"That is precisely the situation here. You take sensitive, intelligent young men, impress them with the fact that a single slip on their part, or even some fortuitous circumstance beyond their control, will result in the death of God knows how many other people, and then expect them to remain sane. It's ridiculous - impossible!"
"But good heavens, doctor! - there must be some answer - There must!" He got up and paced around the room. Lentz noted, with pity, that King himself was riding the ragged edge of the very condition they were discussing.
"No," he said slowly. "No ... let me explain. You don't dare entrust control to less sensitive, less socially conscious men. You might as well turn the controls over to a mindless idiot. And to psychoneurosis situational there are but two cures. The first obtains when the psychosis results from a misevaluation of environment. That cure calls for semantic readjustment. One assists the patient to evaluate correctly his environment. The worry disappears because there never was a real reason for worry in the situation itself, but simply in the wrong meaning the patient's mind had assigned to it.
"The second case is when the patient has correctly evaluated the situation, and rightly finds in it cause for extreme worry. His worry is perfectly sane and proper, but he cannot stand up under it indefinitely; it drives him crazy. The only possible cure is to change the situation. I have stayed here long enough to assure myself that such is the condition here. You engineers have correctly evaluated the public danger of this thing, and it will, with dreadful certainty, drive all of you crazy!
"The only possible solution is to dump the pile - and leave it dumped."
King had continued his nervous pacing of the floor, as if the walls of the room itself were the cage of his dilemma. Now he stopped and appealed once more to the psychiatrist. "Isn't there anything I can do?"
"Nothing to cure. To alleviate - well, possibly."
"How?"
"Situational psychosis results from adrenalin exhaustion. When a man is placed under a nervous strain, his adrenal glands increase their secretion to help compensate for the strain. If the strain is too great and lasts too long, the adrenals aren't equal to the task, and he cracks. That is what you have here. Adrenalin therapy might stave of a mental breakdown, but it most assuredly would hasten a physical breakdown. But that would be safer from a viewpoint of public welfare - even though it assumes that physicists are expendable!
"Another thing occurs to me: If you selected any new watch engineers from the membership of churches that practice the confessional, it would increase the length of their usefulness."
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 mused. "It fills a basic human heed. 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, Doctor 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 at a corner of King's desk. "Superintendent, you are entitle to an explanation as to why I have broken in on you Ilk 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 as for you to tell him to forget my name? I know it seem strange - "
"Not at all." King was mystified, but willing to grab 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 private palaver, Captain."
King looked from Harrington to Lentz, and back at Harrington. The astronomer showed momentary indecision, then protested, "I have no objection at all myself it's up to Doctor King. As a matter of fact," he added," might be a very good thing if you did sit in on it."
"I don't know what it is, Captain," observed Kin "that you want to see me about, but Doctor Lentz is a ready here in a confidential capacity."
"Good! Then that's settled .. I'll get right down I business. Doctor King, you know Destry's mechanics infinitesimals?"
"Naturally." Lentz cocked a brow at King, who chose to ignore it.
"Yes, of course. Do you remember - theorem six, an 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, Doctor 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?"