Astounding British Edition, May 1953 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Dunning’s machine was ingenious. But it could be nothing but a clever application of well known laws and forces. There was no miracle, no magic in it. Having decided this on a slow, verbal basis, Mart felt some- what more at ease. He followed Berk into the library. There was not simply one room of it, but an entire suite had been converted and shelved. There were certainly several thousand volumes in the place. “This is the one that may interest you most.” Berk stepped into the nearest room on his left. “A is for Astrology,” he said. He gestured toward a full section of shelv- ing. Mart scanned the titles: “Astrology for the Novice,” “Astrology and the Infinite Destiny,” “The Babylonian Way,” “The Course of the Stars.” He hopefully pulled the latter volume from the shelf against the possibility it might be an astronomy text. It wasn’t. He quickly put it back with its fellows. “Well read, too,” said Berk. “We examined quite a number and they have copious notations in Dunning’s- handwriting. This may be the one place we can find real clues to his thinking—in such marginal notes.” Mart waved a hand in violent rejection of the somber volumes and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “Junk!” he muttered. “This has no bearing on Keyes’ problem at all, of course. But it certainly ought to be a problem of interest to you. “A guy would need two separate heads to hold an interest in the things downstairs and in this nonsense at the same time.” “But Dunning had only a single head,” said Berk quietly. “Maybe it’s all part of a whole that we don’t see—and that Dunning did. > Mart pursed his lips and alad at the psychologist. “T’m serious,” said Berk. “My field is primarily the human mind, and only secondarily the subjects with which the mind deals. But we see in Dunning a single mind that can whip the matter of anti- gravity, that can hold an interest in the fields represented by the laboratories below, and can.digest the material of this library. “Now, actually, there is no true schizo- phrenia. In the skull of each of us is only a single individual, and anyone examined closely enough can be found to have a remarkably consistent goal, no matter how apparently erratic his activities. “Perhaps much of the material Dunning NOISE LEVEL —— a “i.” ~~ <n * SN * found in both the library and in the labora- __ tory proved redundant, but I would say that — Dunning’s genius apparently lay in his — ability to extract relevant material from the reduntant without categorically rejecting entire areas of human thought.” : x3 Mart smiled tolerantly and turned away. He found himself facing a section of shelves. 2 covered with works on East Indian Philosophy. Six or eight feet of space was : devoted to the subject of Levitation. Mart : jabbed a finger at the titles. “Anything those boys can do by hocus- pocus Nagle can do twice as fast by x’s and y’s and by making electrons jump through hoops.” “That’s all Keyes wants. How soon can you deliver?” s Il. AFTER lunch, they returned to ONR. Mart ~ was assigned an office and given a copy of the Dunning tape. He put aside the - prepared transcript, as Keyes had suggested, and prepared to listen, unbiased. ; He turned on the recorder and winced at the garble of sound that blared forth again. With one hand on the volume control he rested his chin on his arm in front of the speaker and strained to hear through the noise the scarcely audible voice of Dunning. Near the beginning, he caught the word “levitation” mentioned many times, There was a full phrase, “levitation which was first — successfully demonstrated to the Western world by the English medium—.” The buzz of a plane cut off the rest of it. Mart rewound the tape and listened to that much of it again. At each mention of eS levitation an image flared up in Mart’s mind. = An image of a dirty, scrawny Indian fakir : equipped with a filthy turban, a coil of rope a over one arm, and a basket with a snake = in the other hand. oS But Dunning had produced antigravity. What semantic significance had he found in the word? | Mart growled to himself in irritation and let the tape run on. There was nothing more = in those first few feet of it. He perked up | = his ears at a phrase “earth effect” asparntie by a garble from “distribution of sunspots unexplained to date by astronomers, and — politely ignored by all experts—.” It struck a faint bell of recollection in Mart’s mind. He scratched a note on a pad to check it. 2 KE Scomicbooks com £