"There’s no use your calling on me,” answered Thornton definitely. "It would take a week for me to catch up with you, anyhow.”
Hooker’s face clearly showed his disappointment.
"But, Thornton,” he protested, "who else is there but you? You’re the most expert mathematician in America!”
The astronomer laughed.
"I wish I were,” he replied. "But the fact of the matter is my mathematics is by no means my strong point. Anyhow, I haven’t the time. It’s simply out of the question.”
"Well, who is there?” persisted Bennie.
Thornton leaned back meditatively.
"I suggest your trying the research professor of applied mathematics at the new Nationall Institute.”
"Thanks,” answered his friend, slipping his note-book back into his pocket and putting on his hat. "By the way, what’s the gent’s name?”
Thornton’s eye twinkled.
"His name,” he said, ”is Miss Rhoda Gibbs.”
IV
PROFESSOR BENNIE HOOKER arose next morning and got on line in company with Mrs. Mullins’ other boarders for his bath in the tin tub just as usual. But something was different. Breakfast, while no stodgier than usual, did not taste quite the same, and he answered Miss Parkinson, the spinster who roomed beneath him, quite sharply that he wasn’t responsible for the milk or for the maple sirup either, although, in his absent-mindedness, he had appropriated considerably more than his share of both. The fact of the matter was that Thornton had told him to go to a woman for assistance - a woman!
It was now upward of thirty years since there had been a woman in Bennie’s life - leaving out, of course, Miss Beebe, his landlady in Cambridge, and Bridget McGee, the biddy who cleaned his room in the house on the Appian Way, where Miss Beebe resided. He had never liked women, anyway - not since they had insisted on swathing him as a child in flannel soaked in various kinds of healing oils, and his experience with Miss Beebe and the McGee had not increased his regard. They were fools - *or just scrawny fakers, aping intelligence like Miss Beebe, who filled him with disgust. Yet, had he known it, that withered virgin adored the
ground upon which Bennie’s carpet slippers trod, and she had not raised the rent on him for eighteen years. Such are life’s tragedies. And now to be sent to one of the despised sex to crave succor, to beg for aid, humbly to be shown how to solve a not extraordinarily difficult problem in astronomical mathematics - it simply made him sick. He wouldn’t go to her - he simply wouldn’t!
As he sat on his bed, smoking defiantly an after-breakfast pipe, he could see her in his mind’s eye, - a lean, flat-chested, bony person, with a sharp nose and chin, thin gray hair - and a mole, perhaps. "Snippy” - that is what she would be like - in the Beebe order! She would listen to him with a supercilious sniff and condescend patronizingly to put him in the wrong. Yet, he was very anxious to solve his problem, for ever since he had navigated the Flying Ring back from Ungava, he had been meditating on the possibilities afforded by this machine, which could negative the force of gravity. No; he must suppress his natural feelings in the matter and seek out this horny old maid - the research professor of applied mathematics at the National Institute -and get it over with. But he wouldn’t change his collar for her -no, sir!
Still recalcitrant, he took the car over to Georgetown and inquired of the porter at the observatory for the research professor. The nearer he got to her the more averse he was to calling upon any woman for assistance; but once having appealed to the porter, it was too late to draw back, particularly when the latter conducted him to the door of a small room overlooking the garden, knocked, and left him there.
"Come in!”
The words had a certain musical quality as if half sung, although spoken, and while he did not recognize the voice, its cheerfulness communicated itself to the dejected spirits of the professor. With his pipe still in his mouth, to show his superiority, Hooker turned the knob and pushed open the door.
There, between two high French windows, sat the tan tailor-made girl! She had evidently been dictating, for a weazened, stenographic-looking male with a tonsure was bending over a note-book with elevated pencil. As Professor Hooker entered, the stenographer arose stiffly, and the tan young lady lifted her face toward the door and said,
"Good morning!” Then turning to the stenographer: "You may go, Stebbens. I want seven copies of that condensation of Hiroshito’s 'Theory of Thermic Induction.’ ”
Bennie stared at her, choking with embarrassment.
"Are you the research professor of applied mathematics?” he exclaimed, as the stenographer slid by him.
"That’s me,” she laughed,
"I ought to have guessed it,” responded Bennie humbly.
"How did you get on with your problem?”
"I didn’t,” he replied. "The truth is, I got side-tracked on something else.”
Then, suddenly becoming conscious of his pipe, he thrust it hurriedly into his trousers pocket.
"For heaven’s sake go on smoking!” said the girl. "I don’t believe you could think at all without your pipe.”
"That’s true, too,” said Bennie, replacing it where it belonged, with gratitude. "Do you mind taking a look at these equations? I’m after something different this time - not as hard as the other one - but I’m not sure of the solution.” He laid his note-book down before her.
The girl glanced at it thoughtfully for a moment, and, drawing toward her a pad of yellow paper, she swiftly integrated the equation before Bennie’s embarrassed but admiring eyes.
suppose one gets groggy occasionally,” she said. "Of course I can see that you’re on some gravitational problem.” "Yes,” he replied; "I’m trying to calculate the rate at which the velocity of the Flying Ring - Pax’s antigravity machine that I found up in Labrador, you know - would increase as it left the earth if I took it out into space. The attraction of gravitation, at a distance, say, of twelve thousand miles above the earth would amount to comparatively little, and our velocity would increase at a simply terrific rate. I must get an absolute solution of the problem. Skooting round in space would have to be done by a sort of dead reckoning, I suppose, anyhow, but a knowledge of our velocity would be essential, wouldn’t it?”
"By ’our velocity’ do you mean that you are planning to take me with you?” inquired the young lady pleasantly.
At this highly indelicate suggestion, Professor Hooker stared at his fair companion blankly.
"You - I - thunder - no!” he stammered, suddenly turning pink and experiencing a sensation of warm stickiness around his collar. "Wouldn’t do at all, you know! No idea of such a thing! Hope you didn’t think ..”
She leaned back again in her chair and rested her head against the wall, looking dreamily over Bennie’s head to a great astronomical chart hanging upon the opposite side of the room.
"You know,” she responded, and there was almost a suggestion of awe in her voice. "I have sometimes thought of the unlimited possibilities which the Flying Ring would afford to a person who had the courage to avail himself - or herself - of them. There is nothing, so far as I can see, to prevent your navigating the Ring anywhere in space. Provided you arranged for a sufficient supply of oxygen, a flight to the moon would hardly present any difficulties at all.”
"Very little,” answered Bennie. "It is perfectly plain that Pax had anticipated just such a flight, for the Ring is fully equipped with oxygen-tanks and all sorts of similar appliances. It may be that he actually did visit the moon! So long as I can get uranium cylinders for my tractor, I could take the Ring anywhere. But there are other considerations, certain chances that a chap oughtn’t to take - unless he hopes to accomplish something