You don't believe me, do you?' Ryger said, 'If you don't want advertisement, why do yon tell us?'

'You're different. You're my friends, my classmates. Youwent out into space and left me behind.' 

'That wasn't a matter of choice,' objected Kaunas in a thin, high voice.

Villiers ignored that. He said, 'So I want you to know now. What will work for a mouse will work for a human. What will move something ten feet across a lab will move it a million miles across space. I'll be on the Moon, and on Mercury, and on Ceres and anywhere I want to go. I'll match every one of you and more. And I'll have done more for astronomy just teaching school and thinking than all of you with your observatories and telescopes and cameras and spaceships.'

'Well,' said Talliaferro, 'I'm pleased. More power to you. May I see a copy of the paper?'

'Oh, no.' Villiers' hands clenched close to his chest as though he were holding phantom sheets and shielding them from observation. 'You wait like everyone else. There's only one copy and no one will see it till I'm ready. Not even Mandel.'

'One copy!' cried Talliaferro. 'If you misplace it-'

'I won't. And if I do, it's all in my head.'

'If you-' Talliaferro almost finished that sentence with 'die' but stopped himself. Instead, he went on after an almost imperceptible pause, '-have any sense, you'll scan it at least. For safety's sake.'

'No,' said Villiers shortly. 'You'll hear me day after tomorrow. You'll see the human horizon expanded at one stroke as it never has been before.'

Again he stared intently at each face. Ten years,' he said. 'Good-bye.'

'He's mad,' said Ryger explosively, staring at the door as though Villiers were still standing before it.

'Is he?' said Talliaferro thoughtfully. 'I suppose he is, in a way. He hates us for irrational reasons. And, then, not even to scan his paper as a precaution…'

Talliaferro fingered his own small scanner as he said that. It was just a neutrally colored, undistinguished cylinder, somewhat thicker and somewhat shorter than an ordinary pencil. In recent years it had become the hallmark of the scientist, much as the stethoscope was that of the physician and the microcomputer that of the statistician. The scanner was worn in a jacket pocket, or clipped to a sleeve, or slipped behind the ear or swung at the end of a string.

Talliaferro sometimes, in his more philosophical moments, wondered how it was in the days when research men had to make laborious notes of the literature or file away full-sized reprints. How unwieldy!

Now it was only necessary to scan anything printed or written to have a micronegative which could be developed at leisure. Talliaferro had already recorded every abstract included in the program booklet of the Convention. The other two, he assumed with full confidence, had done likewise. Talliaferro said, 'Under the circumstances, refusal to scan is mad.'

'Space!' said Ryger hotly. 'There is no paper. There is no discovery. Scoring one on us would be worth any lie to him.'

'But then what will he do day after tomorrow?' asked Kaunas.

'How do I know? He's a madman.'

Talliaferro still played with his scanner and wondered idly if he ought to remove and develop some of the small slivers of film that lay stored away in its vitals. He decided against it. He said, 'Don't underestimate Villiers. He's a brain.'

Ten years ago, maybe,' said Ryger. 'Now he's a nut. I propose we forget him.'

He spoke loudly, as though to drive away Villiers and all that concerned him by the sheer force with which he discussed other things. He talked about Ceres and his work- the radio plotting of the Milky Way with new radioscopes capable of the resolution of single stars.

Kaunas listened and nodded, then chimed in with information concerning the radio emissions of sunspots and his own paper, in press, on the association of proton storms with the gigantic hydrogen flares on the Sun's surface.

Talliaferro contributed little. Lunar work was unglamorous in comparison. The latest information on long-scale weather forecasting through direct observation of terrestrial jet streams would not compare with radioscopes and protonstorms.

More than that, his thoughts could not leave Villers. Villiers was the brain. They all knew it. Even Ryger, for all his bluster, must feel that if mass transference were at all possible then Villiers was a logical discoverer.

The discussion of their own work amounted to no more than an uneasy admission that none of them had come to much. Talliaferro had followed the literature and knew. His own papers had been minor. The others had authored nothing of great importance.

None of them-face the fact-had developed into space shakers. The colossal dreams of schooldays had not come true and that was that. They were competent routine workmen. No more than that, they knew.

Villiers would have been more. They knew that, too. It was that knowledge, as well as guilt, which kept them in antagonism.

Talliaferro felt uneasily that Villiers, despite everything, was yet to be more. The others must be thinking so too, and mediocrity could grow quickly unbearable. The mass transference paper would come to pass and Villiers would be the great man after all, as he was always fated to be apparently, while his classmates, with all their advantages, would be forgotten. Their role would be no more than to applaud from the crowd.

He felt his own envy and chagrin and was ashamed of it, but felt it nonetheless.

Conversation died, and Kaunas said, his eyes turning away, 'Listen, why don't we drop in on old Villiers?'

There was a false heartiness about it, a completely unconvincing effort at casualness. He added, 'No use leaving bad feelings…'

Talliaferro thought. He wants to make sure about the mass transference. He's hoping it is only a madman's nightmare so he can sleep tonight.

But he was curious himself, so he made no objection, and even Ryger shrugged with ill grace and said,

'Hell, why not?'

It was then a little before eleven.

Talliaferro was awakened by the insistent ringing of his door signal. He hitched himself to one elbow in the darkness and felt distinctly outraged. The soft glow of the ceiling indicator showed it to be not quite four in the morning.

He cried out, 'Who is it?'

The ringing continued in spurts.

Growling, Talliaferro slipped into his bathrobe. He opened the door and blinked in the corridor light. He recognized the man who faced him from the trimensionals he had seen often enough.

Nevertheless the man said in an abrupt whisper, 'My name is Hubert Mandel.'

'Yes, sir,' said Talliaferro. Mandel was one of the Names in astronomy, prominent enough to have an important executive position with the World Astronomical Bureau, active enough to be Chairman of the astronautics section here at the Convention.