‘What?
‘That’s the crazy part about it. They took him away in a confining stretcher, laced up like a corset. I saw them fasten him in myself. But when they got there he was gone. And the attendants claim the straps weren’t even unbuckled.
Waldo started to say, ‘Preposterous,’ thought better of it. Stevens went on
‘But that’s not the half of it. I’d sure like to talk to him myself. I’ve been looking around his lab. You know that set of deKalbs that went nuts -. the ones that were hexed?
‘I know to what you refer.
‘Rambeau’s got a second set to do the same thing!’ Waldo remained silent for several seconds, then said quietly, ‘Dr Stevens-
‘Yes.
‘I want to thank you for your efforts. And will you please have both sets of receptors, the two sets that are misbehaving, sent to Freehold at once?
There was no doubt about it. Once he had seen them with his own eyes, watched the inexplicable squirming of the antennae, applied such tests as suggested themselves to his mind, Waldo was forced to conclude that he was faced with new phenomena, phenomena for which he did not know the rules
If there were rules
For he was honest with himself. If he saw what he thought he saw, then rules were being broken by the new phenomena, rules which he had considered valid, rules to which he had never previously encountered exceptions. He admitted to himself that the original failures of the deKalbs should have been considered just as overwhelmingly upsetting to physical law as the unique behaviour of these two; the difference lay in that one alien phenomenon was spectacular, the other was not
Quite evidently Dr Rambeau had found it so; he had been informed that the doctor had been increasingly neurotic from the first instance of erratic performance of the deKalb receptors
He regretted the loss of Dr Rambeau. Waldo was more impressed by Rambeau crazy than he had ever been by Rambeau sane. Apparently the man had had some modicum of ability after all; he had found out something – more, Waldo admitted, than he himself had been able to find out so far, even though it had driven Rambeau insane
Waldo had no fear that Rambeau’s experience, whatever it had been, could unhinge his own reason. His own self-confidence was, perhaps, fully justified. His own mild paranoid tendency was just sufficient to give him defences against an unfriendly world. For him it was healthy, a necessary adjustment to an otherwise intolerable situation, no more pathological than a callous, or an acquired immunity
Otherwise he was probably more able to face disturbing facts with equanimity than ninety-nine per cent of his contemporaries. He had been born to disaster; he had met it and had overcome it, time and again. The very house which surrounded him was testimony to the calm and fearless fashion in which he had defeated a world to which he was not adapted
He exhausted, temporarily, the obvious lines of direct research concerning the strangely twisting metal rods. Rambeau was not available for questioning. Very well, there remained one other man who knew more about it than Waldo did. He would seek him out. He called Stevens again
‘Has there been any word of Dr Rambeau?
‘No word, and no sign. I’m beginning to think the poor old fellow is dead.
‘Perhaps. That witch doctor friend of your assistant – was Schneider his name?
‘Gramps Schneider.
‘Yes indeed. Will you please arrange for him to speak with me?
‘By phone, or do you want to see him in person?
‘I would prefer for him to come here, but I understand that he is old and feeble; it may not be feasible for him to leave the ground. If he is knotted up with spacesickness, he will be no use to me.
‘I’ll see what can be done.
‘Very good. Please expedite the matter. And, Dr Stevens-
‘Well?
‘If it should prove necessary to use the phone, arrange to have a portable full stereo taken to his home. I want the circumstances to be as favourable as possible.
‘OK.
‘Imagine that,’ Stevens added to McLeod when the circuit had been broken. ‘The Great-I-Am’s showing consideration for somebody else’s convenience