ton had read his papers on induced radiation, thermic
equilibrium, and had one of Bennie's famous Gem Home Cookers in his own
little bachelor apartment. Hooker would know. And if he didn't he'd tell
you so, without befogging the atmosphere with a lot of things he _did_
know, but that wouldn't help you in the least. Thornton clutched at the
thought of him like a falling aeronaut at a dangling rope. He'd be worth
a thousand of these dreaming lecturers, these beer-drinking visionaries!
But where could he be found? It was August, vacation time. Still, he
might be in Cambridge giving a summer course or something.

At that moment Professor Gasgabelaus, the temporary chairman, a huge
man, the periphery of whose abdomen rivalled the circumference of the
"working terrestrial globe" at the other end of the platform, pounded
perspiringly with his gavel and announced that the conference would
adjourn until the following Monday morning. It was Friday afternoon, so
he had sixty hours in which to connect with Bennie, if Bennie could be
discovered. A telegram of inquiry brought no response, and he took the
midnight train to Boston, reaching Cambridge about two o'clock the
following afternoon.

The air trembled with heat. Only by dodging from the shadow of one big
elm to another did he manage to reach the Appian Way--the street given
in the university catalogue as Bennie's habitat--alive. As he swung open
the little wicket gate he realized with an odd feeling that it was the
same house where Hooker had lived when a student, twenty-five years
before.

"Board" was printed on a yellow, fly-blown card in the corner of the
window beside the door.

Up there over the porch was the room Bennie had inhabited from '85 to
'89. He recalled vividly the night he, Thornton, had put his foot
through the lower pane. They had filled up the hole with an old golf
stocking. His eyes searched curiously for the pane. There it was, still
broken and still stuffed--it couldn't be!--with some colourless material
strangely resembling disintegrating worsted. The sun smote him in the
back of his neck and drove him to seek the relief of the porch. Had he
ever left Cambridge? Wasn't it a dream about his becoming an astronomer
and working at the Naval Observatory? And all this stuff about the earth
going on the loose? If he opened the door wouldn't he find Bennie with a
towel round his head cramming for the "exams"? For a moment he really
imagined that he was an un