In a considerable measure, Pym had now recovered his wits. He was puzzled. “So either way you get nothing out of it. If I refuse you get nothing, if I accept you get nothing.” The stranger considered the matter for a while. Then he said, “It hardly behooves me to explain my motives. Yet I will say this: I am gambling you will not yield a single day, a single hour, in exchange for the paper. You will cling to life until the ultimate moment.”
“Surely it’s my own affair if I decide to refuse?”
The stranger was reluctant to answer, so Pym plunged on. “Considering the advantages on your side, I don’t think you’re showing up very well.”
At this, Pym’s tormentor bared his white teeth and snapped, “Professor Pym, as a physicist you know events are not lost. They exist, always. They remain for those with the power to recover them, just as a film of past events can remain after those events have taken place. I want a film of you, Professor, clinging to life, clinging to the last, tedious moment, in a negation of everything you claim to be.”
Pym felt a sudden tautness. He was in a trap with his retreat cut off. The only possibility was to attack. “If it’s so important to you, I think you must be prepared to stake a lot more than these three sheets.”
Pym‘s effrontery took the stranger by surprise. He indicated the papers, his eyes flashing. “These are all you will get from me, unless you are prepared to gamble very much more than the last days of your life.”
The waters were rapidly deepening.
“What have you in mind?” asked Pym.
“You, Professor Pym, you must be the stake. If you want to play games with me.”
“What do I stand to win?”
“Anything you please, anything, my friend!”
“And the wager itself?”
“I wager that, even with a completely free wish, you are incapable of specifying anything that will make a permanent mark on the world. These sheets here, which made our previous game, will not serve you. Nor must you be vague—you are not permitted to ask for the solution to a problem you cannot define. You must not say ‘invent me a particle,’ or ‘give me a theory as good as Einstein’s.’ It is not to be as easy as that. My wager, Professor, is that in the deepest possible sense you are a failure. You can think of nothing of importance.”
Pym felt as if strange, unknown muscles were tightening within him. His every instinct was to accept the challenge. He was angry now, with an inner, white-hot anger. Yet he saw clearly that if you could conceive of a problem you were already halfway to its solution. Which was the trouble with this wager. Unless you had the right concept, you just couldn’t come out with any significant idea. Then a curious notion flashed through his mind. It was certain to win, quite splendid.
“I accept the wager. I will undertake to make a permanent mark on the world.”
“You are free to ask whatever you wish.”
Pym smiled broadly into the Devil’s face.
“Without loss of life, build me a mountain range, up to thirty thousand feet in height, along the border between England and Scotland.”
The Devil, seeing instantly that Pym, this pitiful little fellow, had outmaneuvered him, vanished in a flash of smoke, forgetting to take the three sheets of paper.
Geordie Jones and Barney O’Connor shivered as they waited long hours for their train to be dug out. They knew nothing of Professor Pym, nor did they know the Devil is no defaulter on a bargain.
Pym died during the winter. His last paper, easily his best, is still remembered with affection at the Institute of Physics, the “Pym Effect,” as it is internationally known. But of Pym’s greatest achievement, even the pundits are unaware. The British nowadays never speak about their weather. It is always bad, except miraculously in May and June, when the skies clear and Pym’s mountains can be seen high in the sky, utterly remote and indescribably beautiful.
The Magnetosphere
Francis Charles Lennox Pevensey, third son of the fourteenth Earl of Byeford, was a powerful great ox of a fellow. Home on vacation from prep school at the age of twelve, he engaged his father in a friendly wrestling bout. The fourteenth Earl was trapped unfortunately into a bear hug and had a couple of ribs broken for his pains—the ribs went off, in fact, like a pistol shot. Fortunately young Pev had an equable temperament, so events like this were quite rare.
Pev’s performances in other directions were less impressive. For one thing, he was utterly and hopelessly incapable of grasping what his teachers were talking about. Languages, history, math, science, literature, all came the same to him, they rebounded without effect off his bulky frame.
Sport was like the parson’s egg. He was a sucker for the bowlers at cricket. Nor did he show up particularly well at tennis. But anything that had to be thrown or heaved was simply thrown or heaved, yards and yards further than anybody else. His performances on the rugger field came near to making the game ridiculous. Once he had grasped the object of the game, to carry the ball to that place over yonder beneath those goal posts, why that was exactly what he did. He carried it to the goal posts whenever it came to him. It was all perfectly simple. His school lost no games while he played.
Public school followed prep school. Neither the psychologist, nor the leopard with its spots, will be surprised to learn that Pev showed no sign of changing in the smallest respect. In olden times, Oxford would have followed public school. Pev would have spent two or three years working under a coach for his matriculation. Meanwhile he would have chewed Cambridge to a fine mince whenever the opportunity presented itself.
With the elimination of privilege from the Oxford-Cambridge setup, this classic pattern was utterly beyond realization. Even the fourteenth Earl became reconciled at last to the idea that Oxford and Cambridge were not only crammed with bricklayers’ sons but the damned bricklayers themselves were actually running the show, his old College even. The only idea which recommended itself was to send the lad to the United States, on the curious understanding that the streets of New York were paved with gold.
Following six torrid months of “business,” young Pev conceived the idea of entering space school. Surprisingly, he got over the first hurdle, admission for a preliminary year. It was typical of the difference between the American and the British ways of life that the Americans admitted him on his few strong points, very strong points, whereas the British would have turned him down on his many weak ones.
Not until Pev appeared on the football field did his new career gather any aura of distinction. Sent in a few minutes before the end of the second quarter, Pev got his hands on the ball and proceeded to march fifty-five yards—for a safety. Instantly he became something of a celebrity, he had gotten himself an image. The eleven occasions that first year on which he bulled over for a touchdown did nothing to dispel the image.
His instructors were compelled to bow to the facts—his prowess on the football field, his good temper, his impeccable manners, and, above all else, that indeed he was a real, genuine English lord. In sum, they found it impossible to flunk him. Always they gave him a bare pass, always the minimum, except of course in the physical examinations. With these he had little trouble. When it came to the toughness tests, particularly acceleration tests, Pev came out at the top, not the bottom. Under 5g most people looked like rubber. He didn’t, he felt the acceleration, and that was about all. The doctors said he was a freak, which seemed to him to explain a lot he hadn’t understood before.