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efficiency was equally great in other fields). Feet stirred, and there was
excitement.
Peter Cadron said explosively, "Man! Don't keep us in suspense. What have you
discovered?"
"Permit me," said Hedrock, "to recapitulate." He went on. "Are you aware, on the
morning of June third, four thousand seven hundred and eighty-four Isher, a
man from the year nineteen hundred and fifty-one A.D. appeared in our
Greenway weapon shop. The discovery was then made that the empress was
directing a new energy weapon against all Imperial City weapon shops. This
energy was a form of atomic power, old in nature but new to science. Its discovery
heralds another step forward in our understanding of the complex structure of
the space-time tensions that make for the existence of Matter. The source of the
energy in Imperial City was a building completed about a year ago and located on
Capital Avenue. Its effect on the Greenway shop differed from its effect on shops
further away. Theoretically, it should have destroyed any material structure
instantly but, though Isher rulers have never known it, weapon shops are not
made of matter in the accepted sense. And so there was an intricate interplay of
gigantic forces that took place predominantly in time itself. And so a man came
seven thousand years out of the past."
He described briefly, using pure mathematical terms, the seesaw action of the
man and the building, once they were launched into the abyss of time. He went
on. There are still people who cannot understand how there can be a time swing,
when it is a macrocosmic fact that the sun and its planets move steadilv through
space-time at twelve-plus miles a second, in addition to which the planets follow
an orbital course around the sun at varying speeds. By this logic it should follow
that, if you go into the past or future, you will find yourself at some remote point
in space, far from Earth. It is hard for people who think this to realize that space
is a fiction, a by-product of the basic time-energy, and that a matter tension like a
planet does not influence phenomena in the time stream, but is itself subject to
the time energy laws.
"The reason for the balancing two hours and forty minutes after every swing is
obscure, but it has been suggested that nature unrelentingly-seeks stability. The
building when it swings into the past, occupies the same 'space' as it did in
normal time but there are no repercussions- for the reason that similarity is a
function of time itself, not of its tension-product. McAllister started at seven
thousand years, the building at two seconds. That is approximate.
"Today the man is several quadrillions of years away and the building swings at a
distance of somewhat less than three months. The fulcrum, of course, moves
forward in our time, so that we have the following situation-the building no
longer swings back in time as far as June third, where the seesaw originally
started. Please bear these facts in mind while I turn briefly to another division of
this seemingly complicated but basically simple business."
Hedrock paused. There were quick minds in this room. It interested him to see
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that every face was still expectant. Now that he himself knew the truth it seemed
queer that they had not yet grasped the reality. He continued: "Gentlemen, the
Coordination Department discovered some months ago that there existed in the
village of Glay a callidetic giant. With so much internal pressure pushing him we
had no difficulty maneuvering him into coming to Imperial City. At first, our
belief that he would influence events markedly was nullified bv his ignorance of
Isher realities. I won't go into the details but he was shipped to Mars as a
common laborer. He was able to return almost immediately."
He went on to explain how Lucy Rail had been married to one Cayle Clark a few
hours before the arrival of the ship that brought Cayle Clark back to Earth, how
the two Clarks secured 500,000 credits, then visited Colonel Medlon, one of
them disguised. The visit was a fortunate one for Medlon. He Lad just been asked
by the empress to produce Clark, or else. A captaincy was conferred on Clark,
with the usual hypnotic machine training for officers. The following day he
reported to the empress.
"For a reason which she considers to have been impulse, but which is traceable to
his callidity, she attached him to her personal staff and he is there now. Wherever
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