Astounding Science Fiction (British Edition) — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

66 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION hardly anything, really. Don’t you Suppose it’s just barely conceivable that there is some biological method of nullifying gravity. Perhaps I am a mutation of some sort. | havea... well, call it a muscle . . . which can abolish gravity. At least it can abolish the effect of gravity on myself. Well, let’s investigate it. Why sit on our hands? If we have antigravity, imagine what it will mean to the humanrace.”’ “Hold it, Rog,” said Sarle. “Think about the matter a while. Why are you so unhappy about it? According to Jane, you were almost mad with fear the first day it happened, before you had any way of knowing that science was going to ignore you and that your superiors would be un- sympathetic.” : “That’s right,” murmured Jane. Sarle said, “‘Now why should that be? Here you had a great, new, wonderful power; a sudden freedom from the deadly pull of gravity.” Roger said, “Oh, don’t be a fool. It was—horrible. I couldn’t under- stand it. I still can’t.” “Exactly, my boy. It was some- thing you couldn’t understand and therefore something horrible. You're a physical scientist. You know what makes the universe run. Or if you don’t know, you know someone else knows. Even if no one understands a certain point, you know that some day someone will know. The key word is know. It’s part of your life. Now - you come face to face with a pheno- menon which you consider to violate one of the basic laws of the universe. Scientists say: Two masses. will attract one another according to a fixed mathematical rule. It is an inalienable property of matter and space. There are no exceptions. And now you're an exception.” Roger said, glumly, ““And how.” “You see, Roger,” Sarle went on, ‘for the first time in history, mankind really has what he considers unbreak- able rules. I mean, unbreakable. In primitive cultures, a medicine man might use a spell to produce rain. If it didn’t work, it didn’t upset the validity of magic. It just meant that the shaman had neglected some - part of his spell, or had broken a taboo, or offended a god. In modern theocratic cultures, the command- ments of the Deity are unbreakable. Still, if a man were to break the commandments and yet prosper, it évould be no sign that that particular religion was invalid. The ways of Providence are admittedly mysterious and some invisible punishment awaits. “Today, however, we have rules that really can’t be broken, and one of them is the existence of gravity. It works even though the man who invokes it has forgotten to mutter em-em-over-ahr-square.” Roger managed a twisted smile. “You're all wrong, Jim. The un- breakable rules have been broken over and over again. Radioactivity was impossible when it was dis- covered. Energy came out of nowhere ; incredible quantities of it. It was as ridiculous as levitation.” “Radioactivity was an objective phenomenon that could be communi- cated and duplicated. Uranium would fog photographic film for anyone. A Crookes tube could be built by anyone and wouid deliver an electron stream in identical fashion for all. You—” “T’ve tried communicating—” “J know. But can you tell me, for instance, how J might levitate.” “Of course not.” “That limits others to observation only without experimental duplica- tion. It puts your levitation on the same plane with stellar evolution, something to theorize about but never experiment with.” im EComichooks, co