He leaned back in the chair, summing up what he had heard. Dunning's thesis seemed to be that much sound data had been excluded by conventional scientists from standard theories. The dead man had believed much of this data could be found and explained in the various realms of astrology, East Indian mysticism, movements of sunspots, the levitation of mediums, and a host of other unorthodox areas.
Where was the thread of rational thought that could find its way through this? He closed his eyes again, trying to feel for a starting point.
There came a knock on the door, and a voice. 'May I come in, Dr Nagle?'
It was Keyes. Mart rose and offered a chair. 'I have just finished the tapes and transcription. There is very little to go on.'
'Very little indeed,' said Keyes. 'When you were a youngster entering a contest for the first time you had a feeling for it. You know what I mean. It's in your throat and chest, and in your stomach. It goes all the way through your legs to your toes.
'It's the feeling of your entire organism — a feeling that you haven't got a chance to win — or that you are going to acquit yourself to the maximum ability within you, regardless of the strength of others. Do you understand me?'
Mart nodded.
'What kind of a feeling do you have about this, Dr Nagle?'
Mart relaxed and leaned back with his eyes half closed. He understood Keyes. He had gone through the range of all possible feelings since yesterday afternoon. Which one of them had remained with him?
'I can do it,' he said quietly to Keyes. 'I could wish for more data, and I'm not wholly in sympathy with Dunning's approach. But I can examine the data he had, and re-examine the data I have. And I can do it.'
'Good!' Keyes stood up. 'That's what I came in to find out. And your answer is what I hoped to hear. You may expect that your reaction is not quite universal among your colleagues, although I feel all will co-operate. But some of them will be licked before they start, because they will feel, and persist in feeling, that the thing ought not to be.'
Dr Kenneth Berkeley had never ceased to wonder at the constitution of man. When he was very young he had wondered why some of his fellows believed in fairies, and others did not. He wondered why some could believe the moon was made of green cheese, and others were equally sure it could not be so.
He grew to wonder intensely just how man knew anything for sure, and that long road of wonder led to the present moment of his status as fellow in psychology at ONR.
He was grateful for the privilege of being on this project under the leadership of Dr Keyes. Keyes appreciated more than any other physicist that he had known the importance of the fact that an individual is a man first and a scientist second — that there is no true objectivity in science. There is no divorcing the observer from the observed, and every scientific theory and law, no matter how conscientiously propounded and objectively proved is nevertheless coloured by the observer.
Berkeley was intrigued by the study of the physicists' reactions to the situation in which Dunning's discovery and death had placed them.
Martin Nagle had reacted approximately as Berkeley expected. They had known each other well during undergraduate days in college, drifting apart later as their professions diverged.
Through the day Berkeley conducted the rest of the scientists through the house. A number of them had made requests to go privately as Mart had done. Others went in groups of three or four. But by the end of the day all had visited the place except Professor Wilson Dykstra.
During the first day, Dykstra confined himself to a study of the tape and transcription. He did not present himself for a visit to the Dunning house until the following morning.
Berk called at his hotel. He kept the psychologist waiting fifteen minutes before he finally appeared through the revolving doors.
Dykstra was a small, round man in his late sixties, owlish in heavy framed glasses. His jutting lower lip seemed to signify his being perpetually on the defensive, as if he couldn't believe the world were really as he saw it. But Berk knew he was a great man in his own field. He had contributed much to the elucidation of Einstein's work in relation to gravity, which was the reason for his being invited to participate in the project.
The sky was threatening, and Dykstra clutched a black umbrella to his chest as he emerged from the hotel. Berk waited with the car door open.
'Good morning, Dr Dykstra. It looks as if we'll be alone this morning. Everyone else took a visit to Dunning's yesterday.'
Dykstra grunted and got in. 'That's the way I wanted it. I spent a full day yesterday going over that ridiculous tape recording.'
Berk moved the car out into the line of traffic. He had rather felt from the very first that the project could get along just as well without Dykstra.
'Were you able to derive anything at all from it?'
