curity of every college and university faculty member in the state.
In any state where there's a tenure law."
Leonard Fitch, the psychologist, took an opposite attitude. As
Chalmers was leaving the college at the end of the afternoon, Fitch
cut across the campus to intercept him.
"I heard about the way you stood up to Whitburn this morning, Ed," he
said. "Glad you did it. I only wish I'd done something like that three
years ago.... Think he's going to give you any real trouble?"
"I doubt it."
"Well, I'm on your side if he does. I won't be the only one, either."
"Well, thank you, Leonard. It always helps to know that. I don't think
there'll be any more trouble, though."
* * * * *
He dined alone at his apartment, and sat over his coffee, outlining
his work for the next day. When both were finished, he dallied
indecisively, Weill's words echoing through his mind and raising
doubts. It was possible that he had been manufacturing the whole thing
in his subconscious mind. That was, at least, a more plausible theory
than any he had constructed to explain an ability to produce real
knowledge of the future. Of course, there was that business about the
_Kilroy_. That had been too close on too many points to be dismissed
as coincidence. Then, again, Weill's words came back to disquiet him.
Had he really gotten that before the event, as he believed, or had he
only imagined, later, that he had?
There was one way to settle that. He rose quickly and went to the
filing-cabinet where he kept his future-history notes and began
pulling out envelopes. There was nothing about the _Kilroy_ in the
Twentieth Century file, where it should be, although he examined each
sheet of notes carefully. The possibility that his notes on that might
have been filed out of place by mistake occurred to him; he looked in
every other envelope. The notes, as far as they went, were all filed
in order, and each one bore, beside the future date of occurrence, the
date on which the knowledge--or must he call it delusion?--had come to
him. But there was no note on the landing of the first unmanned rocket
on Luna.
He put the notes away and went back to his desk, rummaging through the
drawers, and finding nothing. He searched everywhere in the apartment
where a sheet of paper could have been mislaid, taking all his
books, one by one, from the shelves and leafing through them, even
books he knew he had not touched for
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