In front of the ONR building he stopped with his hands in his pockets and looked over the unpleasant grey of the city's buildings. He could close his eyes and still see a man rising straight up into the air — soaring at an angle — dropping like a plummet.
All at once he realized he hadn't even stopped to examine the remains of the instrument under the tarpaulin. He turned suddenly on Berkeley.
'The psychology of this thing — is that where you're in on it, Berk?'
His companion nodded. 'Keyes called me in when he wanted an investigation into Dunning's past. I'm staying, I guess.'
'You know it's impossible, don't you?' said Mart. 'Utterly and completely impossible! There's nothing in our basic science to explain this thing, let alone duplicate it.'
'Impossible? Meaning what?'
'Meaning that I've got to… that every one of us has got to shift gears, back up, retrace who knows how far — twenty years of learning — five hundred years of science? Where did we go off the track? Why was it left to a screwball like Dunning to hit it right?'
'He was an odd character,' mused Berk. 'Astrology, mysticism, levitation. There's quite a bit in the tape about levitation. That's not so far removed from the concept of anti-gravity at that, is it?'
Mart made a rough noise in his throat. 'I expect to hear any moment that his first successful flight was aboard a broomstick.'
'Well, there's quite a bit of lore about broomsticks — also magic carpets and such. Makes you wonder how it all got started.'
The shock was slow in wearing down. Martin returned to the hotel after the evening conference, which was spent mostly in examination of the wreckage.
It was as Keyes had said, hopeless. But there was an indefinable something about gazing upon the remains of what had been the realization of an impossible dream. Mart felt a kind of frantic yearning to reach out and touch that mass and convert it back to the instrument it had once been by sheer force of will. As if believing it possible would make it so.
And wasn't there some essence of truth in this, he thought? Dunning had believed it could be done and had done it. Reputable men in science didn't believe such things possible-
Now, in his hotel room, Mart sat on the edge of the bed looking out of the window and across the night lights of the city. There were certain things you had to accept as impossible. The foundation of science was built upon the concept of the impossible as well as the possible.
Perpetual motion.
The alchemist's dream — as the alchemist dreamed it, anyway.
Anti-gravity-
All man's experience in attempting to master nature showed these things could not be done. You had to set yourself some limitations. You had to let your work be bounded by certain Great Impossibles or you could spend a lifetime trying to solve the secret of invisibility or of walking through a brick wall.
Or trying to build a magic carpet.
He stood up and walked to the window. There had been growing all afternoon a sense of faint panic. And now he identified it. Where could you draw the line? It had to be drawn. He was sure of that.
It had been drawn once before, quite definitely. In the 1890s they had closed the books. Great minds believed then that science had encompassed the universe. All that was not known belonged to the Great Impossibles.
Then had come radium, the Roentgen tube, relativity, cosmic rays.
The line vanished. Where was it now? A few hours ago he would have said he could define it with fair accuracy. Tonight he did not know.
He went to bed. After an hour he got up and called Kenneth Berkeley. The clock said almost midnight. It didn't matter.
'Berk,' he said into the phone. 'Mart. I've just been thinking. The whole crowd will be going through Dunning's lab and his library. What's the chance of you getting me out there first thing in the morning? Just the two of us. I'd like to beat the crowd.'
'I think I can arrange it,' said Berk. 'Keyes wants each of you to work as you wish. I'll tell you more about that tomorrow. I'll call you as early as I can.'
It rained during the night, and when Berk called for Mart in his car, the city was dismal with fog, lessening even further the reality surrounding them.
'Keyes wasn't much in favour of this,' said Berk as they drove away from the hotel. 'It's liable to make some of the others mad, but frankly, I'm sure he's convinced that you're the member of the class mostly likely to succeed.'
Mart grunted. 'Least likely, I'd say. I'm not sure that I'm convinced yet that Dunning didn't have some terrific joker in here somewhere.'
'I know what you mean, but you will. It comes gradually. And easier for you. You're the youngest of the group. Keyes thinks some of the older men may spend all their time proving Dunning couldn't do it. How do you feel about that? Is that the way you're heading, or are you going to try to find out what Dunning did?'
'Anything a jerk like Dunning can do, Nagle can do double — once Nagle is convinced that Dunning did it.'
