'He was at ease now. He complained these days that when the big stations were on, they were too loud so that they "dazzled" him unless he wore a shield, just as he complained that electric sparks hurt him like a very loud noise "only brighter-like." I knew that was so for I had seen him wincing painfully on account of a quite distant thunderstorm. I found myself suddenly and irrationally angry with him for having this extra world open to him and being unable to convey it to me.
'It was he who broke the silence and with it my unreasonable mood. He raised his hand and pointed upwards.
' "What's out there, Doctor?"
'I looked into the star scattered blue-black sky.
' "Space," I said. "Emptiness, or nearly, with little suns and planets floating about in it."
' "Aye, Mr. Pauley learned me that at school. But he didn't say owt about what goes on out there."
' "Goes on?"
' "Aye, goes on. 'E said as they was worlds, maybe like this, some of 'em, but nowt about t' chaps as lives on 'em, and what they do there."
' "He couldn't very well. You see, we don't even know that anyone does. Some people think that there may be life in some forms where conditions allow it, but others, the majority, think it unlikely."
' "They're daft."
' "Which of them?"
' "The ones as don't think so."
'I looked at him. His head was thrown back and his upturned face shone dimly white in the starlight. A rush of excitement, almost physically painful, made my heart thump.
'It was hard to make my voice anything like normal as I asked:
' "Why?" and hung on his answer.
' "Why! Because if it ain't chaps like us doin' things out there, 'oo is it?"
'I did not dare to respond for a moment. From long experience I knew that at any display of excitement he took refuge in suspicious self-protection. Young Ted couldn't be driven, only led cautiously.
"It wouldn't be God, would it?" he suggested hopefully.
'I told him I considered it unlikely.
' "What is it? Voices?" I added, as if out of a mild interest.
' "No. It's like—oh, like colours or notes."
' "Music?"
' "No, and 'tain't like any of the ordinary things, either. I'd know as it were different even if it weren't a long way away like it is."
'It took some time as usual to discover what he was meaning, but I had the impression at last that it was a thing happening at the far limits of his extra sense. As one cannot see stars in daylight, so he could perceive this disturbance only when the more powerful stations were off the air. It was something, it seemed, which happened in three tones. Tones of what? Something which was neither sound nor colour. They occurred in some deliberately arranged sequence—he was emphatic that they could not be accidental—yet they did not exactly repeat. They were faint and far away. He knew, knew without doubt, that they meant something, yet he couldn't tell what it was.
' "Like a chap gabbin' foreign," he tried, "you know as it means summat, but you don't know what. Like that, only different," he added with fair lucidity.
'And as different from accidental influences as "singin' from a motor 'orn."
'It left me more confused than usual. At one time I would think he implied someone signalling in a three-tone code, analogous perhaps to the dots and dashes of Morse. At another, that it was a system of communication which his intelligence could not grasp, in much the same way that we cannot grasp insects' methods of communication.
'But of one thing I went home that night quite certain. Here was such a possibility as I had never suspected. Beside it, all my earlier discoveries which had seemed so important, became trifling. Contact, perhaps some day communication, with the planets!'
Chapter Six
THE GIFT OF AGES
'I thought over it all the next day with a great desire to do nothing precipitate. A wrong move now, I felt, might have tremendous effects.
'But the main result was that my earlier conviction grew clearer and clearer as a necessity. Young Ted must have a good education—the best we could get for him. The job of making sense of those signals, if it were possible at all, was not going to be easy.
'To use a metaphor over again, he was in the position of a man who hears dots and dashes, realises they are rational, but has never heard of Morse and is ignorant of the language used—perhaps Ted would be up against a worse problem; a quite unsimilar, incomprehensible type of intelligence behind signs.
'A puzzle like that is going to take all the intelligence and knowledge that can be brought to bear on it. For Ted to attempt it without all the resources one could give him would be inviting discouragement and failure. It needed a mind trained to patience and the scientific approach, perceptive and yet plodding, a mind with tenacity of purpose.
'Perhaps you can't give a mind those characteristics, but at least you can give it the chance to acquire them, and hope for the best. It was a chance I determined that young Ted in some way must have.
'With my own mind fully made up I went to see Jim Filler next evening.
'I intended to press again for Ted's education, but not to bring out my new reason for its necessity save as a last resource. For now our positions were curiously reversed from those of eight years ago; then it was he who was afraid I would not believe him, now I was pretty certain of being unable to convince him of the further development.
'It had been an uncertain kind of day, and there were dark clouds piling up on the horizon and a thundery feeling in the air when I arrived. Jim was working in his garden, but he stuck his fork into the ground when he saw me and led the way into the cottage.
'It wasn't difficult for him to guess what I'd come about. He was pretty used to my tackling him on the education issue by this time, though we never got any further, but this time the opening was easier than usual. It was, in fact, volunteered.
'"I've been thinkin' it over about our Ted," he said, "an' I don't know as it'll do 'im any 'arm to learn a bit, even if it don't do 'im no good."
' "Good," I said, feeling a bit taken aback at the complete volte face. "I was going to mention it."
' "Y' don't say," he answered drily.
' "I'm glad, very glad indeed," I went on, "I'm sure you'll never regret it, nor Ted either. Well, now we'll have to go into the matter of raising the money."
'He shook his head.
' "No, we won't. I said as 'ow I wasn't borrowin' for 'im, and I ain't."
' "But—well, it's going to cost a bit, you know," I told him.
' "I know. I've been into all that."
'I waited. Jim's sort takes its own time.
' " 'E'll earn it 'imself. Maybe it'll take 'im a year or two, but then 'e'll be able to go to college an' pay 'is own way."
' "How?"
'Jim chuckled.
' "Way you never thought of. Mr. Pauley's notion, an' a good one, too."
'I had known that it must come; it was surprising that I had had the field to myself for so long, yet I felt a hot resentment.
' "Pauley, where does he come in?" I asked, though I knew on the moment exactly where he came in. It was inevitable that someone should find out about young Ted soon, and who likelier than his schoolmaster.
' "Same way as thaself. 'E came 'ere sayin' same as you, as 'ow our Ted ought to go to college. So I tells 'im just t'same as I tells you. Aye, an' I tells 'im it's no good 'im tryin' to change my mind, seein' as you been tryin' to for t'best part of two years, and not done it. So 'e goes off. Next day 'e's back. 'E's been thinkin', 'e 'as. 'E says why not let our Ted go on t'Alls and make a bit o' money 'imself?"