by Isaac Asimov
I did not find a job; my expected Ph.D. degree was no passport to affluence, after all. That was humiliating, too.
I accepted an offer from Professor Robert C. Elderfield to do a year’s postdoctoral research for him for $4,500, working on anti-malarial drugs. I accepted, though not with great enthusiasm, and started work for him on June 2, 1948, the day after I had officially gained my Ph.D.-At least it would give me another year to find a job.
By the next month, I had settled down sufficiently to consider writing a science fiction story, “The Red Queen’s Race.” On July 12 it was finished and I submitted it to Campbell. It was accepted on the sixteenth and once again I was back in business.
The Red Queen’s Race
Here’s a puzzle for you, if you like. Is it a crime to translate a chemistry textbook into Greek?
Or let’s put it another way. If one of the country’s largest atomic power plants is completely ruined in an unauthorized experiment, is an admitted accessory to that act a criminal?
These problems only developed with time, of course. We started with the atomic power plant-drained. I really mean drained. I don’t know exactly how large the fissionable power source was-but in two Hashing microseconds, it had all fissioned.
No explosion. No undue gamma ray density. It was merely that every moving part in the entire structure was fused. The entire main building was mildly hot. The atmosphere for two miles in every direction was gently warm. Just a dead, useless building which later on took a hundred million dollars to replace.
It happened about three in the morning, and they found Elmer Tywood alone in the central source chamber. The findings of twenty-four close-packed hours can be summarized quickly.
1. Elmer Tywood-Ph.D., Sc.D., Fellow of This and Honorary That, one-time youthful participant of the original Manhattan Project, and now full Professor of Nuclear Physics-was no interloper. He had a Class-a Pass-Unlimited. But no record could be found as to his purpose in being there just then. A table on casters contained equipment which had not been made on any recorded requisition. It, too, was a single fused mass-not quite too hot to touch.
2. Elmer Tywood was dead. He lay next to the table; his face congested, nearly black. No radiation effect. No external force of any sort. The doctor said apoplexy.
3. In Elmer Tywood’s office safe were found two puzzling items: i.e. twenty foolscap sheets of apparent mathematics, and a bound folio in a foreign language which turned out to be Greek, the subject matter, on translation, turning out to be chemistry.
The secrecy which poured over the whole mess was something so terrific as to make everything that touched it, dead. It’s the only word that can describe it. Twenty-seven men and women, all told, including the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Science, and two or three others so top-notch that they were completely unknown to the public, entered the power plant during the period of investigation. All who had been in the plant that night, the physicist who had identified Tywood, the doctor who had examined him, were retired into virtual home arrest.
No newspaper ever got the story. No inside dopester got it. A few members of Congress got part of it.
And naturally sol Anyone or any group or any country that could suck all the available energy out of the equivalent of perhaps fifty to a hundred pounds of plutonium without exploding it, had America’s industry and America’s defense so snugly in the palm of the hand that the light and life of one hundred sixty million people could be turned off between yawns.
Was it Tywood? Or Tywood and others? Or just others, through Tywood?
And my job? I was decoy; or front man, if you like. Someone has to hang around the university and ask questions about Tywood. After all, he was missing. It could be amnesia, a hold-up, a kidnapping, a killing, a runaway, insanity, accident-I could busy myself with that for five years and collect black looks, and maybe divert attention. To be sure, it didn’t work out that way.
But don’t think I was in on the whole case at the start. I wasn’t one of the twenty-seven men I mentioned a while back, though my boss was. But I knew a little-enough to get started.
Professor John Keyser was also in Physics. I didn’t get to him right away. There was a good deal of routine to cover first in as conscientious a way as I could. Quite meaningless. Quite necessary. But I was in Keyser’s office now.
Professors’ offices are distinctive. Nobody dusts them except some tired cleaning woman who hobbles in and out at eight in the morning, and the professor never notices the dust anyway. Lots of books without much arrangement. The ones close to the desk are used a lot-lectures are copied out of them. The ones out of reach are wherever a student put them back after borrowing them. Then there are professional journals that look cheap and are darned expensive, which are waiting about and which may some day be read. And plenty of paper on the desk; some of it scribbled on.
Keyser was an elderly man-one of Tywood’s generation. His nose was big and rather red, and he smoked a pipe. He had that easygoing and non-predatory look in his eyes that goes with an academic job-either because that kind of job attracts that kind of man or because that kind of job makes that kind of man.
I said: “What kind of work is Professor Tywood doing?”
“Research physics.”
Answers like that bounce off me. Some years ago they used to get me mad. Now I just said: “We know that, professor. It’s the details I’m after.”
And he twinkled at me tolerantly: “Surely the details can’t help much unless you’re a research physicist yourself. Does it matter-under the circumstances?”
“Maybe not. But he’s gone. If anything’s happened to him in the way of’-I gestured, and deliberately clinched-”foul play, his work may have something to do with it-unless he’s rich and the motive is money.”.
Keyser chuckled dryly: “College professors are never rich. The commodity we peddle is but lightly considered, seeing how large the supply is.”
“
I ignored that, too, because I know my looks are against me. Actually, I finished college with a “very good” translated into Latin so that the college president could understand it, and never played in a football game in my life. But I look rather the reverse.
I said: “Then we’re left with his work to consider.”
“You mean spies? International intrigue?”
“Why not? It’s happened before! After all, he’s a nuclear physicist, isn’t he?”
“He is. But so are others. So am I.”
“Ah, but perhaps he knows something you don’t. “
There was a stiffening to the jaw. When caught off-guard, professors can act just like people. He said, stiffly: “As I recall offhand, Tywood has published papers on the effect of liquid viscosity on the wings of the Rayleigh line, on higher-orbit field equations, and on spin-orbit coupling of two nucleons, but his main work is on quadrupole moments. I am quite competent in these matters.”
“Is he working on quadrupole moments now?” I tried not to bat an eye, and I think I succeeded.
“Yes-in a way.” He almost sneered, “He may be getting to the experimental stage finally. He’s spent most of his life, it seems, working out the mathematical consequences of a special theory of his own.”
“Like this,” and I tossed a sheet of foolscap at him.
That sheet was one of those in the safe in Tywood’s office. The chances, of course, were that the bundle meant nothing, if only because it was a professor’s safe. That is, things are sometimes put in at the spur of the moment because the logical drawer was filled with unmarked exam papers. And, of course, nothing is ever taken out. We had found in that safe dusty little vials of yellowish crystals with scarcely legible labels, some mimeographed booklets dating back to World War II and marked “Restricted,” a copy of an old college yearbook, and some correspondence concerning a possible position as Director of Research for American Electric, dated ten years back, and, of course, chemistry in Greek.
The foolscap was there, too.
It was rolled up like a college diploma with a rubber band about it and had no label or descriptive title. Some twenty sheets were covered with ink marks, meticulous and small
I had one sheet of that foolscap. I don’t think anyone man in the world had more than one sheet. And I’m sure that no man in the world but one knew that the loss of his particular sheet and of his particular life would be as nearly simultaneous as the government could make it.
So I tossed the sheet at Keyser, as if it were something I’d found blowing about the campus.
He stared at it and then looked at the back side, which was blank. His eyes moved down from the top to the bottom, then jumped back to the top.
“I don’t know what this is about,” he said, and the words seemed sour to his own taste.
I didn’t say anything. Just folded the paper and shoved it back into the inside jacket pocket.
Keyser added petulantly: “It’s a fallacy you laymen have that scientists can look at an equation and say,, Ah, yes-’ and go on to write a book about it. Mathematics has no existence of its own. It is merely an arbitrary code devised to describe physical observations or philosophical concepts. Every man can adapt it to his own particular needs. For instance no one can look at a symbol and be sure of what it means. So far, science has used every letter in the alphabet, large, small and italic, each symbolizing many different things. They have used bold-faced letters, Gothic-type letters, Greek letters, both capital and small, subscripts, superscripts, asterisks, even Hebrew letters. Different scientists use different symbols for the same concept and the same symbol for different concepts. So if you show a disconnected page like this to any man, without information as to the subject being investigated or the particular symbology used, he could absolutely not make sense out of it.”
I interrupted: “But you said he was working on quadrupole moments. Does that make this sensible?” and I tapped the spot on my chest where the foolscap had been slowly scorching a hole in my jacket for two days.
“I can’t tell. I saw none of the standard relationships that I’d expect to be involved. At least I recognized none. But I obviously can’t commit myself.”
There was a short silence, then he said: “I’ll tell you. Why don’t you check with his students?”
I lifted my eyebrows: “You mean in his classes?”
He seemed annoyed: “No, for Heaven’s sake. His research students! His doctoral candidates! They’ve been working with him. They’ll know the details of that work better than I, or anyone in the faculty, could possibly know it.”
“It’s an idea,” I said, casually. It was, too. I don’t know why, but I wouldn’t have thought of it myself. I guess it’s because it’s only natural to think that any professor knows more than any student.
Keyser latched onto a lapel as I rose to leave. “ And, besides,” he said, “I think you’re on the wrong track. This is in confidence, you understand, and I wouldn’t say it except for the unusual circumstances, but Tywood is not thought of too highly in the profession. Oh, he’s an adequate teacher, I’ll admit, but his research papers have never commanded respect. There has always been a tendency towards vague theorizing, unsupported by experimental evidence. That paper of yours is probably more of it. No one could possibly want to…er, kidnap him because of it.”
“Is that so? I see. Any ideas, yourself, as to why he’s gone, or where he’s gone?”
“Nothing concrete,” he said pursing his lips, “but everyone knows he is a sick man. He had a stroke two years ago that kept him out of classes for a semester. He never did get well. His left side was paralyzed for a while and he still limps. Another stroke would kill him. It could come any time.”
“You think he’s dead, then?”
“It’s not impossible.”
“But where’s the body, then?”
“Well, really-That is your job, I think.“
It was, and I left.
I interviewed each one of Tywood’s four research students in a volume of chaos called a research laboratory. These student research laboratories usually have two hopefuls working therein, said two constituting a floating population, since every year or so they are alternately replaced.
Consequently, the laboratory has its equipment stack in tiers. On the laboratory benches is the equipment immediately being used, and in three or four of the handiest drawers are replacements or supplements which are likely to be used. In the farther drawers, in the shelves reaching up to the ceiling, in odd corners, are fading remnants of the past student generations-oddments never used and never discarded. It is claimed, in fact, that no research student ever knew all the contents of his laboratory.
All four of Tywood’s students were worried. But three were worried mainly by their own status. That is, by the possible effect the absence of Tywood might have on the status of their “problem.” I dismissed those three-who all have their degrees now, I hope-and called back the fourth.
He had the most haggard look of all, and had been least communicative-which I considered a hopeful sign.
He now sat stiffly in the straight-backed chair at the right of the desk, while I leaned back in a creaky old swivel-chair and pushed my hat off my forehead. His name was Edwin Howe and he did get his degree later on; I know that for sure, because he’s a big wheel in the Department of Science now.
I said: “You do the same work the other boys do, I suppose?”
“It’s all nuclear work, in a way.”
“But it’s not all exactly the same?”
He shook his head slowly. “We take different angles. You have to have something clear-cut, you know, or you won’t be able to publish. We’ve got to get our degrees.”
He said it exactly the way you or I might say, “We’ve got to make a living.” At that, maybe it’s the same thing for them.
I said: “All right. What’s your angle?”
He said: “I do the math. I mean, with Professor Tywood.”
“What kind of math?”
And he smiled a little, getting the same sort of atmosphere about him that I had noticed in Professor Keyser’s case that morning. A sort of, “Do-you-really-think-I-can-explain-all-my-profound-thoughts-to-stupid-little-you?” sort of atmosphere.
All he said aloud, however, was: “That would be rather complicated to explain.”
“I’ll help you,” I said. “Is that anything like it?” And I tossed the foolscap sheet at him.
He didn’t give it any once-over. He just snatched it up and let out a thin wail: “Where’d you get this?”
“From Tywood’s safe.”
“Do you have the rest of it, too?”
“It’s safe,” I hedged.
He relaxed a little-just a little: “You didn’t show it to anybody, did you?”
I showed it to Professor Keyser.”
Howe made an impolite sound with his lower lip and front teeth, “That jackass. What did he say?”
I turned the palms of my hands upward and Howe laughed. Then he said, in an offhand manner: “Well, that’s the sort of stuff I do.”
“And what’s it all about? Put it so I can understand it.”
There was distinct hesitation. He said: “Now, look. This is confidential stuff. Even Pop’s other students don’t know anything about it. I don’t even think I know all about it. This isn’t just a degree I’m after, you know. It’s Pop Tywood’s Nobel Prize, and it’s going to be an Assistant Professorship for me at Cal Tech. This has got to be published before it’s talked about.”
And I shook my head slowly and made my words very soft: “No, son. You have it twisted. You’ll have to talk about it before it’s published, because Tywood’s gone and maybe he’s dead and maybe he isn’t. And if he’s dead, maybe he’s murdered. And when the department has a suspicion of murder, everybody talks. Now, it will look bad for you, kid, if you try to keep some secrets.”
It worked. I knew it would, because everyone reads murder mysteries and knows all the cliches. He jumped out of his chair a
nd rattled the words off as if he had a script in front of him.
“Surely,” he said, “You can’t suspect me of…of anything like that. Why…why, my career-”
I shoved him back into his chair with the beginnings of a sweat on his forehead. I went into the next line: “I don’t suspect anybody of anything yet. And you won’t be in any trouble, if you talk, chum.”
He was ready to talk. “Now this is all in strict confidence.”
Poor guy. He didn’t know the meaning of the word “strict.” He was never out of eyeshot of an operator from that moment till the government decided to bury the whole case with the one final comment of “?” Quote. Unquote. (I’m not kidding. To this day, the case is neither opened nor closed. It’s just “?”)
He said, dubiously; “You know what time travel is, I suppose?”
Sure I knew what time travel was. My oldest kid is twelve and he listens to the afternoon video programs till he swells up visibly with the junk he absorbs at the ears and eyes.
“What about time travel?” I said.
“In a sense, we can do it. Actually, it’s only what you might call micro-temporal-translation -”
I almost lost my temper. In fact, I think I did. It seemed obvious that the squirt was trying to diddle me; and without subtlety. I’m used to having people think I look dumb; but not that dumb.
I said through the back of my throat: “Are you going to tell me that Tywood is out somewhere in time-like Ace Rogers, the Lone Time Ranger?” (That was Junior’s favorite program-Ace Rogers was stopping Genghis Khan single-handed that week.)
But he looked as disgusted as I must have. “No,” he yelled. “I don’t know where Pop is. If you’d listen to me-I said micro-temporal-translation. Now, this isn’t a video show and it isn’t magic; this happens to be science. For instance, you know about matter-energy equivalence, I suppose.”
