osing your father...."

"Yeah," Fred agreed. "I wanted to ask you something though. Dad gave a
lecture on his new theory a few days ago, didn't he?"

Mark looked at him blankly. Then, "Oh! I guess he did. As a matter of
fact I didn't pay much attention to it." He grinned. Then he remembered
he should be solemn and stopped grinning. "I--I sort of slipped by it.
He made the mistake of telling us ahead of time it was off the course
and no questions on it would be in the finals, so I more or less rested
up during the period for a tennis match afterwards. Why?"

"Didn't you get any of what he said?" Fred persisted.

"Oh, a little," Mark admitted. "It was about some system of arriving at
the basic laws of nature by pure logic, only what you arrived at didn't
agree with facts. Some kind of intellectual curiosity." He thought a
minute. "Oh," he said, "I see what you want. Didn't he leave any notes
on it? It would be too bad if his theory was lost to the world now
that--" He left the rest unsaid.

"Maybe you can remember something," Fred coaxed. "Anything. Did he talk
about his theory again?"

"Next day he gave a lecture on the necessity of unbelief in modern
science. It was pretty good. He overemphasized it, though. Some of the
kids thought he was making a religion of unbelief."

"What did they say about his theory?" Fred asked quickly.

"Oh, they were quite impressed. Two of them live--lived here in the
rooming house. They were up here that evening tossing it back and forth.
I was too tired from the tag match. I let them talk."

"What did they think about it?"

Mark frowned in an effort to recall. "It had to do with this universe
being basically illogical, or at least seeming to be, because it didn't
agree with your father's theory. They started building up fantasies on
it. One I remember was a good one."

"What was that?"

"I think it was Jimmy. He said it would be funny if we were here
because we believed this universe was the only real one. Something about
inherited memory. Our coming from a long line of people who believed
this was the only place, because all our ancestors who didn't believe it
shot off into some other universe and had their children there. Utterly
crazy. You know."

"Yeah, I know," Fred agreed. "You going to be around in case I want to
see you again?"

"God! I hope so!" Mark said. "It makes me nervous."

"You're safe enough," Fred said. "Well--thanks. I'll be seeing you."

*