For the umpteenth time he took out the little sketch Schneider had made and examined it. There was, he thought, just one more possibility: to return again to Earth and insist that Schneider actually do in his presence, whatever it was he had done which caused the deKalbs to work. He knew now that he should have insisted on it in the first place, but he had been so utterly played out by having to fight that devilish thick field that he had not had the will to persist
Perhaps he could have Stevens do it and have the process stereophotoed for a later examination. No, the old man had a superstitious prejudice against artificial images
He floated gently over to the vicinity of one of the inoperative deKalbs. What Schneider had claimed to have done was preposterously simple. He had drawn chalk marks down each antenna so, for the purpose of fixing his attention. Then he had gazed down them and thought about them ‘reaching out for power’, reaching into the Other World, stretching- Baldur began to bark frantically
‘Shut up, you fool!’ Waldo snapped, without taking his eyes off the antennae
Each separate pencil of metal was wiggling, stretching. There was the low, smooth hum of perfect operation
Waldo was still thinking about it when the televisor demanded his attention. He had never been in any danger of cracking up mentally as Rambeau had done; nevertheless, he had thought about the matter in a fashion which made his head ache. He was still considerably bemused when he cut in his end of the sound-vision circuit. ‘Yes?
It was Stevens. ‘Hello, Mr Jones. Uh, we wondered . . . that is- ‘Speak up, man!
‘Well, how close are you to a solution?’ Stevens blurted out. ‘Matters are getting pretty urgent.
‘In what way?
‘There was a partial breakdown in Great New York last night. Fortunately it was not at peak load and the ground crew were able to install spares before the reserves were exhausted, but you can imagine what it would have been like during the rush hour. In my own department the crashes have doubled in the past few weeks, and our underwriters have given notice. We need results pretty quick.
‘You’ll get your results,’ Waldo said loftily. ‘I’m in the final stages of the research.’ He was actually not that confident, but Stevens irritated him even more than most of the smooth apes
Doubt and reassurance mingled in Stevens’s face. ‘I don’t suppose you could care to give us a hint of the general nature of the solution?
No, Waldo could not. Still – it would be fun to pull Stevens’s leg. ‘Come close to the pickup, Dr Stevens. I’ll tell you.’ He leaned forward himself, until they were almost nose to nose – in effect. ‘Magic is loose in the world!
He cut the circuit at once
Down in the underground labyrinth of North America’s home plant, Stevens stared at the blank screen. ‘What’s the trouble, chief?’ McLeod inquired
‘I don’t know. I don’t rightly know. But I think that Fatty has slipped his cams, just the way Rambeau did.
McLeod grinned delightedly. ‘How sweet! I always did think he was a hoot owl.
Stevens looked very sober. ‘You had better pray that he hasn’t gone nuts. We’re depending on him. Now let me see those operation reports.
Magic loose in the world. It was as good an explanation as any, Waldo mused. Causation gone haywire; sacrosanct physical laws no longer operative. Magic. As Gramps Schneider had put it, it seemed to depend on the way one looked at it
Apparently Schneider had known what he was talking about, although he naturally had no real grasp of the physical theory involved in the deKalbs
Wait a minute now! Wait a minute. He had been going at this problem wrongly perhaps. He had approached it with a certain point of view himself, a point of view which had made him critical of the old man’s statements – an assumption that he, Waldo, knew more about the whole matter than Schneider did. To be sure he had gone to see Schneider, but he had thought of him as a back- country hex doctor, a man who might possess one piece of information useful to Waldo, but who was basically ignorant and superstitious