The ring of the doorbell interrupted my thoughts at that point and brought me to my feet in surprise. Visitors were very few those days.
I looked out the window and saw a tall, portly figure talking with Police Sergeant Cassidy. I recognized him at once as Howard Winstead, head of the Institute. Harman was hurrying out to greet him, and after a short exchange of phrases, the two entered the office. I followed them in, being rather curious as to what could have brought Winstead, who was more politician than scientist, here.
Winstead didn’t seem very comfortable, at first; not his usual suave self. He avoided Harman’s eyes in an embarrassed manner and mumbled a few conventionalities concerning the weather. Then he came to the point with direct, undiplomatic bluntness.
“John,” he said, “how about postponing the trial for a time?”
“You really mean abandoning it altogether, don’t you? Well, I won’t, and that’s final.”
Winstead lifted his hand. “Wait now, John, don’t get excited. Let me state my case. I know the Institute agreed to give you a free hand, and I know that you paid at least half the expenses out of your own pocket, but-you can’t go through with it.”
“Oh, can’t I, though?” Herman snorted derisively.
“Now listen, John, you know your science, but you don’t know your human nature, and I do. This is not the world of the ‘Mad Decades,’ whether you realize it or not. There have been profound changes since 1940.” He swung into what was evidently a carefully prepared speech.
“After the First World War, you know, the world as a whole swung away from religion and toward freedom from convention. People were disgusted and disillusioned, cynical and sophisticated. Eldredge calls them ‘wicked and sinful.’ In spite of that, science flourished-some say it always fares best in such an unconventional period. From its standpoint it was a ‘Golden Age.’
“However, you know the political and economic history of the period. It was a time of political chaos and international anarchy; a suicidal, brainless, insane period-and it culminated in the Second World War. And just as the First War led to a period of sophistication, so the Second initiated a return to religion.
“People were disgusted with the ‘Mad Decades.” They had had enough of it, and feared, beyond all else, a return to it To remove that possibility, they put the ways of those decades behind them. Their motives, you see, were understandable and laudable. All the freedom, all the sophistication, all the lack of convention were gone-swept away clean. We are living now in a second Victorian age; and naturally so, because human history goes by swings of the pendulum and this is the swing toward religion and convention.
“One thing only is left over since those days of half a century ago. That one thing is the respect of humanity for science. We have prohibition; smoking for women is outlawed; cosmetics are forbidden; low dresses and short skirts are unheard of; divorce is frowned upon. But science has not been confined-as yet.
“It behoves science, then, to be circumspect, to refrain from arousing the people. It will be very easy to make them believe-and Otis Eldredge has come perilously close to doing it in some of his speeches-that it was science that brought about the horrors of the Second World War. Science outstripped culture, they will say, technology outstripped sociology, and it was that unbalance that came so near to destroying the world. Somehow, I am inclined to believe they are not so far wrong, at that.
“But do you know what would happen, if it ever did come to that? Scientific research may be forbidden; or, if they don’t go that far, it will certainly be so strictly regulated as to stifle in its own decay. It will be a calamity from which humanity would not recover for a millennium.
“And it is your trial flight that may precipitate all this. You are arousing the public to a stage where it will be difficult to calm them. I warn you, John. The consequences will be on your head.”
There was absolute silence for a moment and then Harman forced a smile. “Come, Howard, you’re letting yourself be frightened by shadows on the wall. Are you trying to tell me that it is your serious belief that the world as a whole is ready to plunge into a second Dark Ages? After all, the intelligent men are on the side of science, aren’t they?”
“If they are, there aren’t many of them left from what I see.” Winstead drew a pipe from his pocket and filled it slowly with tobacco as he continued: “Eldredge formed a League of the Righteous two months ago-they call it the L. R.-and it has grown unbelievably. Twenty million is its membership in the United States alone . Eldredge boasts that after the next election Congress will be his; and there seems to be more truth than bluff in that. Already there has been strenuous lobbying in favour of a bill outlawing rocket experiments, and laws of that type have been enacted in Poland, Portugal and Rumania. Yes, John, we are perilously close to open persecution of science.” He was smoking now in rapid, nervous puffs.
“But if I succeed, Howard, if I succeed! What then?”
“Bah! You know the chances for that. Your own estimate gives you only one chance in ten of coming out alive.”
“What does that signify? The next experimenter will learn by my mistakes, and the odds will improve. That’s the scientific method.”
“The mob doesn’t know anything about the scientific method; and they don’t want to know. Well, what do you say? Will you call it off?”
Harman sprang to his feet, his chair tumbling over with a crash. “Do you know what you ask? Do you want me to give up my life’s work, my dream, just like that? Do you think I’m going to sit back and wait for your dear public to become benevolent? Do you think they’ll change in my lifetime?
“Here’s my answer: I have an inalienable right to pursue knowledge. Science has an inalienable right to progress and develop without interference. The world, in interfering with me, is wrong; I am right. And it shall go hard; but I -will not abandon my rights.”
Winstead shook his head sorrowfully. “You’re wrong, John, when you speak of ‘inalienable’ rights. What you call a ‘right’ is merely a privilege, generally agreed upon . What society accepts, is right; what it does not, is wrong.”
“Would your friend, Eldredge, agree to such a definition of his ‘righteousness’?” questioned Harman bitterly.
“No, he would not, but that’s irrelevant. Take the case of those African tribes who used to be cannibals. They were brought up as cannibals, have the long tradition of cannibalism, and their society accepts the practice. To them , cannibalism is right , and why shouldn’t it be? So you see how relative the whole notion is, and how inane your conception of ‘inalienable’ rights to perform experiments is.”
“You know, Howard, you missed your calling when you didn’t become a lawyer.” Harman was really growing angry. “You’ve been bringing out every moth-eaten argument you can think of. For God’s sake, man, are you trying to pretend that it is a crime to refuse to run with the crowd? Do you stand for absolute uniformity, ordinariness, orthodoxy, commonplaceness? Science would die far sooner under the programme you outline than under governmental prohibition.”
Harman stood up and pointed an accusing finger at the other. “You’re betraying science and the tradition of those glorious rebels: Galileo, Darwin, Einstein and their kind. My rocket leaves tomorrow on schedule in spite of you and every other stuffed shirt in the United States. That’s that, and I refuse to listen to you any longer. So you can just get out.”
The head of the Institute, red in the face, turned to me. “You’re my witness, young man, that I warned this obstinate nitwit, this… this hare-brained fanatic.” He spluttered a bit, and then strode out, the picture of fiery indignation.
Harman turned to me when he had” gone: “Well, what do you think? I suppose you agree with him.”