I stopped on the way to theStaten Island Airport to call up, and that was a mistake, doubtless,since I had a chance of making it otherwise. But the officewas affable. "We'll hold the ship five minutes for you," the clerksaid. "That's the best we can do."
So I rushed back to my taxi and we spun off to the thirdlevel and sped across the Staten bridge like a comet treading asteel rainbow. I had to be in Moscow by evening, by eight o'clock,in fact, for the opening of bids on the Ural Tunnel. The Governmentrequired the personal presence of an agent of each bidder,but the firm should have known better than to send me,Dixon Wells, even though the N. J. Wells Corporation is, so tospeak, my father. I have a—well, an undeserved reputation forbeing late to everything; something always comes up to preventme from getting anywhere on time. It's never my fault; this timeit was a chance encounter with my old physics professor, oldHaskel van Manderpootz. I couldn't very well just say hello andgood-bye to him; I'd been a favorite of his back in the collegedays of 2014.
I missed the airliner, of course. I was still on the StatenBridge when I heard the roar of the catapult and the Soviet rocketBaikal hummed over us like a tracer bullet with a long tail offlame.
We got the contract anyway; the firm wired our man inBeirut and he flew up to Moscow, but it didn't help my reputation.However, I felt a great deal better when I saw the eveningpapers; the Baikal, flying at the north edge of the eastbound laneto avoid a storm, had locked wings with a British fruitship andall but a hundred of her five hundred passengers were lost. I hadalmost become "the late Mr. Wells" in a grimmer sense.
I'd made an engagement for the following week with old vanManderpootz. It seems he'd transferred to N.Y.U. as head ofthe department of Newer Physics—that is, of Relativity. He deservedit; the old chap was a genius if ever there was one, andeven now, eight years out of college, I remember more from hiscourse than from half a dozen calculus, steam and gas, mechanics,and other hazards on the path to an engineer's education. So onTuesday night I dropped in an hour or so late, to tell the truth,since I'd forgotten about the engagement until mid-evening.
He was reading in a room as disorderly as ever. "Humph!"he grunted. "Time changes everything but habit, I see. Youwere a good student, Dick, but I seem to recall that you alwaysarrived in class toward the middle of the lecture."
"I had a course in East Hall just before," I explained. "Icouldn't seem to make it in time."
"Well, it's time you learned to be on time," he growled.Then his eyes twinkled. "Time!" he ejaculated. "The most fascinatingword in the language. Here we've used it five times(there goes the sixth time—and the seventh!) in the first minuteof conversation; each of us understands the other, yet science isjust beginning to learn its meaning. Science? I mean that I ambeginning to learn."
I sat down. "You and science are synonymous," I grinned."Aren't you one of the world's outstanding physicists?"
"One of them!" he snorted. "One of them, eh! And whoare the others?"
"Oh, Corveille and Hastings and Shrimski—"
"Bah! Would you mention them in the same breath withthe name of van Manderpootz? A pack of jackals, eating thecrumbs of ideas that drop from my feast of thoughts! Had yougone back into the last century, now—had you mentioned Einsteinan