"I'm sorry you cannot come to a reasonable conclusion," said Dr.
Thorndyke. "If you cannot see the logic of--"
I cut him off short. "Look, Doc," I snapped, "If you can't see where
your line of thinking ends, you're in bad shape."
He looked superior. "You're sour because you know you haven't got what
it takes."
I almost nipped. "You're so damned dumb that you can't see that in any
society of supermen, you'd not be qualified to clean out ash trays," I
tossed back at him.
He smiled self-confidently. "By the time they start looking at my
level--if they ever do--you'll have been gone long ago. Sorry, Cornell.
You don't add up."
Well, that was nothing I didn't know already. In his society, I was a
nonentity. Yet, somehow, if that's what the human race was coming to
under the Thorndyke's and the Phelps', I didn't care to stay around.
"All right," I snapped. "Which way do I go from here? The laboratory, or
will you dispense with the preliminaries and let me take the high slide
right now before this--" I held up my infected finger, "gets to the
painful stages."
With the air and tone of a man inspecting an interesting specimen
impaled on a mounting pin, Thorndyke replied:
"Oh--we have use for the likes of you."