King was plainly surprised. "I don't follow you."
"The patient unloads most of his worry on his confessor, who is not himself actually confronted by the situation, and can stand it. That is simply an ameliorative, however. I am convinced that, in this situation, eventual insanity is inevitable. But there is a lot of good sense in the confessional," he added. "It fills a basic human need. I think that is why the early psychoanalysts were so surprisingly successful, for all their limited knowledge." He fell silent for a while, then added, "If you will be so kind as to order a stratocab for me—"
"You've nothing more to suggest?"
"No. You had better turn your psychological staff loose on means of alleviation; they're able men, all of them."
King pressed a switch and spoke briefly to Steinke. Turning back to Lentz, he said, "You'll wait here until your car is ready?"
Lentz judged correctly that King desired it and agreed. Presently the tube delivery on King's desk went ping! The Superintendent removed a small white pasteboard, a calling card. He studied it with surprise and passed it over to Lentz. "I can't imagine why he should be calling on me," he observed, and added, "Would you like to meet him?"
Lentz read:
THOMAS P. HARRINGTON
captain (mathematics)
united states navy
director
u. s. naval observatory
"But I do know him," he said. "I'd be very pleased to see him."
Harrington was a man with something on his mind. He seemed relieved when Steinke had finished ushering him in, and had returned to the outer office. He commenced to speak at once, turning to Lentz, who was nearer to him than King. "You're King?… Why, Dr. Lentz! What are you doing here?"
"Visiting," answered Lentz, accurately but incompletely, as he shook hands. "This is Superintendent King over here. Superintendent King — Captain Harrington."
"How do you do, Captain — it's a pleasure to have you here."
"It's an honor to be here, sir."
"Sit down?"
"Thanks." He accepted a chair and laid a briefcase on a corner of King's desk. "Superintendent, you are entitled to an explanation as to why I have broken in on you like this—"
"Glad to have you." In fact, the routine of formal politeness was an anodyne to King's frayed nerves.
"That's kind of you, but— That secretary chap, the one that brought me in here, would it be too much to ask you to tell him to forget my name? I know it seems strange—"
"Not at all." King was mystified, but willing to grant any reasonable request of a distinguished colleague in science. He summoned Steinke to the interoffice visiphone and gave him his orders.
Lentz stood up and indicated that he was about to leave. He caught Harrington's eye. "I think you want a private palaver, Captain."
King looked from Harrington to Lentz and back to Harrington. The astronomer showed momentary indecision, then protested: "I have no objection at all myself; it's up to Dr. King. As a matter of fact," he added, "it might be a very good thing if you did sit in on it."
"I don't know what it is, Captain," observed King, "that you want to see me about, but Dr. Lentz is already here in a confidential capacity."
"Good! Then that's settled. I'll get right down to business. Dr. King, you know Destry's mechanics of infinitesimals?"
"Naturally." Lentz cocked a brow at King, who chose to ignore it.
"Yes, of course. Do you remember theorem six and the transformation between equations thirteen and fourteen?"
"I think so, but I'd want to see them." King got up and went over to a bookcase. Harrington stayed him with a hand.
"Don't bother. I have them here." He hauled out a key, unlocked his briefcase, and drew out a large, much-thumbed, loose-leaf notebook. "Here. You, too, Dr. Lentz. Are you familiar with this development?"
Lentz nodded. "I've had occasion to look into them."
"Good — I think it's agreed that the step between thirteen and fourteen is the key to the whole matter. Now, the change from thirteen to fourteen looks perfectly valid — and would be, in some fields. But suppose we expand it to show every possible phase of the matter, every link in the chain of reasoning."
He turned a page and showed them the same two equations broken down into nine intermediate equations. He placed a finger under an associated group of mathematical symbols. "Do you see that? Do you see what that implies?" He peered anxiously at their faces.
King studied it, his lips moving. "Yes… I believe I do see. Odd… I never looked at it just that way before — yet I've studied those equations until I've dreamed about them." He turned to Lentz. "Do you agree, Doctor?"
Lentz nodded slowly. "I believe so…. Yes, I think I may say so."
Harrington should have been pleased; he wasn't. "I had hoped you could tell me I was wrong," he said, almost petulantly, "but I'm afraid there is no further doubt about it. Dr. Destry included an assumption valid in molar physics, but for which we have absolutely no assurance in atomic physics. I suppose you realize what this means to you, Dr. King?"
King's voice was dry whisper. "Yes," he said, "yes— It means that if that bomb out there ever blows up, we must assume that it will go up all at once, rather than the way Destry predicted — and God help the human race!"
Captain Harrington cleared his throat to break the silence that followed. "Superintendent," he said, "I would not have ventured to call had it been simply a matter of disagreement as to interpretation of theoretical predictions—"
"You have something more to go on?"
"Yes and no. Probably you gentlemen think of the Naval Observatory as being exclusively preoccupied with ephemerides and tide tables. In a way you would be right — but we still have some time to devote to research as long as it doesn't cut into the appropriation. My special interest has always been lunar theory.
"I don't mean lunar ballistics," he continued. "I mean the much more interesting problem of its origin and history, the problem the younger Darwin struggled with, as well as my illustrious predecessor, Captain T. J. J. See. I think that it is obvious that any theory of lunar origin and history must take into account the surface features of the Moon — especially the mountains, the craters, that mark its face so prominently."
He paused momentarily, and Superintendent King put in: "Just a minute, Captain — I may be stupid, or perhaps I missed something, but — is there a connection between what we were discussing before and lunar theory?"
"Bear with me for a few moments, Dr. King," Harrington apologized. "There is a connection — at least, I'm afraid there is a connection — but I would rather present my points in their proper order before making my conclusions." They granted him an alert silence; he went on:
"Although we are in the habit of referring to the 'craters' of the Moon, we know they are not volcanic craters. Superficially, they follow none of the rules of terrestrial volcanoes in appearance or distribution, but when Rutter came out in 1952 with his monograph on the dynamics of vulcanology, he proved rather conclusively that the lunar craters could not be caused by anything that we know as volcanic action.
"That left the bombardment theory as the simplest hypothesis. It looks good, on the face of it, and a few minutes spent throwing pebbles into a patch of mud will convince anyone that the lunar craters could have been formed by falling meteors.
"But there are difficulties. If the Moon was struck so repeatedly, why not the Earth? It hardly seems necessary to mention that the Earth's atmosphere would be no protection against masses big enough to form craters like Endymion or Plato. And if they fell after the Moon was a dead world while the Earth was still young enough to change its face and erase the marks of bombardment, why did the meteors avoid so nearly completely the great dry basins we call lunar seas?