“Oh no, no! Well, let’s see, this is the twenty-fourth of May-suppose we . . . how about, uh, say thirty-one years, three weeks, one day, seven hours, thirteen minutes, and twenty-five seconds?”
“A poor jest, sir. When I said `accurate’ I meant `accurate to better than one part in one hundred thousand.’ I have had no opportunity to calibrate to one part in nine hundred million.”
“Oh. You see, Doctor, how important an exact rehearsal is to me, since I know so little about it. Uh, suppose we call it thirty-one years and three weeks. Or is that still too finicky?”
“Not at all. The maximum error should not exceed two hours.” He made his adjustments. “You can take your place on the stage.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes. All but the power. I could not actually make this displacement with the line voltage I used on those coins. But since we aren’t actually going to do it, that doesn’t matter.”
I looked disappointed and was. “Then you don’t actually have what is necessary to produce such a displacement? You were speaking theoretically?”
“Confound it, sir, I was not speaking theoretically.”
“But if you don’t have the power . . . ?”
“I can get the power if you insist. Wait.” He went to a corner of the lab and picked up a phone. It must have been installed when the lab was new; I hadn’t seen one like it since I was awakened. There followed a brisk conversation with the night superintendent of the university’s powerhouse. Dr. Twitchell was not dependent on profanity; he could avoid it entirely and be more biting than most real artists can be when using plainer words. “I am not in the least interested in your opinions, my man. Read your instructions. I have full facilities whenever I wish them. Or can you read? Shall we meet with the president at ten tomorrow morning and have him read them to you? Oh? So you can read? Can you write as well? Or have we exhausted your talents? Then write this down: Emergency full power across the bus bars of the Thornton Memorial Laboratory in exactly eight minutes. Repeat that back.”
He replaced the instrument. “People!”
He went to the control board, made some changes, and waited. Presently, even from where I stood inside the cage, I could see the long hands of three sets of meters swing across their dials and a red light came on at the top of the board. “Power,” he announced.
“Now what happens?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s just what I thought.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I said. Nothing would happen.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand you. I hope I don’t understand you. What I meant is that nothing would happen unless I closed this pilot switch. If I did, you would be displaced precisely thirty-one years, three weeks.”
“And I still say nothing would happen.”
His face grew dark. “I think, sir, you are being intentionally offensive.”
“Call it what you want to. Doctor, I came here to investigate a remarkable rumor. Well, I’ve investigated it. I’ve seen a control board with pretty lights on it; it looks like a set for a mad scientist in a grabbie spectacular. I’ve seen a parlor trick performed with a couple of coins. Not much of a trick, by the way, since you selected the coins yourself and told me how to mark them; any parlor magician could do better. I’ve heard a lot of talk. But talk is cheap. What you claim to have discovered is impossible. By the way, they know that down at the department. Your report wasn’t suppressed; it’s simply filed in the screwball file. They get it out and pass it around now and then for a laugh.”
I thought the poor old boy was going to have a stroke there and then. But I had to stimulate him by the only reflex he had left, his vanity.
“Come out of there, sir. Come out. I’m going to thrash you. With my bare hands I’m going to thrash you.”
The rage he was in, I think he might have managed it, despite age and weight and physical condition. But I answered, “You don’t scare me, Pappy. That dummy button doesn’t scare me either. Go ahead and push it.”