“I still haven’t heard any of the details.”

  “The details are simple. At ten o’clock this morning our delegates on the Security Council were accusing an unknown nation of committing an act of war against us. By four o’clock this afternoon ten other nations on the Security Council jointly accused us of committing an act of war against them. And they’ve labeled our own accusation a deliberate lie calculated to conceal our hostilities.”

  “They must have a basis for this.”

  “Oh, they have a basis all right. And by latest reports from our secret service it seems to be true. It’s Tib’s passing. The Luna One was the only one of our interplanetary missiles knocked out because it’s the only one we had ready for launching, but elsewhere it’s different. The Russians had one all set to go in the Urals. It’s still there. The timing mechanism all disorganized. By an odd coincidence their timing device is exactly the same as ours. They say they invented it. In Australia the Aussies had one ready to go. Same thing. Argentina had two. Both knocked out. Those are all we know about for certain, but judging by what’s happened in the Security Council a half dozen other nations were buildings the things, hoping to stake out first claims on the moon, and apparently all of them have been knocked out. Nobody killed, nobody hurt. But right now all the interplanetary missiles are dead.”

  “But if the same thing happened to us, I don’t see why—”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Flanders said, warming up to the conversation. “It doesn’t matter for one good reason. Tib’s passing originated on this island! That’s the one thing we’ve proved conclusively. We were close to the source and could pinpoint it right away. It took other nations longer, but by a few hours ago they had it. We were accusing them of using a secret weapon against us; now they’re accusing us of using one against them. What’s more, they say that as long as we have it, we’ll keep right on using it and knock out their moon ships as fast as they build them. That’s the reason for the’ ultimatum. We’ve been given until ten o’clock tonight to surrender the island to United Nations forces.”

  “And will we?”

  Flanders shook his head. “Unfortunately one nation took unilateral action and shot down Admiral Gowers’ plane. I needn’t tell you which nation that was. And that puts a different light on the whole affair. Furthermore, as far as we’ve been able to learn, only Santa Felicia has been visited by saboteurs. So it’s impossible for our government to accede to any demands until Gowers is released, reparations are made and the responsibility for the saboteurs satisfactorily fixed.” Flanders glanced around the table to see if this conclusion met with agreement. Then he leaned forward and spoke quietly. “Besides, if there’s any truth in what Staghorn told Thorpe, we just might have a secret weapon. If Staghorn isn’t shot, he may get a medal. We can’t risk losing an advantage like that. I’m merely speaking what I believe will be the thinking in Washington, of course.”

  The others thought this over and nodded—except for Thorpe who’d been engrossed in his reading. He rose from the conference table with a queer expression on his face, surveyed his companions as though he’d never seen them before and then headed for the door with the tablet clutched in his hand. “I’m meeting Staghorn,” he said, and vanished.

  His departure was followed by a brief silence that was broken when Flanders said again, “Meaningless.” Then he added, “I’ve noticed before that there’s an inherent absurdity in all international crises.”

  Hume leaned back in his chair and waited, thinking that Flanders was quite right. The chief trouble with events being meaningless was that it gave those concerned with them nothing intelligent to talk about. In a crisis such as this there should be a dramatic directness, a series of plans and an order of fulfillment. Such plans seldom had any relationship to what later happened, but they created the local illusion of purposiveness. He remembered a somewhat similar situation described by Tolstoy—the staff meeting of the Russians just before Napoleon entered Moscow. The characters talked a lot so that Tolstoy could demonstrate how meaningless words and plans were in relation to events. But then Tolstoy had some sort of theory that the mass movements of men in war were a phenomenon of nature, that first men surged east and then surged back west again, and that it all occurred without volition on the part of any individual or group of individuals. But in the present case, if war came men wouldn’t do any surging. Guided missiles would surge east and others would surge west, and it was quite difficult to see how this could be a natural phenomenon. True, those in this room would have little to say about it although Captain Flanders would have to give the order to launch the missiles from this particular locality. But in giving that type of order he lost his individuality.

  The intercom buzzed and Flanders answered it. A voice said, “The cage, sir. We’re back in operation.”

  “Thank you,” said Flanders. He turned off the intercom and spoke to Colonel Hudson. “If we should still be alive tomorrow, I’ve a new orchid to show you. Deep purple lip. Golden perianth. Just opened yesterday. I haven’t had a chance to look at it today.”

  “What’s a perianth?” asked the colonel.

  “A general term for corolla and calyx where they’re not well differentiated—as in most monocotyledons.”

  “Yes,” said the colonel. “I’d like to see that.”

  The door opened and Thorpe came back into the room. Flanders asked him where Staghorn was and he gestured back through the door. “In there. He’s reading what he wrote.”

  “Does he remember it?” Hume asked.

  “He says not. Seemed quite surprised.” Thorpe glanced toward Flanders. “It’s just as well he has a chance to cool down. He put up quite a fuss when they brought him over here.”

  “And what about that girl?”

  “I think we’d better finish with Staghorn first, Captain.” Thorpe sat down and put a new tape on the recorder. “This is going direct to Washington?”

  “That’s what they want. We’re connected with the Pentagon, and I understand we’re also being piped into the White House.”

  “Quite an audience,” Thorpe said, adjusting the microphones. ‘Well, as you say, they asked for it.” He started the tape.

  The door from the reception room creaked open and Roger Staghorn loomed in the entrance, the tablet gripped in his hand. He surveyed the occupants of the room with extreme displeasure and then stalked to the one vacant chair at the side of the table. He pulled it back and twisted it back and forth noisily until Colonel Hudson shifted his chair over to make more room.

  “Sorry,” said the colonel. “I seem to be in your way.”

  “You most certainly are,” said Staghorn. He sat down and hunched his chair close to the table, then glared at the rectangle of faces. “I am appalled,” he began. “It was always my firm belief that the principle of parsimony applied to the activities of men as well as to the behavior of nonliving matter. It was always my conviction that men must perforce expend a minimum amount of time and energy in order to obtain the barely acceptable reward. But I am wrong! You men and your superiors in Washington have shown conclusively that men are capable of expending a maximum amount of time and energy in order to rob themselves of any reward whatsoever! Now bring me up to date. What’s all this claptrap about wars and ultimatums?”

  15

  At eight-twenty Staghorn was still talking. “It has long been a matter of observation that of all the animals on earth man accumulates and saves the most rubbish. And though on rare occasions individuals have been known to discard the junk in their attics or burn the debris from their basements, few men indeed are capable of discharging the litter that has accumulated in their heads! And this is precisely where the greatest trash heaps exist. If they could be made visible and odorous, their sight and stench would make hermits of us all, and no man could stand a cave to the leeward of his brother. But being invisible and scentless, they are perpetuated from generation to generation and are manifested only by the verminous squeakings that pass for intelligent conversation among men!

  “Have any of you given your own thought to what has happened on this island? No. You’ve only hunted among the rubbish in search of any old thought that might do. And none will!”

  “Doctor Staghorn,” cut in Flanders, “you’re squeaking louder than anyone yourself.”

  “Let him be,” cried Colonel Hudson. “I’m enjoying this!”

  “Do I except myself?” said Staghorn. “No! My rubbish heap is as large and as varied as any. But fortunately I was parted from it for a few hours by a loss of memory and during those hours I discovered a’ few articles of value. Let me orient you. Have you wondered why at this moment of crisis you sit here unable to feel within yourselves that any crisis exists? Have you wondered why during the past months, while you labored so industriously to make this island unassailable and prepare for a mission to the moon, you none the less were filled with weariness and with the unspoken conviction that it was all shadow play without reason or substance? I tell you it is time to give in to your doubts! For among the major items of junk cluttering the present world of ideas is the belief that men can escape this earth by journeying to the stars. Yes, I know that men such as you are forced by experience to curtail your optimism and look no farther than the moon, but if you descend only slightly into the murk of ignorance you will find thousands who look forward to a home on Mars. And lower yet are additional thousands who believe the journey is already accomplished!

  “This is sheer superstition, as benighted as any medieval bone worship, and like the belief in the power of relics, it has been fostered in the name of Holy Truth. O Great God Science, you are now reduced to a braying ass! Yea, the ass of Buridan which, unable to choose between two haycocks, will starve to death while staring at the lifeless moon!

  “And you know it is superstition. You know it, and this is why your convictions fail. You know that if the bombs start falling, it is because you have invited them by false belief. In short, you are assailed by the certainty that regardless of the reality of any calamity that overtakes us, its cause is artificial, contrived out of the junk that clutters our mental dooryards.

  “Then let us sweep it aside! Let us begin by admitting that the major item of rubbish consists in a preoccupation with space. Nor do I mean only such idiotic contrivances as moon ships, artificial satellites and intercontinental missiles. These are only the obvious’ symptoms of our slavishness to the three-dimensional concept. More disastrously, the concept limits our thinking to the same dimensions and thereby prevents us from grasping the very space we covet. I tell you space is more plentiful than you think but it is far less substantial! This table that stands so solidly between us is a transient wisp of color; your bodies are but fleeting shadows; the land we hold so dear is a phantom. Yet out of such evanescent gleams we have woven the superstition of materiality, assigning space, substantiality and permanence to that which endures but for an instant. It is for this myth that you prepare to lay down your lives! And so strongly is this habit of thought fixed upon you that at the very moment when the myth can be destroyed, at the moment when the universe is prepared to give you its abundance, you would foredoom all future opportunity by killing each other for the possession of nothing!”

  “Staghorn,” snapped Flanders, “you’re preaching. You’re fairly frothing. And time is short!”

  “You’ve finally said something true,” Staghorn replied. “Time is unbelievably short. It occurs in finite periods of duration which I find, upon studying these pages—” he indicated the tablet, “—is known as Staghorn’s constant.”

  “The time to which I refer is the moment when the ultimatum expires.”

  “Yes. But I’ve explained to you that that situation is contrived of rubbish and has no connection with reality.” He thumped his tablet. “But this does—as I shall soon demonstrate. There is one and only one minimal explanation for the events that have transpired since last night. It should have been clear to any of you, knowing your jobs as you do, that Tib’s passing couldn’t be a secret weapon. Yet you tried to think of it as such because of old habits of thought. It should have been apparent at once that the two strangers who came to this island could not be spies or saboteurs. Yet such is the mood of our times that habits of suspicion prevented your thinking anything else. One of the two strangers is dead, the innocent victim of the mad world into which he stumbled by accident. The other lives.” Staghorn abruptly rose to his feet.

  “Gentlemen, even though this is our last night on earth, let us use the remaining time to rectify in so far as humanly possible the injury we have done the beautiful creature who waits in the next room—humanity as it might have been and still might be if we come through this night alive. In this case let science be the proper handmaiden to justice. Let us go to my laboratory and try to send that girl home!”

  16

  Staghorn and Thorpe were gone from the staff meeting-gone to Staghorn’s laboratory where Staghorn declared he would try to bring about a repetition of Tib’s passing.

  This much Flanders approved at once after consultation with Washington—a negative type of approval to judge by his conversation. “My frank opinion is that the man has delusions of grandeur. But we can’t ignore the possibility that something did occur in his laboratory that’s within his control and that he can demonstrate. Is there any way”—he was talking to Washington—“of extending the ultimatum until we know for sure? If by any chance Staghorn is right and Tib’s passing was accidental, it should make a difference. He’ll be strictly supervised, of course.”

  So Staghorn, Thorpe and several assistants departed for the laboratory. Flanders was less successful in gaining permission to make the attempt to send the girl home. The difficulty lay in trying to explain what he meant when he didn’t know himself. Neither did the officers around him and neither did Hume. It was evident from the conversation that the men in Washington had decided Staghorn wasn’t alone in his madness. Voices expressed alarm and the final word was: “Under no circumstances do anything that might result in the woman’s escape. A destroyer is now en route to Santa Felicia which will transport her to Washington for complete questioning and examination.”

  “You see,” Flanders said to Hume. “It’s impossible. I have my orders.”

  “There’s nothing contrary to orders in taking Lael to the laboratory’,” Hume said heatedly. “It will be well guarded.”

  “True,” said Flanders.

  “And if anything does happen there, she might help to explain it.”

  “I agree. But that very possibility constitutes a risk. It would appear that I was disobeying orders.”

  “You have all of us as witnesses to your intent.” Hume swept a glance around the faces in the room. Colonel Hudson nodded. Lieutenant Parker said, “Yes.” The rest acquiesced by silence. “Then I’ll get Lael,” Hume continued. “She’ll come with no trouble.”

  Flanders scowled, then shrugged his shoulders and said, “Parker, see that the cable connection is transferred to Staghorn’s laboratory.”

  Lael was alone in the little room across the corridor. She stood at the window looking out into the night, but at Hume’s footstep she turned. She wore a yellow cotton print dress that Edith Thorpe had given her, but she’d refused shoes and was barefooted. Her face showed the anxiety of waiting. She came to him quickly in silent grace and stood looking up into his eyes.

  “I will go home now?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But come.” He took her hand and led her out to join the others who were waiting. The warmth of her fingers in his was the only reassuring sensation he had. It was definite and everything else was confused. He felt as though he were suffering from a negative hallucination where instead of seeing something that didn’t exist, he was failing to see something that did. The evidence of what Staghorn proposed to do was all in front of him and he couldn’t quite put it together. He had a powerful emotional block against doing so. Whenever he tried to follow the evidence to its logical conclusion, he found many of his long-established beliefs being threatened. They weren’t cherished beliefs but they were deeply rooted. In the aggregate they were his own individuality, and to destroy them was to destroy himself. It was a form of mental suicide. It occurred to him that this same situation arose at any time when old beliefs were challenged or negated by new discoveries. That was why old errors died so hard, why new concepts had to beg so long for acceptance. Men would rather destroy their bodies than alter the pattern of their thoughts.

  As he descended the steps into Staghorn’s laboratory he realized that close to twenty-four hours had passed since Staghorn terminated his lecture upon seeing a face on the other side of a soap film. A woman’s face. Was it Lael’s? Staghorn hadn’t said so and there was no reason why it should have been. Lael was at his side now, her hand gripping his as they crossed the basement floor and paused at the curb of the big basin that was flooded with light. By her tightening fingers he knew that she recognized the place. At his side Captain Flanders, Colonel

  Hudson and Gordon Thorpe also came to a halt. Staghorn had been there for some time already, resetting and adjusting the broken wires on the soap film frame. It was immersed beneath the surface of the sodium oleate solution now.

  When the group of observers was assembled, Staghorn moved over to the laboratory entrance. “What occurred last night was accidental as far as I was concerned,” he said. “Tonight what I do is deliberate, and yet I can’t guarantee the results. Last night two humans arrived from an unknown country. Tonight, who knows, a monster might emerge. If so, I don’t want to be responsible for letting it loose on the island.” With this he grinned toothily and took the precaution—unusual for him—of locking the door. The group at the curb watched uneasily as Staghorn pocketed the key and marched to his control board beside the desk.