Ackerman shook his head tiredly. He handed Blaine the several sheets of
typescript. "Here," he said. "This gives you enough information for a
beginning. Once you grasp the situation, you are to do the job outlined
on the last four pages."
He turned to Tansie. "Drive the ship to Barry Ford's world, while I try
to explain what's to be done."
"What are you going to do?" she asked him.
"There's some strings still untied," smiled Ackerman, who was now
master of the situation and worthy of the name of Great Physicist. "The
Blaines are going to build me my laboratory!"
He left Calvin and Laurie in the familiar woods of Wisconsin on the
other world, complete with his projector and the plans. Then down
through the "time-space" he and Tansie went, on that world, to an era
which Ackerman knew to be the critical "time".
"We 'pushed' there," he said. "Now we pry here."
"What kind of measure comes here?"
"Same prescription," said Ackerman, reaching for his temperon-clad
glove.
"And is this where the Ford-Laplane outfit comes in?"
"No. Since this is the world of free research, the cyclotron laboratory
will be remotely controlled and unattended; no one will get hurt."
"But I don't understand how the same cure works on both worlds,"
complained Tansie.
"Very simple. The other world didn't know what one another was doing
because everybody was afraid to talk. In this world no one knows what
his neighbor is doing because, with everybody doing it, there is too
little correlation of effort. No one has to ask anybody's permission to
tinker, and so when this laboratory goes up, again no one will be quite
sure of what caused it."
"But those who were running it will," objected Tansie.
Ackerman smiled. "Tansie Lee is one of my favorite cooks," he told her.
"She's been cooking for years. And would Tansie know what happened if
she mixed up a batch of baking powder biscuits out of her grandmother's
old tried and true recipe--used in the family for years--and when she
popped them in the oven to cook, they exploded and destroyed the end of
the house?"
"So?" she smiled. "You're going to take a standard experiment and fudge
it up?"
"Yup," he said with a grin, waving a bit of temperon, held in his
temperon-clad glove.
Again the explosion boiled skyward, and the flame and the blast seared
the eyeballs and battered at the eardrums. Then it was over, and they
were gone again.
"And now?" asked Tansie.
"Now we effect the coalescence of two worlds of probability," he told
her.
* * * * *
Les Ackerman drove the "time-space" vehicle at a head-long pace into
the "future". He nodded with satisfaction when he noted that the
destruction of Calvin Blaine's world was not to be. And though he had
never seen the opposing success in probability--the destruction of the
world of free research--he knew about when its probable destruction
took place. He watched, and was gratified to know that his acts had
averted the successful culmination of either side's plans for conquest.
On through "time-space" went Ackerman and Tansie Lee, across the years
until it was apparent that the twin worlds of dual probability were,
indeed, coming closer together. For as Les explained it, when the world
of throttled research opened up, and the world of too-free research
closed down, they began to become more and more like one another. So
they were coming closer together not only in attitude, but in "space"
as well.
Slowly and ponderously they came together. It took years from the
initial tangential contact to where their surfaces were almost in
perfect register.
And Ackerman sought through the doubled-world again and found running
the "time-space" vehicle difficult because the congruency of the two
worlds made through-passage impossible. But across the world he went,
even so.
And he found what he was looking for. In both worlds, men were working
on research problems. It was a crazy scene; the laboratories were in
excellent register, and appeared as one. The men, of course, were free
to move, and they were not performing the same acts. It made for a
blurring, maddening scene to watch men working furiously in a large
laboratory and working _through_ one another.
Then one man in each world turned from his work and held up a sample.
They were about eight feet apart in space.
Their fellows stopped work also, and each group went below.
"Now," said Ackerman, "if we're lucky--"
"This," said Tansie Lee, "is where we part."
"Part?" he asked in wonder.
She nodded. "I am going--back--to you--my husband. After all, Lester,
we have yet to meet for the truly first time. That is--well--I mean I
can't very well marry you twice in 'time', you know. You'll have to
make the acquaintance of Tansie Lee for the first time, too."
"When do we part?"
"As soon as you are successful."
"I'll be looking for you," he said. Then he stopped short, standing in
the hallway of the laboratory as the men trouped past--through--the two
of them on their way to the cyclotron chamber below.
He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. "I can kiss a
married woman," he said, "with a free mind so long as she is married to
me."
She went into his arms to be held--as she was holding him--close.
Ackerman more than half expected another interruption, but it did not
come. That annoying thought faded as he found his entire attention held
by the softly eager woman in his arms. Long, tender, silent moments
passed, and then returned reality.
"I like your looks," he told her. "And that was a temporary good-bye.
I'll be most careful not to make any mistakes."
Tansie's eyes were shining brightly but she merely nodded and said
only: "Auf wiedersehen, my darling."
* * * * *
Ackerman turned and hurried down the laboratory steps with Tansie
behind him. They arrived just as both technicians were placing the
samples to be bombarded in the cyclotron--one in each world but in
perfect register. Ackerman stood in the room beside the big machine
as the others left, his temperon-clad glove poised over the congruent
samples.
Then and only then he saw the rest. They came hurriedly, fearfully. But
not in hatred of one another.
Calvin Blaine shook his head. "You should not have done this," he said.
"But it is done," added Barry Ford. "Now he must have perfect
co-ordination, or else."
Tod Laplane shrugged. "If he coalesces these twin worlds at the wrong
'time', there will be the damnedest celestially cosmic explosion since
the beginning of the universe."