Waldo

Waldo began to think of the arcane arts as aborted sciences, abandoned before they had been clarified

And yet the manifestations of the sort of uncertainty which had characterized some aspects of magic and which he now attributed to hypothetical additional continua had occurred frequently, even in modern times. The evidence was overwhelming to anyone who approached it with an open mind: Poltergeisten, stones falling from the sky, apportation. ‘bewitched' persons - or, as he Thought of them, persons who for some undetermined reason were loci of uncertainty - ‘haunted' houses, strange fires of the sort that would have once been attributed to salamanders. There were hundreds of such cases, carefully recorded and well vouched for, but ignored by orthodox science as being impossible. They were impossible, by known law, but considered from the standpoint of a coextensive additional continuum, they became entirely credible

He cautioned himself not to consider his tentative hypothesis of the Other World as proved; nevertheless, it was an adequate hypothesis even if it should develop that it did not apply to some of the cases of strange events

The Other Space might have different physical laws - no reason why it should not. Nevertheless, he decided to proceed on the assumption that it was much like the space he knew

The Other World might even be inhabited. That was an intriguing thought! In which case anything could happen through ‘magic'. Anything! Time to stop speculating and get down to a little solid research. He had previously regretfully given up trying to apply the formulas of the medieval magicians. It appeared that they never wrote down all of a procedure; some essential - so the reports ran and so his experience confirmed - was handed down verbally from master to student. His experience with Schneider confirmed this; there were things, attitudes, which must needs be taught directly

He regretfully set out to learn what he must unassisted

‘Gosh, Uncle Gus, i'm glad to see you!

‘Decided I'd better look in on you. You haven't phoned me in weeks.

‘That's true, but I've been working awfully hard, Uncle Gus.

‘Too hard, maybe. Mustn't overdo it. Lemme see your tongue.~ ‘I'm OK.' But Waldo stuck out his tongue just the same; Grimes looked at it and felt his pulse

‘You seem to be ticking all right. Learning anything?

‘Quite a lot. I've about got the matter of the deKalbs whipped.

‘That's good. The message you sent Stevens seemed to indicate that you had found some hookup that could be used on my pet problem too.~ ‘In a way, yes; but around from the other end. It begins to seem as if it was your problem which created Stevens's problem.

‘Huh?

‘ Imean it. The symptoms caused by ultra short-wave radiation may have had a lot to do with the erratic behaviour of the deKalbs.

‘ How?' ‘I don't know myself. But I've rigged up a working hypothesis and I'm checking it.

‘Hm-m-m. Want to talk about it?

‘Certainly - to you.' Waldo launched into an account of his interview with Schneider, concerning which he had not previously spoken to Grimes, even though Grimes had made the trip with him. He never, as Grimes knew, discussed anything until he was ready to

The story of the third set of deKalbs to be infected with the incredible writhings caused Grimes to raise his eyebrows. ‘Mean to say you caught on how to do that?

‘Yes indeed. Not "how", maybe, but I can do it. I've done it more than once. I'll show you.' He drifted away towards one side of the great room where several sets of deKalbs, large and small, were mounted, with their controls, on temporary guys. ‘This fellow over on the end, it just came in today. Broke down. I'll give it Gramps Schneider's hocus-pocus and fix it. Wait a minute. I forgot to turn on the power.

He returned to the central ring which constituted his usual locus and switched on the beamcaster. Since the ship itself effectively shielded anything in the room from outer radiation, he had installed a small power plant and caster similar in type to NAPA's giant ones; without it he would have had no way to test the reception of the deKalbs

He rejoined Grimes and passed down the line of deKalbs, switching on the activizing circuits. All save two began to display the uncouth motions he had begun to think of as the Schneider flex. ‘That one on the far end,' he remarked, ‘is in operation but doesn't flex. It has never broken down, so it's never been treated. It's my control; but this one' - he touched the one in front of him - ‘needs fixing. Watch me.

‘What are you going to do?

‘To tell the truth, I don't quite know. But I'll do it.' He did not know. All he knew was that it was necessary to gaze down the antennae, think about them reaching into the Other World, think of them reaching for power, reaching - The antennae began to squirm

‘That's all there is to it - strictly between ourselves. I learned it from Schneider.' They had returned to the centre of the sphere, at Grimes's suggestion, on the pretext of wanting to get a cigarette. The squirming deKalbs made him nervous, but he did not want to say so

‘How do you explain it?

‘I regard it as an imperfectly understood phenomenon of the Other Space. I know less about it than Franklin knew about lightning. But I will know- I will! I could give Stevens a solution right now for his worries if I knew some way to get around your problem too.

‘I don't see the connexion.

‘There ought to be some way to do the whole thing through the Other Space. Start out by radiating power into the Other Space and pick it up from there. Then the radiation could not harm human beings. It would never get at them; it would duck around them. I've been working on my caster, but with no luck so far. I'll crack it in time.

‘I hope you do. Speaking of that, isn't the radiation from your own caster loose in this room?

‘Yes.

‘Then I'll put on my shield coat. It's not good for you either.

‘Never mind. I'll turn it off.' As he turned to do so there was the sound of a sweet, chirruping whistle. Baldur barked. Grimes turned to see what caused it

‘What,' he demanded, ‘have you got there?

‘Huh? Oh, That's my cuckoo clock. Fun, isn't it?' Grimes agreed that it was, although he could not see much use for it. Waldo had mounted it on the edge of a light metal hoop which spun with a speed just sufficient to produce a centrifugal force of one g

‘I rigged it up,' Waldo continued, ‘while I was bogged down in this problem of the Other Space. Gave me something to do.

‘This "Other Space" business - I still don't get it.

‘Think of another continuum much like our own and superposed on it the way you might lay one sheet of paper on another. The two spaces aren't identical, but they are separated from each other by the smallest interval you can imagine - coextensive but not touching - usually. There is an absolute one-to- one, point-for-point correspondence, as I conceive it, between the two spaces, but they are not necessarily the same size or shape.

‘Hey? Come again - they would have to be.

‘Not at all. Which has the larger number of points in it? A line an inch long, or a line a mile long?

‘A mile long, of course.

‘No. They have exactly the same number of points. Want me to prove it?

‘I'll take your word for it. But I never studied that sort of maths.