he said softly, "you can pull from now till doomsday as
far as I'm concerned, and you won't even disturb us now." He looked back
over his shoulder into the power room. A hunched bulk, beautifully
designed and carefully finished, the apparatus that created 'Uncertainty
of the Fourth Degree' was destroying matter, and creating by its
destruction terrific electric fields. These fields were feeding the
magnetic shield now. Under the present drain, the machine was not
noticeably working. In fact, Kendall was a bit annoyed. He had tested
out the energy generating properties of this machine, trying to find a
limit. He had found there was no limit. The great copper conductors,
charged with the same atostor force that was used in the mercury fuel,
were perfect conductors, they had not heated. But the eleven thousand
tons of discharged mercury metal had been completely charged in just a
bit better than eleven minutes. The pumps wouldn't force it through the
charging apparatus any faster than that.

Two weeks more had passed, while the "S Doradus" and the "Cepheid" were
fitted out with the new apparatus Buck had designed. They were almost
ready to start now.

McLaurin came down the corridor, and stopped near Kendall. He too smiled
at the Miran's attempts. "They've got a long way to go, Buck."

"They're going a long way. Clear back home--and we'll be right along. I
don't think they can outdistance us."

"I still don't see why you couldn't use one of those Uncertainty
conditions--the First Degree perhaps, and annihilate our inertia."

"You can't control Uncertainty. By its essential character it's beyond
control."

"What's that Fourth Degree machine of yours--the material energy--if it
isn't controlled and utilized Uncertainty?"

"It's utter and utterly uncontrolled Uncertainty. The matter within that
field breaks down to absolutely nothing. Within, no law whatsoever
applies, but fortunately, outside the old laws of physics apply--and we
can gather and use the energy which is released outside, though nothing
can be done inside. Why, think, man, if I could control that
Uncertainty, I could do anything at all, absolutely anything. It would
be a world as unreasonable as a bad dream. Think how unreasonable those
manifestations we first got were!"

"But can't you get any control at all?"

"Very little. Anyway, if I could get inertialess conditions at will, I'd
be afraid of them. They'd make chemical reactions impossible in all