Suppose he were to review the situation from a different viewpoint. Let it be assumed that everything Schneider had to say was coldly factual and enlightened, rather than allegorical and superstitious- He settled himself to do a few hours of hard thinking. In the first place Schneider had used the phrase ‘the Other World’ time and again. What did it mean, literally? A ‘world’ was a space-time-energy continuum; an ‘Other World’ was, therefore, such a continuum, but a different one from the one in which he found himself. Physical theory found nothing repugnant in such a notion; the possibility of infinite numbers of continua was a familiar, orthodox speculation. It was even convenient in certain operations to make such an assumption
Had Gramps Schneider meant that? A literal, physical ‘Other World’? On rcflection, Waldo was convinced that he must have meant just that, even though he had not used conventional scientific phraseology. ‘Other World’ sounds poetical, but to say an ‘additional continuum’ implies physical meaning. The terms had led him astray
Schneider had said that the Other World was all round, here, there, and everywhere. Well, was not that a fair description of a space superposed and in one-to-one correspondence? Such a space might be so close to this one that the interval between them was an infinitesimal, yet unnoticed and unreachable, just as two planes may be considered as coextensive and separated by an unimaginably short interval, yet be perfectly discreet, one from the other
The Other Space was not entirely unreachable; Schneider had spoken of reaching into it. The idea was fantastic, yet he must accept it for the purposes of this investigation. Schneider had implied – no – stated that it was a matter of mental outlook
Was that really so fantastic? If a continuum were an unmeasurably short distance away, yet completely beyond one’s physical grasp, would it be strange to find that it was most easily reached through some subtle and probably subconscious operation of the brain? The whole matter was subtle – and Heaven knew that no one had any real idea of how the brain works. No idea at all. It was laughably insufficient to try to explain the writing of a symphony in terms of the mechanics of colloids. No, nobody knew how the brain worked; one more inexplicable ability in the brain was not too much to swallow
Come to think of it, the whole notion of consciousness and thought was fantastically improbable. All right, so McLeod disabled his skycar himself by thinking bad thoughts; Schneider fixed it by thinking the correct thoughts. Then what? He reached a preliminary conclusion almost at once: by extension, the other deKalh failures were probably failures on the part of the operators. The operators were probably rundown, tired out, worried about something, and in some fashion still not clear they infected, or affected, the deKalbs with their own troubles. For convenience let us say that the deKalbs were short- circuited into the Other World. Poor terminology, but it helped him to form a picture
Grimes’s hypothesis! ‘Run-down, tired out, worried about something!’ Not proved yet, but he felt sure of it. The epidemic of crashcs through material was simply an aspect of the general anyasthenia caused by short-wave radiation
If that were true- He cut in a sight-sound circuit to Earth and demanded to talk with Stevens
‘Dr Stevens,’ he began at once, ‘There is a preliminary precautionary measure which should be undertaken right away.
‘Yes?
‘First, let me ask you this: Have you had many failures of deKalbs in private ships? What is the ratio?
‘I can’t give you exact figures at the moment,’ Stevens answered, somewhat mystified, ‘but there have been practically none. It’s the commercial lines which have suffered.
‘Just as I suspected. A private pilot won’t fly unless he feels up to it, but a man with a job goes ahead no matter how he feels. Make arrangements for special physical and psycho examinations for all commercial pilots flying deKalb-type ships. Ground any who are not feeling in tiptop shape. Call Dr Grimes. He’ll tell you what to look for.
‘That’s a pretty tall order, Mr Jones. After all, most of those pilots, practically all of them, aren’t our employees. We don’t have much control over them.