--"

"Play; these things are toys. Educational toys, it is true, but toys,
nevertheless."

"I don't understand."

"Toys are fine for children. You and your friends, however, are no
longer children. You haven't got a chance now to grow up and gain an
education in a normal manner. You can't finish your childhood, playing
with your toys. You can't take all the time you need to find out what
your capacities and aptitudes are. You will never know a world that will
allow you that luxury.

"Every available brain is needed on this problem. You've got to make a
decision today, this very minute, whether you want to give a hand to its
solution."

"You know I want to be in on it!"

"Do you? Then you've got to decide that you are no longer concerned
about being a scientist. Forget the word. What you are does not matter.
You are simply a man with a problem to solve.

"You have to decide whether or not you can abandon your compassion for
the millions who are going to die; whether you can reject all pressure
from personal danger, and from the threat to everything and everyone
that is of any importance to you.

"You've got to decide whether or not this problem of the destruction of
surface tension of metals is the most absorbing thing in the whole
world. It needs solving, not because the fate of the world hinges on it,
but because it's a problem that consumes you utterly. This is what
drives you, not fear, not danger, not the opinion of anyone else.

"When he can function this way, the scientist is capable of solving
important problems. By outward heartlessness he can achieve works of
compassion greater than any of his critics. He knows that the greatest
pleasure a man can know lies in taking a stand against those forces that
bend ordinary men."

For the first time in his life Ken suddenly felt that he knew his
father. "I wish you had talked to me like this a long time ago," he
said.

Professor Maddox shook his head. "It would have been far better for you
to find out these things for yourself. My telling you does not convince
you they are true. That conviction must still come from within."

"Do you want me to become a scientist?" Ken asked.

"It doesn't make any difference what I want," his father answered almost
roughly. He was looking away from Ken and then his eyes found his son's
and his glance softened. He reached across the desk and grasped Ken's
hand.

"Yes, I want it more than anything else in the world," he s