Mart made no answer, and Keyes slumped back in his chair. “There are penalties, of course. They will be applied. But what rankles most is that you have given abroad even more than you gave here. You achieved the thing which we directly sought and did not find on Project Levitation, a low-capacity antigravity device. And you have given it, literally, to the enemy instead of preserving it for your own. Can you give me any explanation for such insanity?”

Mart inhaled deeply. “Yes. I can give you a great many answers in due time. But only a few of them now. First, I was granted a patent on the antigravity device used in my toy. Have you read that patent?”

Keyes held up the pile of papers at the side of the desk. “I have read nothing else but it and the news accounts in the last thirty-six hours!”

“You have noted, then, the very precise specifications given in disclosing the mechanism of the toy. You have noted that the patent states this is based on a newly discovered Law of Nature.”

“Indeed I have!” said Keyes bitterly. “And what Law of Nature may I assume it to be?”

“Not the one we found during Project Levitation!” said Mart in sudden intensity. “Not that one — do you understand what that means, Dr. Keyes? I have not betrayed the confidences and work of Project Levitation.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Project Levitation produced antigravity. You utilize the principle of antigravity in these toys of yours. Therefore you utilize the results of Project Levitation, which you were sworn to protect in all secrecy.”

“No.” Mart shook his head firmly. “There is more than just one principle. To make a crude analogy: One might produce a motor car powered by steam or electricity or gasoline engines. The car would perform the same operations, within limits, regardless of the type of power. Beyond those limits, of course, the similarity would vanish.

“So it is with Project Levitation and my little toy. You wanted us to find a means of building a Buck Rogers flying belt. We didn’t do it, but we did find a means of powering thousand-ton airships and spaceships.

“No possible utilization of the particular principle involved in the work of Project Levitation would produce a flying belt. On the other hand, my little toy, as described in the patent, will never be extrapolated to produce spaceships. Its maximum capacity is a little over two pounds, and cannot be scaled up. It is true that new, and at present unknown, designs based on this new Law of Nature can produce spaceships or flying belts — but they are not inherent in the Nagle Rocket toy. I have not violated the secrecy which I swore in connection with my work at ONR. I have not betrayed you. Believe me, I have not!”

Upon opening the office with Kenneth Berkeley, Mart had intensified his contacts with fellow researchers and former students who now held responsible positions in nearly every major industry. His contacts led as well into every Government laboratory employing specialists even remotely connected with basic physical research. As be expected, there began to be responses from these various points of communication. Among the first of these was one from Jennings out on the West Coast. Jennings had been with them on Levitation.

“The news of the Nagle and Berkeley enterprises,” he wrote, “makes me yearn for the good old days of Project Levitation. I didn’t know anything could be as foundationless as that project was when it started, but I believe you’ve topped it in that respect. The boys out here keep telling me you’ve gone off your rocker for sure, and I keep telling them you haven’t. When you get around to it I would appreciate some evidence to back up my defense.

“P.S. Yes, the Nagle Rockets are getting so thick in the air over our subdivisions out here that midair collisions are not infrequent, with resulting claims and counterclaims of damages from one small fry to another. Have you any legal recommendations?

“P.P.S. One corner of our physics lab was blown out the other day. Nobody got hurt, but some people are awfully mad. Seems to be some strong factions developing. There are those who would like to throw you in the clink, those who suggest you retire to the nearest booby hatch, and those who swear by all the windings of our local cyclotron that they're going to figure out just what you’ve built into these gadgets. Also had a note from Keyes advising me to stay firmly shut up regarding Project L. I trust I may be among the first to receive enlightenment.”

Mart chuckled as he showed the letter to Berk. “I can imagine what it must have cost Jennings to write that note,” he said. “He’ll go into a deep spin if he doesn’t get the answer pretty soon. I imagine that out of all those we have stirred up he is the most likely to find the gimmick.”

“How about that young fellow from Apex?” said Berk. “You said he was a pretty sharp type.”

“He’s an engineer. Whether that gives him more or less to overcome than a theoretical physicist I don’t know. I suspect, however, that we’ll be hearing again, one way or another, from Don Wolfe.”

Through his technological grapevine Mart learned that by the end of the sixth week of rocket sales a specimen had been dissected in nearly every university lab and in every corporation with more than five hundred dollars a year to spend on basic research. He learned also that Sam had received an order directly from the United States Bureau of Standards for one dozen Nagle Rockets. He was even more pleased when the grapevine came up with the dope that they were actually for trans-shipment to an AEC lab, and that the Bureau had bought its own rockets at the local five and ten.

Letters and telephone calls reported an increasing frenzy building up in all these laboratories as the scientists tinkered with the little gadget, trying to find out its basis of operation and scale it up to useful load size. He didn’t get too much from the AEC labs, but he was pretty sure the personnel there were participating in the maddening frustration reported from the Bureau of Standards and elsewhere.

With apprehension too, he waited for reports of injuries resulting from imprudent attacks on the problem. With evident good fortune, however, the grapevine had carried the news of the West Coast minor disasters and precautions were being taken. An occasional flash burn and destruction of carelessly placed equipment were all that came to his attention.

By Christmas the sale of the Nagle Rocket and the scientific frustration created by it had reached a peak. Joe Baird continued to throw occasional dark hints of vast, sinister doings on the part of the toy’s creator. Sam Marvenstein had doubled the size of his plant not once but twice. Up to two days before Christmas he was shipping rockets in carload lots.

And then it was over. With the end of the Christmas season, the frantic production wheezed to a halt. Through the offices of St. Nick and Sam Marvenstein, virtually every potential customer for a Nagle Rocket had his wants satisfied.

The day after New Year’s, Mart called Sam down to the offices of Research Consultants. As the manufacturer sat down by the desk, Mart handed him a cagelike dingus about six inches in diameter.

“The successor to the Nagle Rocket,” Mart said.

Sam looked puzzled. He turned the contraption over in his hands a couple of times and shifted so the light from the window fell through the spaces between the wires to better advantage.

“I suppose it’s really quite clever,” sighed Sam. “But exactly what does it do?”

“We’re tentatively calling it the Teleport,” said Mart. “I imagine you can think up a name with more sales appeal. You may remember reading about teleportation in a science-fiction magazine you mentioned when we first met.”

Sam’s face brightened. “Sure... I remember now! That’s the story where the fellow sends his girl across the country by radio and she comes out the other end twins so that everybody is happy and don’t need to fight over her any more.”

“Roughly,” said Mart. “Just roughly. So here’s what the gadget does. You see that this aluminum disk bisects the spherical cage and that a wire goes through the hole in the center of the disk. On one side there is a bead on the wire. Now I push the button at one pole of the sphere, where the cage wires come together with the single wire through the middle. Now the bead is on the other side of the disk.”

He handed the gadget back to Sam. “Try it yourself. Press the little button at the pole of the sphere.”

Sam took it again, a look of disappointment verging on repugnance showing on his face. “I don’t get it,” he said. “There’s nothing to that. Pushing a bead along the wire that goes through the hole in a piece of metal —”

“Look closely, Sam, and push the button.”

Sam did so, settling the device in a shaft of sunlight again and squinting through the wires of the cage. He pressed with his thumb. Instantly, the bead on the interior wire vanished from one side of the disk and appeared on the other.

“I still don’t see,” said Sam in disappointment. Then he stopped. “Hey, wait a minute! How did that bead get through there? There’s no hole for it to go through. The wire fills up the hole!”

Mart nodded benignly. “Right. Do you think that might be a sort of flash in the pan gadget that would interest the small fry — and maybe their older brothers and sisters — to the tune of a couple of hundred thousand copies?”

“Yeah, I guess maybe it would sell,” Sam muttered as he continued staring into the wire framework, pressing the button at first one pole and then the other. “But there’s gotta be a hole in the disk! There’s gotta be a way for the bead to get through,” he said. “You gotta tell me!”

“That does it,” said Mart as he watched the two men take seats in the amphitheater. “That does it, or I miss my guess. After they get through with their looking we can pack our trunks and go home.”

“The AEC, did Jennings say?” Berk asked.

“None other.”

Jennings and Goodman stayed inside for a long time. Finally, they came out into the orange sunlight of early evening. Jennings’ face seemed pale, as if he had been out of the sunlight for a long time. His hands trembled perceptibly as he lit a thin cigar.

“The food at our hotel is very good,” said Mart.

Jennings nodded. Neither he nor his companion said a word. The four men turned and walked all the way to the hotel in silence. Only as they sat down to the table and picked up the menu did Jennings emerge from his remoteness.

“Baked ham,” he murmured to the waitress. “And make the coffee strong. Very strong.”

Then, while they waited, he folded his hands on the table and settled his eyes on Mart. “I know you too well,” he said, “to ask if you are simply pulling our leg, but I have to ask it, anyway.”

Mart shook his head. “You’ll have to tell me what you mean by that. I have shown you only a contraption for parting dollars from suckers — with apologies and exceptions to present company,” he smiled as he glanced in Dr. Goodman’s direction.

The AEC man gave no notice that he’d heard.

“Only two kinds of men could produce the Volcano,” said Jennings. “One would be merely a fool who had stumbled on the design by accident and didn’t know what he’d made. The other would be a genius who knew exactly what he had — a genius whose brilliance was so great that he could afford to sit back and laugh at the rest of us scratching our heads and looking silly trying to figure it out.”

“Nobody’s laughing,” said Mart soberly. “But you’ve got to say it.”

“All right,” said Jennings. “That Volcano of yours is nothing but an extremely exact hyper scale model of a radioactive atomic nucleus, complete with potential barrier penetration in full operation.

“You’re telling us that you know the full basic theory behind nuclear structure and phenomena. You’re telling us that you know what happens in a radioactive atom. And you’re thumbing your nose at us while you say it. Why? Why have you done this to us, Mart?”

Mart looked down at the tablecloth and traced the pattern in the linen with his fingernail. “Not that,” he said. “I’m not deriding you. I’m ready to tell you why. I’m ready to tell anyone who figures out the Volcano for himself. After dinner, up in our own room.”

The rest of the meal passed in almost complete silence. Berk and Mart knew that Jennings wanted to talk. They knew he was thinking of their last association, on Project Levitation, but he couldn’t speak of that with Goodman present.

The AEC man seemed to sense that he was something of an intruder. As the silence continued, a look of disgruntled determination settled upon his face, as if he intended not to be left out of any secrets that might pass between the others.

Afterwards, they went up to Mart’s room. Carolyn and the children had gone to a show, so they were alone. Jennings lit a fresh cigar and sat down by a window where he could see the haze of lights and desert dust over Las Vegas. Mart stood a moment near the window, looking out. Then he turned.

“I want a patent on what I’ve got,” he said. “That’s all I’m after. Nothing but a patent.”

Jennings blew a cloud of smoke into the air and looked up quizzically. Goodman lurched impatiently in his chair. “You have patents!” the AEC man said. “I even wired Washington and had a copy of the Volcano patents sent out while I went to Los Angeles. You’re covered on everything you’ve done!”

But already Jennings was smiling as he watched Mart through the haze of cigar smoke that was fading between them. “So you want a patent!” he murmured. “I should have guessed that it would be something oblique like that, since you were teamed up with Berk. This is Berk’s angle, isn’t it?”

"We worked it out together,” said Mart. “We had developed these things and didn’t know what to do with them. Finally, Berk got so tired of my griping about the impossibility of using them without giving them away that he suggested we do something about it. We have.”

Jennings shook his head. “Not yet, Mart. You haven’t done anything except stir up a hornet’s nest. It remains to be seen whether or not the stirring-up is going to result in any real action on your problem.”

“The stirring-up is something in itself,” said Mart. “Things will never be quite the same again for anyone who fully understands the symbology of the Volcano.”

“You are talking over my head!” said Goodman irritably. “I fail completely to understand what this is all about. You have produced a model which you have tacitly admitted has been correctly interpreted by myself and Dr. Jennings. Now you say you want patents — on a device which is already covered by patents!”

“You will recall,” said Mart, “that each patent refers to a specific, unnamed Law of Nature upon which the device in question is based. In accord with the present Patent System that is as far as I can go. And we had plenty of trouble going that far — getting the Volcano in under the wire as an amusement device instead of an immoral gambling machine.”

“What do you mean, that’s as far as you can go? Where else do you want to go?”

“Where would you like me to go?”

Goodman became slightly redder in the face. “I would like you to enlighten us in our ignorance regarding the structure and internal processes of the radioactive atom — if you consider us capable of understanding it. I would like you to show how the methods of propulsion in your rocket toy may be adapted to full-scale aircraft. And the Teleport... it’s obvious what we would like you to do with that, if it’s possible.”

“It’s possible, I assure you,” said Mart. “Let me say that I don’t know exactly how — that would take a corps of engineers some little time and a fairly well equipped development laboratory to design the exact means, but that is only a matter of detail.

“I am not an engineer, Dr. Goodman, nor a gimmick maker — except temporarily. I am a theoretical researcher and desire to remain so. Unfortunately, however, I have to eat. So do my family.”

“I don’t see what that — Any good University —”

“It is commonly supposed that the theoretical researcher is much like the Artiste of old: far above working for mere dirty money. He’s supposed to work for Truth and Knowledge, while somebody else — the development engineer — makes the old filthy green stuff.”

“Dr. Nagle —”

“Now if I were to do what you ask, to broadcast the basic principles which I have discovered and employed in these devices, I would be completely out in the cold. I would get no protection or further remuneration whatever. As long as I remain a maker of trinkets and gimmicks I am entitled to the full protection and blessings of our Patent Laws. The moment I step into the field of new, basic science I have no protection whatever. I cannot even use my own work!

“I cannot reveal to you these basic Laws of Nature which I have discovered without forfeiting all claim to financial benefit from my work!”

Dr. Goodman made a noise as if appalled by some enormous sacrilege. “Of course you can’t patent a Law of Nature! It’s unthinkable! That’s something that’s just there — for everybody to use.”

“Fine. Let them use it then.”

There was a small dinner party that night at the hotel with a couple dozen of his closest friends. Keyes was there and Jennings, and Don Wolfe. They invited Dykstra just for the hell of it, but the professor had urgent business elsewhere.

Mart kept the talk away from the hearing, and from the general subject of his discoveries. It kept spilling over into their conversation, but he had no intention of letting it be aired at the dinner table. All they had to say now was for the Committee. Only Jennings broke through with one piece of information pertinent to Mart’s work. He reported that Goodman had acquired one of the tavern-size Volcanoes and was working out a system to beat the game.

Testimony was resumed on Tuesday morning. Dykstra was the first to be called. He arose with a clearing of his throat and moved portentously to the front of the room with the faint side-wise waddle that marked his movements.

He said: “From that great moment, now lost in the dim shades of history, when the first cave man struck fire from flint to warm and illumine his cavern, there has been a code which the true scientist unwaveringly observes. Unspoken and unwritten, it is nevertheless engraved upon his heart in letters that burn. That code is that knowledge shall be free. It shall be the rightful possession of all mankind. The true scientist would no more think of taking out a patent upon his work than he would think of deliberately falsifying the reports of his observations. Nowhere, in the presence of scientific men, have I heard anything quite so insulting as the reference made yesterday to the revered name of Dr. Einstein. As if he would actually be concerned with the trivialities of royalties from the manufacture of photoelectric ceils! Royalties are for tinkerers and garage mechanics. Scientists have nothing to do with such!”

Cogswell coughed behind his hand. “It would seem, Dr. Dykstra, that scientists must also eat.”

“The laborer is worthy of his hire,” said Dykstra, “No genuine scientist ever starved or was in want. He must live sparingly, of course, but a Spartan regimen is all the more conducive to the work of the mind at highest efficiency.

“No, indeed, senator, the true scientist is not in need of royalties. A man who is worth his salt will automatically gain the reputation that will take him where he deserves to go — to the laboratories and to the endowments which are his rightfully, in return for the benefit he bestows so freely upon all mankind. Bestows without thought of the vulgar commercialism which we see here being attempted to be thrust upon us.”

In the afternoon, Jennings was called. His spare, sticklike frame settled awkwardly into the witness chair. An amused tolerance was upon his face.

“I would prefer to answer your questions,” he said. “There is no general statement I have to make beyond what has already been said.”

Cogswell said, “What can you tell us, Dr. Jennings, of the allegedly revolutionary principles behind these toys of Dr. Nagle?”

“I can tell you nothing, because I do not know what these principles are,” said Jennings.

“You do not know for certain that Dr. Nagle has actually made the discoveries claimed for him and by him?”

“I am certain. I am very certain that they exist. I am certain that this Volcano which you have there on the table is symbolical of perhaps the most revolutionary discoveries since those that led to the release of atomic energy. Proper utilization of the principles symbolized there would no doubt lead to transmutation of the elements with the simplicity of ordinary chemical reactions. It is difficult to estimate the value of the discovery.”

“And yet you tell us you do not know what the principle is,” said Cogswell. “It appears that the scientific mind runs in channels far removed from the reasoning of ordinary individuals.”

“No, that's a very ordinary channel of thinking — or should be, anyway,” said Jennings. “It simply means that I know the abilities of Martin Nagle. I know him. I trust him. If he says it is so, then I believe that his symbology is based upon actual fact.”

“Well, if you are so convinced of the existence of these discoveries, what is your opinion of Dr. Nagle’s contention that he is entitled to patent protection upon them?”

“I think he is entirely correct in his demands,” said Jennings.

“And these unknown principles would be classified, patent-wise, as Laws of Nature?”

“Yes.”

“If this is the case, why have they not been exposed by others of your profession? Is this symbology not sufficiently understandable to be deciphered? Do you acknowledge that, as Dr. Nagle says, no one else is smart enough to figure these things out for another hundred years? Or do you have another unwritten code — one forbidding you to try?”

Jennings smiled wryly. “Dr. Nagle didn’t say that, but we’ll let it pass. We have no code, either. On the contrary, there is scarcely a scientist in the country who has not tried to crack these three gimmicks of Mart’s since he put them on the market. I know of only one man who has made any partial success of the attempt.”

“Can you give any reason for this lack of success? Is Dr. Nagle truly the singular genius he appears?”

“He’s a singular genius, all right, but not in the way he appears,” said Jennings with a laugh. “To answer your question, I suspect there are certain traditional ways of finding out things that are wholly wrong in their approach. I believe Dr. Nagle has abandoned these and has devised for himself new methods to find basic knowledge.”

“And you would say, I suppose, that this Committee should recommend amendments to the Patent Laws permitting Dr. Nagle to obtain patents on Laws of Nature?”

"Indeed I would!” said Jennings.

Afterwards, Mart contended that it was the television broadcast that swung the decision, but Berk was not sure. The following days saw a huge stack of testimony taken from scientists who told almost incredible stories of trying to get satisfaction from the existing Patent System.

Mart was called for final testimony and rebuttal, but he could only underline what had already been said. He was gratified, however, to observe that the attitude of the whole Committee was considerably different from that expressed by them on the first day of the hearings. He even felt that perhaps they understood — just a little — what he meant by declaring that Sir Isaac Newton should have been able to patent the Law of Gravity. And that he, Martin Nagle, should be allowed to patent the atom.

At the end of the final session, Senator Cogswell took his hand. “There’ll be some changes made,” he promised. “It may be rough going to get it done. We may have to call you back again — more than once. But in the end you people are going to get what you want. Generations of scientists to come are going to be grateful because you endured the personal sacrifice of staging this demonstration which brought to our attention the inadequacies of a system of which we were unjustly proud.”