o young men
were lounging about after a strenuous game of tennis. The blue tendrils
of smoke from their pipes rose slowly, to be drawn away by the efficient
ventilating system. The taller of the two seemed to be doing most of the
talking. In the positions they had assumed it would have been rather
difficult to be sure of which was the taller, but Robert Morey was a
good four inches taller than Richard Arcot. Arcot had to suffer under
the stigma of "runt" with Morey around--he was only six feet tall.

The chosen occupation of each was physical research, and in that field
Arcot could well have called Morey "runt", for Arcot had only one
competitor--his father. In this case it had been "like father, like
son". For many years Robert Arcot had been known as the greatest
American physicist, and probably the world's greatest. More recently he
had been known as the father of the world's greatest physicist. Arcot
junior was probably one of the most brilliant men the world had ever
seen, and he was aided in all his work by two men who could help him in
a way that amplified his powers a thousand fold. His father and his best
friend, Morey, were the complimentary and balancing minds to his great
intelligence. His father had learned through years of work the easiest
and best ways of performing the many difficult feats of laboratory
experimentation. Morey could develop the mathematical theory of a
hypothesis far more readily than Arcot could. Morey's mind was more
methodical and exact than Arcot's, but Arcot could grasp the broad
details of a problem and get the general method of solution developed
with a speed that made it utterly impossible for his friend even to
follow the steps he suggested.

Since Arcot junior's invention of the multiple calculus, many new
ramifications of old theories had been attained, and many developments
had become possible.

But the factor that made Arcot so amazingly successful in his line of
work was his ability to see practical uses for things, an ability that
is unfortunately lacking in so many great physicists. Had he collected
the royalties his inventions merited, he would have been a billionaire
twice or thrice over. Instead he had made contracts on the basis that
the laboratories he owned be kept in condition, and that he be paid a
salary that should be whatever he happened to need. Since he had sold
all his inventions to Transcontinental Airways, he had been able to
devote all his time to scien