Aboard the Mallidaxian, Seaton cut the social amenities as short as he courteously could; then went with inseparable Mergon and Luloy to Tammon’s laboratory. That fourth dimensional gizmo was what he was interested in. With his single-mindedness that was all he was interested in, at the moment, of the entire Jelman culture. All four donned Skylark thought-helmets and Seaton set out to learn everything there was to be known about that eight million cubic feet of esoteric apparatus. And Mergon, who didn’t know much of anything about recent developments, was eager to catch up.
Seaton did not learn all about the fourth-dimensional device in one day, nor in one week; but when he had it all filed away in the Brain he asked, “Is that all you have of it?”
He did not mean to be insulting; he was only greatly surprised.
The old savant bristled and Seaton apologized hastily. “I didn’t mean to belittle your achievement in any sense, sir. It’s probably the greatest breakthrough ever made. But it doesn’t seem to be complete.”
“Of course it isn’t complete!” Tammon snapped. “I’ve been working on it only—”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” Seaton broke in. “The concept is incomplete. In several ways. For instance, if fourth dimensional translation is used as a weapon, you have no defense against it.”
“Of course there’s no defense against it!” Tammon defended his brain-child like a tigress defending her young. “By the very nature of things there can’t be any defense against it!”
At that, politeness went by the board. “You’re wrong,” Seaton said, flatly. “By the very nature of things there has to be. All nature is built on a system of checks and balances.
Doing a job so terrifically big and so brand new, I doubt if anybody could get the whole thing at once. Let’s go over the theory again, together, with a microscope, to see if we can’t add something to it somewhere?”
Tammon agreed, but reluctantly. Deep down in his own mind he did not believe that any other mind could improve upon any particular of his work. As the review progressed, however, he became more and more enthusiastic. As well he might; for the mathematics section of Richard Seaton’s multi-compartmented mind contained, indexed and cross-index, all the work done by countless grand masters of the subject during half a million years.
Luloy started to pull her helmet off, but Mergon stopped her with a direct thought. “I’m lost, too, sweet, but keep on listening. We can get bits here and there — and we’ll probably never have the chance again to watch two such minds at work.”
“Hold it!” Seaton snapped, half an hour later. “Back up — there! This integral here. Limits zero to pi over two. You’re limiting the thing to a large but definitely limited volume of your generalized N-dimensional space. I think it should be between zero and infinity — and while we’re at it let’s scrap half of the third determinant in that no-space-no-time complex. Let’s see what happens if we substitute the gamma function here and the chi there and the xi there and the omicron down there in the corner.”
“But why?” the old savant protested. “I don’t see any possible reason for any of it.”
Seaton grinned. “There isn’t any — any more than there was for your original brainstorm. If there had been the Norlaminian would have worked this whole shebang out a hundred thousand years ago. It’s nothing but a hunch, but it’s strong enough so I want to follow it up — okay? Fine then, integrating that, we get…”
Five hours later, Tammon took his helmet off and stared at Seaton with wonder in his eyes. “Do you realize just what you’ve done, young man? You have made a break through at least equal to my own. Opened up a whole vast new field — a field parallel to my own, perhaps, but in no sense the same.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Merely an enlargement. All I did was follow a hunch.”
“An intuition,” Tammon corrected him. “What else, pray, makes breakthroughs?”
And Luloy, on the way out of the laboratory hand in hand with Mergon, said, “I had no idea that Tellus ever did or ever could produce anybody like him. He is their god’s fair-haired child, for a fact. Sennlloy will have to know about this, Merg.”
“She will indeed — I was sure you’d think of that.”
And as soon as Dorothy could get Seaton alone that evening she stared at him with a variety of emotions playing over her face. As though she had never seen him before; or as though she were getting acquainted with him all over again. “I’ve been talking to Sennlloy,” she announced. “Or, rather, she’s been talking to me. She didn’t lose much time, did she?”
Seaton blushed to the roots of his hair. “I’ll say she didn’t. Not any. She knocked me for a block-long row of ash cans.”
“Uh-huh. Me, too — and how! She told me you said I’d blow my red top and I just about did, until she explained. She’s quite a gal, isn’t she? And what a shape! You know, I’m awfully glad I’m not too bad in that shape department myself, or I’d die of mortification looking at them? But Dick — don’t you suppose there are any people in this whole cockeyed universe except us and the Rayseenians who don’t run around naked all the time?”
“I wouldn’t know; but what has all that got to do with the price of hasheesh in Istanbul?”
“It ties in. She must have thought I was some kind of an idiot child, but she didn’t show it. She couldn’t really understand my taboos, she said, since they were not in her own heredity, but she could accept them as facts in mine and work within their limitations.”
Dorothy blushed, but went on, “I’d be the only Prime Operator — and so forth. You know about the ‘and so forth’. Anyway, before she got done she actually made me feel ashamed of myself! They really need your genes, Dick. You didn’t let on, did you, that DuQuesne’s a Tellurian, too?”
“I’ll say I didn’t! The less they think that ape and I came from the same world, the better I’ll like it.”
“You and me both. Well, she didn’t actually say so, but when she found out what kind of genes you have she decided to pour every one of DuQuesne’s right down the drain.”
“Could be.” Seaton didn’t agree with that conclusion at all, but he was too smart to argue the point.
At breakfast the following morning Seaton said, “You chirped it, birdie, about their thinking us some kind of idiot children. Besides, the First Principle and Prime Tenet of all diplomacy has always been, ‘When in Rome be a Roman candle’. So I think we’d all better peel to the raw as of now. You and I had better, whether the rest do or not. Check?”
“Check — but I think they will. We’re horribly conspicuous, dressed. People look at us as though we were things that had escaped from a zoo. And all the Green System people have always thought we were more than somewhat loco in the coco for covering up so much. We’ll get used to it easily enough — look at the nudists. So lead on, my bold and valiant — I follow thee to the bitter end of all my raiment.”
“I knew you would, ace. Let’s go spread the gospel.”
When they approached the Cranes and the Japanese on the subject, Margaret threw back her black-thatched head and laughed. “We must be psychic — we were going to spring the same thing on you. And after all, actually, how much do our bathing suits hide? Yours or mine either one? And we have it to show, too — so here goes! The last one undressed is Stinker of the Day!” She began to unzip, then paused and looked at Lotus.
The Nisei girl shrugged. “We all should, of course, I won’t like it and I positively know I’ll never get used to it, but if you two do I will too if it kills me.”
“’At-a-girl, Lambie!” Margaret put her arm around the beautifully formed little body and squeezed. “But you just wait — you’ll have it really made. None of them ever saw anything like you before, you gorgeous little doll, you. With your size and build you’ll be the absolute Queen of the May!”