"Is there anything . . . ?"
"Not a thing," said Doc. "Not a thing that anyone can do. We can wait. That's all."
THAT was months ago, and Charley is still waiting. Cooper's still missing and there's no trace of him.
So Charley waits and worries. And the thing he worries about is Cooper's lack of a formal education, his utter lack of certain basic common knowledge.
There is one hope, of course—that Cooper, if and when he decides to act, will make his action retroactive, going back in time to outlaw not electricity itself, but Man's discovery of electricity. For, disrupting and terrible as that might be, it would be better than the other way.
But Charley's afraid that Cooper won't see the necessity for retroactive action. He's afraid that Cooper won't realize that, when you outlaw electricity, you can't limit it to the current that runs through a wire to light a lamp or turn an engine. When you rule out electricity as a natural phenomenon, you rule out all electricity, and that means you rule out an integral part of atomic structure. And that you affect not only this Earth but the entire Universe.
So Charley sits and worries and waits for the flicker of the lamp beside his chair.
Although he realizes, of course, that when it comes there won't be any flicker.
Beginning Next Month
THE CAVES OF STEEL
by Isaac Asimov
Three tension-charged installments of mystery and suspense in the super-city civilization of the future. You'll be missing a lot if you don't read this new novel by one of science fiction's brightest stars!