The scientific pioneer
Date: 2024-08-09T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Short stories

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The scientific pioneer

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Title: The scientific pioneer

Author: Nelson S. Bond

Release date: August 9, 2024 [eBook #74221]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1940

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCIENTIFIC PIONEER ***

The Scientific Pioneer

By Nelson S. Bond

Horse-Sense Hank could answer all the
problems of science. He could even apply
logic to love. But turnips...!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories March 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

One thing about that heap of mine, it always picks the loneliest places to roll over and play doggo. It started spluttering about the time the road changed from concrete to macadam, and when the macadam trickled into a thin silver of bumpy dirt it wheezed, snorted, and gave up the ghost.

I said, "Damn!" and a few things more expressive. I got out and struggled with the hood and looked at the innards and admired their incomprehensible compactness. I jiggled a few wires here and there and nothing happened. Then I looked for telephone wires. There were none. But I discovered that I wasn't alone. There was a man leaning on the worm fence across the road, watching me with drawling incuriosity.

I said, "Hey, you! Is there a telephone anywhere around these parts?"

He shifted a billiard ball from his left cheek to his right, squinted, and shook his head.

"Nup," he said.

"How about a garage?" I asked. "How far is it to the nearest garage?"

He bobbed his head northward. "Two mile. Mebbe two'n a half," he said.

"Thanks," I told him, "for the poisonous information."

I locked the car and started in the direction he had pointed out. I had taken a dozen steps when he halted me.

"Swim good?" he asked.

I looked at him, then at the dull, gray, February sky, then at the dappled patches of unthawed snow clinging to the roots and hollows.

"I'm a duck," I said, "not a penguin. I stick to hot water in the winter. I hold the All-American free-style record for February bathtub paddling. Why?"

"That's what," he said, "I figgered. You can't go thataway, then. Bridge is out, an' river's half a mile wide. You better go 'tother direction."

I glared at him. "Say it," I said. "How far?"

"Fifteen miles," he guessed. "Sixteen, more like."

"Sixteen miles!" I did the only thing I could think of. I kicked my buggy in the bumper, then collapsed onto the running board.

"Hell's beacons, man, I can't walk that far! Not without my Boy Scout axe. What am I going to do? I've got to get to Westville before dark, my car's on the squeegee, and so far as I'm concerned that thing under the hood is a deep, dark mystery."

He said, "Let's see," interestedly, and gangled over the fence. He lifted the hood and stared into the maw of my crate. His eyes darted from one piece of machinery to another; after a while he began to mumble to himself, and once he nodded.

Then he muttered, "'Pears like it oughta be this 'un here—" and reached in and touched something. It clinked. He tightened it.

"Try 'er now," he said. "Wiggle somethin'. Make 'er go."

"Sure," I said caustically. "All I need is a nice long hill."

But I climbed in and kicked the starter. Then I yelled. Because the old jalopy gave one disgusted snort, then began to purr like a fireside tabby!

"She roars," he said, "purty. Don't she?"

"She do, indeed," I told him exuberantly. "Say, friend, why didn't you tell me you were a mechanic? You've saved me three aspirins and a broken arch."

"Me a mechanic?" he drawled. "Shucks, Mister, I ain't never seen the innards of one of them things before."

"You've never—" I chuckled. "Cut the comedy. Then how did you know what to do to make it start?"

He squirmed, a trifle embarrassedly, I thought, and shuffled his feet.

"Well, now, it just stood to reason," he said. "Seemed like that thingamajig hangin' on the whatchamaycallit should've—"

I grinned. "Okay, pal. You've got secrets, I've got secrets, all God's children got secrets. Anyhow, thanks for the first-aid. Here's a little something for your—"

But he shook his head. "Aw, that's all right," he mumbled. "'Twarn't nothin', Mister. So long." He grinned and ambled off across the field. And that was that.

I reached Westville before dark, found the man I'd been sent out to interview, and told him who I was.

"I'm Jim Blakeson," I said. "There's a rumor that I'm the Public Relations Department for Midland University. It's a phony. Between you and me and the League of Nations, I'm really the third assistant errand boy for Culture, Inc. Now—about this new comet you discovered.

"Midland is all upsy-daisy to find such a promising young amateur astronomer in the state. They're willing to subsidize you to the extent of a newer and larger telescope if you'll agree to act as a lay member of their observatory staff. What say?"

The ham star-gazer—Hawkins was his name—turned a delicate shade of mauve. It was happiness, I think. For a minute I thought he was going to kiss me. Then delight went out and he shook his head.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Blakeson, but I can't accept your offer. I'd love to, but the truth of the matter is—I'm not the man who discovered that comet."

I said, "Wait a minute. Maybe I'm in the wrong galaxy. You're Hawkins, aren't you? You're the guy who plotted the comet's course, no?"

"I'm Hawkins. I plotted its course. But I didn't discover it." His spirits were down around his shoelaces now. "That was done by a neighbor of mine, a few miles down the way. Chap by the name of Hank Cleaver. 'Horse-sense Hank', we call him."

My extra-sensory perception percepted. "Don't look now," I said, "but is this Horse-sense Hank a long cold drink of wisdom about thirty years old? Given to lack of speech and habit of chewing tobacco?"

"That's Hank," said the youngster. "He's the one. He's no astronomer, you understand. But he happened to stop around one night while I was charting. I started to explain something about cometary orbits, and after a while he said he 'lowed as how I ought to take a careful look in the region of Beta Draconis. I did, and—well, there it was. The new comet. He said he just figured as how there ought to be one there!"

"Kid," I said solemnly, "something tells me the discovery of that comet was peanuts. Just peanuts. I'm going to get you that subsidy, anyway. And tomorrow morning I'm going back to have another talk with the guy who earned it for you."

So I did. I found Horse-sense Hank poking around in his south forty and told him what I wanted. He didn't answer for so long that I thought maybe the shock had killed him.

I asked anxiously, "Well, Hank? What's the word?"

"Turnips," he said mournfully, "is hell. It don't matter where you plant 'em or how careful. They never do what you expect. Oh, you mean about the University? Well, I don't guess it would do no harm. I'll go if you want me to."

"I do," I told him with savage satisfaction. "All my life I've wanted to see what would happen when a man with plain, ordinary horse-sense crossed gray matter with a bunch of animated reference books. You're the party of the first part. Look, Hank—suppose you were out hunting with another guy. You see the flash of his gun; ten seconds later you hear the boom. How far away from him are you?"

"A game, mebbe?" asked Hank. He pondered for a minute while I waited, wondering if I'd cleaned the machine the first time or if this were a perpetual jackpot.

Then, "How cold is it?" asked Hank.

I almost yelped with joy. "Say about sixty-eight," I said.

Hank said, "Well, then, I reckon he'd be 'bout two mile off. Trifle more, mebbe."

"Why?" I demanded. "How did you know?"

Hank looked perplexed. He said, "Well, it seems as if. That's all."

"And that," I told him, "is all I wanted to know! Come on, my friend. Let's go puzzle pedagogues!"

The only thing stuffier than the office of H. Logan MacDowell, Midland University's president, was H. Logan himself. Hank and I entered the outer office, ran a gantlet of upturned noses, and were finally informed by a pair of glinting pince-nez that "Dr. MacDowell will see you now, if you please." We pleased.

Beauty and the Beast greeted us. H. Logan's daughter might be a chippie off the old blockhead, but they look as much alike as me and my passport picture. She smiled at us as we entered, and life was all sugar and Santa Claus. Our pal the prexy lurched and wobbled in the depths of his swivel-chair, gave it up as a bad job, motioned us to seats and hrrumphed!

"Well, Blakeson, might I interrogate as to the reason for this unexpected visitation?"

"If," I deciphered, "you mean why am I here, sure! This is an unveiling. Take off your polysyllables, Doctor. You're in the presence of genius."

"Genius?" MacDowell stared distastefully at Hank's mail-order suit and bulldog shoes. "Genius?"

"When you say that," I advised, "grovel. You see before you, Doc, a man deserving of the finest faculty position dear old M. U. has to offer. Meet Hank Cleaver, the human slide rule!"

MacDowell frowned. "I deplore, Blakeson, your unacademic speech habits. Furthermore, you are undoubtedly aware that there are at present no unoccupied seats on the Midland faculty. If your friend would care to deposit his credentials with my secretary, however, and write an application for admittance to our staff—"

Horse-sense Hank's eyes accused mine. "Write, Jim? Shucks, you didn't tell me I had to write nothin'. You know I can't write."

Indignation overcame Prexy MacDowell's inertia. He came to his feet quivering like a radium finder in a bucket full of pitchblende.

"What! Blakeson, do you mean to tell me you have the effrontery to suggest for addition to our faculty a man who can neither read nor write? Young man, this time you have gone too far! I fail to recognize the humor in this situation. I'll have you—"

"Look, Prexy," I said, "sit down and take the load off your brains. You didn't hire me, and you can't fire me. I report to the Advisory Council. Now, listen to me. This man is the greatest find since Pharoah's daughter went snipe hunting in the bulrushes. He knows stuff and things."

"Stuff?" wheezed the college president. "Things?"

"Ask him. Anything at all. He's got more answers than a quiz program."

MacDowell stiffened like a strychnine victim. "I refuse," he proclaimed stentoriously, "to lend myself to such a display. The dignity of my office—"

Helen MacDowell had been staring at Hank with frank curiosity.

Now she said, "Papa, why don't you follow Jim's suggestion? Ask Mr. Cleaver a question."

That got him. "Very well," he said. "I will ask a single question. But if he fails to answer it—"

He had a dirty look in his eyes. I said, "Serve it straight, Doc. No tricky place names or technical phrases."

"I shall merely ask our rustic friend," said MacDowell stiffly, "to explain to us the fundamental laws of motion as established by Sir Isaac Newton." And he glared at Hank and me malevolently.

Merely! I looked at Hank, and the blank expression on his pan gave me the queasies. He said wonderingly.

"Sir Isaac Newton, Jim? Who's he?"

"Skip that part, Hank," I advised. "What the Doc wants to know is: what natural laws apply to things moving? You know—what do they have to do or can't do?"

"Oh!" Hank's brow furrowed. He knotted his ham-like paws and unknotted them again. Finally a light shone in his eyes and he said.

"Well, far's I can see, fust thing is that they can't get goin' by themselves, or if once they do, they can't stop less'n somethin' stops 'em."

I glanced at MacDowell, who had gulped audibly. I said,

"Keep going, guy. You're hot as a firecracker."

"Well, seems like everything in motion makes an equal motion like itself, an' it don't matter whether what it acts on is still or movin'. An' if there's anything else actin' along with it, both movements is goin' to have a say in the showdown."

Me, I'm a publicity man, not a physicist. It was all a deep fog in my mind, but MacDowell's eyes were bulging.

"Go on!" he ordered grimly.

"Lastwise," drawled Hank, "'Pears like whenever there's a movement one way, there ought to be an equal kick-back 'tother way." He hesitated for a long moment. Then he shrugged. "Reckon that's all I can think of offhand."

MacDowell repeated numbly, "That's all he can think of—offhand!" and staggered to his chair. He tottered for seconds, then dropped into it. "The product of a genius' thoughts for years. And he solves it in five minutes!"

Then he snapped out of it, and was he sore!

"You, Blakeson!" he yelled.

"Yeah?"

"This is one of your tricks! What do you mean by this outrageous imposter? You can't deceive me! This man has studied physics. He knows—"

"Physics?" interrupted Hank eagerly. "Say, you're darn tootin' I've studied physics. An' take it from me, all these here now drugstore things ain't no good. You get you a batch of fresh wild-cherry saplings, bile 'em in water for a half hour, an' add—"

"Quiet," I pleaded, "is requested for the sake of those who are asleep. Dr. MacDowell, I give you my word of honor Hank is just what he appears to be. A man of the soil, gifted with great talents. Or rather, one great talent—that of common sense."

"A—a moment!" MacDowell silenced me with an uplifted palm. "Mr. Cleaver, are you acquainted with the principles of Mendel?"

"Nup!" acknowledged Hank cheerfully.

"Perhaps, then, you'd be kind enough to derive an answer for this question? A man has a black dog and a white one. He mates them. The female whelps four puppies. Of the four, how many will you expect to be black, how many white?"

Horse-sense Hank cast a sidelong glance at Helen, and blushed. But he didn't bat an eyelash.

"This here now black hound, what color was his old man an' woman?"

"They were also black."

"An' 'tother one's mammy an' pappy was white?"

"We will," said Dr. MacDowell weakly "assume that to be so." He knew he had lost again. And so he had. For Hank's answer was bland simplicity.

"Why, then, them there pups would just natcherally hafta be all black."

"H-how do you know?" demanded MacDowell faintly.

"Just seems as if," said Hank. He scratched his head. "'Course," he said cautiously, "them there wouldn't be good show dogs, them pups. They wouldn't breed true wuth a damn. Next time they was mated, their pups would be mixed colors. I'd say 'bout three to one for the blacks."[1]

President MacDowell shuddered violently. He fell back into his chair, covered his eyes with shaking fingers.

"Take him away!" he pleaded. "A lifetime of study, and—Get him out of my sight, Jim Blakeson! Oooooh!"

The last I saw of him, he was ripping the diplomas off his office walls, tearing them into shreds of despair.

So that was that. But Horse-sense Hank didn't go back to his turnip patch. Because Helen MacDowell followed us from the office, her eyes glowing. She said, "He's marvelous, Jim. Marvelous! What are you going to do now?"

"I was thinking," I told her gloomily, "of trying a perfect crime with your old man as 'X-marks-the-spot.' Any objections?"

She said thoughtfully, "You might wait till I get next month's allowance. Daddy's not bad when you get used to him, Jim. But I mean about Mr. Cleaver. Is he planning to stay here in town?"

Hank shuffled his feet. "Seems if I oughta go on back to my turnips," he opined. "Durn things'll go to seed if I don't."

Helen turned it on, and what I mean, when she did it really went on. Her smile wasn't even directed my way, but I caught the backwash and made next year's New Year resolutions ten months in advance.

"But how disappointing, Mr. Cleaver! I was hoping we might have dinner somewhere and talk a little while—"

"Great idea!" I said. "I'll call Tony's—"

"—just the two of us," she continued, "alone."

Hank swallowed with difficulty. And stayed. Who wouldn't?

So I put him up at my apartment. At first he demurred.

"I don't wanta be no expense to you, Jim," he protested.

But he wasn't. Because one night I took him to the College Clubbe, a gambling joint on the outskirts of town. He looked awful in a rented dinner jacket; the smartly garbed croupiers laughed when he walked into the casino. But he who laughs last, laughs last. We moved to the roulette table and watched for a few minutes.

Finally red came up three times running. So when the croupier called for bets, I laid a couple chips on the black. Hank frowned. As the white ball rattled around in its groove he reached out suddenly, moved my chips to the other side of the board, to the red.

I said, "Hey, wait a minute, guy! Don't be a—"

Then the ball stopped rolling and the attendant purred, "Twenty-one red, passé!" and raked to my little bet an equal number of chips.

I pointed at the neat, even rows of chips and bills stacked before the croupier.

"You see that stuff, my friend? That's money, not hay. You may be a genius at some things, but this is the old gambola. A risk any way you look at it. Lay off my bets!"

And this time I moved my entire bet to the black column. Why not? It was due.

But Hank said plaintively, "Shucks, Jim, it stands to reason—"

And once again he reached out and shifted my bet to the red. Someone in the crowd snickered. I went to move it back but the croupier, faintly haughty, said,

"No further play, sir, if you please!"

Then the ball stopped—on the red 36!

I looked at Hank. He looked back guiltily.

"It seemed like it ought to, Jim," he said.

I gave up. I handed him my chips. I said, "This is where I get off. Take over, Professor. I've got to see a man about a town car!"

And I walked to the bar for a drink. I felt sort of sorry for the owners of the College Clubbe. It was tough luck for them that, after all these years, they should be the ones to play host to the first fool-proof "system" in the history of gambling.

About twenty minutes later the crowd was shoulder deep about the roulette table. I decided it was time to go take a look-see, and fought my way to Hank's side. When I reached there I found that play had been temporarily halted.

The croupier, green-gilled and glistening with sweat, stood before an almost chipless board. The counters were chin-high before Hank. The manager pressed through, spoke briefly to the croupier, then turned to Hank.

"I understand, sir, you wish to make a final wager against the house. Your entire stake on the fall of a single number?"

Hank nodded, embarrassed at being the center of attention.

"I sorta thought," he gulped, "it might be smart."

I groaned. The chips before Hank were a rainbow. At a rough estimate, he was about thirty grand to the pink. To stake all that on one roll—a 38-to-1 shot for a 35-to-1 return—

"No, Hank!" I tugged his coat sleeve. "Cash in! Don't take a crazy chance like that!"

He looked at me aggrievedly. "But it ain't what you might call a chance, Jim. 'Pears to me like it's a sure thing for number nineteen to come up. Way I see it—" He nodded to the manager. "Let 'er ride. The works on number nineteen."

The manager nodded to the croupier, the croupier set the tiny ball spinning. The crowd tensed, and a white blur chittered its unpredictable path about the whirling wheel. The wheel slowed, the ball slowed, my heart slowed. Then all three swooped into action, the last with a lurching thump. The ball hesitated on the rim of the double-zero, bounced to the 32, jogged to the lip of the 19, settled there—

Then hopped! The watchers groaned, and the voice of the croupier was a high, thin bleat.

"Twenty-four—black—passé!"

My town car, my penthouse and my financial independence went whuppety-flicker, like the tag end of a film racheting through a projector. I glared into Hank's bewildered face, bawled at him accusingly,

"See, you dope! All because you—"

He looked dazed, incredulous. He stammered,

"But it had to be the nineteen, Jim! It couldn't be anything else, don't you see? It couldn't—"

"It couldn't," I wailed, "but it was! You—"

Then he was no longer limp, uncertain, at my side. He was making a leaping dive across the table at the croupier. The man yipped once, lunged backward, and a pellet rolled from his hand. It was a duplicate of that which now spun in the roulette wheel, but not quite a dupe!

Instead of solid ivory, I knew it would turn out to have a steel core, responsive to magnetic influence. The only thing that could break down the analytical perfection of Horse-sense Hank was a gimmick! A gimmick is a polite way of describing a cheap gambling trick.

"The durned crook!" Hank was howling. "He gypped me! I knew the nineteen was due! Just as sure as fate it was due!"

Those were the last intelligible words for quite a while. For at that instant some resourceful employee jerked a switch, plunging the College Clubbe into darkness. People began to scream and struggle and run. I heard the meaty impact of flesh on flesh, then the clatter of ivory tokens on the polished flooring.

I remember thinking sadly, "Good-bye, Mr. Chips!"

Then a more brilliant thought struck me. I remembered that those ivories were cashable at any time. Tomorrow! After the excitement had died down. I scrambled for the abandoned table, scooped up two double handfuls, then two more. It was our money, rightly.

I hightailed it for the exit. It took me a little time to get away. Everyone else had the same idea. But I finally made it. There was no use looking for Hank in that mob, so I grabbed a taxi to town, hoping he'd be able to come home under his own power.

But he was already home when I got there. He was just finishing a financial census at my desk, dreamily counting crisp, crunchy bills into piles before him.

"—and seventy-eight, eight hundred and seventy-nine—" He saw me and grinned. "Hi, Jim! Got part of what I deserved, anyhow. See? 'Bout six thousan' bucks!"

I sniffed. "Chicken feed! I've got the rest of it. The real stuff! Ten buck chips!"

With a calm, superior smile I began to unload my colorful cargo beside his pile of green. But Hank didn't look enthusiastic. I waited for the ooohs and aaahs, and when none came I snapped,

"Well, what's the matter? You sore because I made out better than you did?"

He shifted uncomfortably and refused to meet my eye. He said,

"Well, it ain't exactly that, Jim. Only—"

"Only what?"

"Only," he gulped, "them chips ain't gonna do much good, way I figger. 'Pears to me like after what happened tonight, that there place ain't never gonna open up no more."

He was right, of course. Hank was always right. I still have two hatfuls of roulette chips; you can have them, parcel post collect. The College Clubbe folded the next morning, but the story of why it collapsed got around. And Hank became something of a celebrity.

That's how, in spite of Doc MacDowell's pigheadedness, the rest of the Midland University faculty got to hear about my rural protégé. To hear was to visit; to visit was to listen with awe. They handed him stumpers; he up-rooted them and handed them back with Q.E.D.'s tacked on them.

With calm nonchalance Hank Cleaver answered the questions of the incredulous scientists.

At first, Horse-sense Hank was a sort of perambulating parlor game to the professoriat. They came and tried out on him the trick questions to which they—and presumably only they—knew the answers. No soap! They asked him about the variable nature of light waves; he derived, alone and unaided, a formula which Professor Hallowell of the Physics Department identified as the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction.

They asked him about electronic structures. First they had to tell him what an electron was; after that, he did the talking. He confused me and practically everyone else present. He kept talking about a "whatchamaycallit." Finally Dr. Enderby of the Blair Research Foundation pinned him down as to the exact nature of this mysterious something.

Blair grayed visibly when he discovered that Hank's "whatchamaycallit" was identical in meaning, value and structure with h—that abstruse physical concept known as Planck's constant.

Hank offered apologetically, "They ain't no word to describe it exactly. It—well, it just is, that's all. I reckon if you wanted to, you could say it was the diff'rence in energy values in them there light rays we been talkin' about. But that ain't all. It's more'n that. It's also the amount of diff'rence in the way things are. I mean, when you bet or gamble, the whatchamaycallit comes into the picture."

Blair wept. "Heisenberg! The uncertainty factor! Identical with Planck's constant!" He went home gibbering.

Then the graybeards realized that Hank was not just a freak; he was the Answer Man in person. They started digging up toughies that had stymied them for years. They served them in simple language and Hank dished up replies in homespun.

Me, I don't pretend to understand half the stuff I heard them talking about. So you'll have to overlook it if I botch the job of retelling. I recall hearing an astronomer ask one night,

"Mr. Cleaver, what in your opinion is the explanation of the observed fact that celestial bodies apparently always move in conic sections of elliptic or infinite orbits?"

Hank twiddled his fingers and said, "Why, 'pears to me that's on account of nature is lazy."

Someone ejaculated, "Nature lazy?"

"Sure. Movin' things take the shortest path."

The astronomer, frankly dubious, said, "But, really! An ellipse could hardly do that because a 'shortest path'—"

"No?" said Hank. "You take a flat piece of paper. The quickest way acrost it is a straight line, ain't it?"

"Naturally."

"You take a globe of the world, though, an' things don't work the same. You want to go from, say, Los Angeles to Japan, you wouldn't follow straight across one of them lines of latitude, would you? You'd sort of hump up by way of Alaska."

A listener nodded eagerly. "That's right. You'd take the arc of a great circle. The Great Circle route."

"Well," said Hank, "same thing in the universe—which has got, near's I can figger out, another right angle in it besides the ones we know an' see."

"You mean another dimension? A fourth dimension?"

"Call it that. Anyhow, in this sort of super-globe which has four dimensions, stands to reason that the shortest distance from one point to another will be a closed figger. A sort of lopsided circle."

That stopped them cold for a moment. But Tomkins, the astronomer, wasn't through yet.

"Our observations, Hank, also indicate that in this universe, every other galaxy is running away from ours as fast as it can. Why is this?"

Cleaver repeated unbelievingly, "Runnin' away?"

"Yes. Our spectroscopes show a 'red shift' in the apparent motion of all stars. This proves that the universe is expanding—"

"Why, no!" said Hank. "Gosh, no!"

"No?"

"Why, you got it all backward," explained Horse-sense Hank. "What you're sayin' ain't reasonable. Truth of the matter is, the universe ain't expandin' at all. It's just a-standin' still. Reason things look thataway to us is because—we're contractin'!"

And that really did stop them! Even when Hank explained that the same effect would be visible to a man standing in the middle of the floor of a gigantic room while the walls receded, as would be visible to a man shrinking in the middle of a normal-sized room. They didn't get it, but they tried. They took it home to sleep on.

So grew the fame of Horse-sense Hank. And while all this was going on, another thing was happening, too. Hank was seeing Helen MacDowell, practically every night. And—well, if you've ever seen a supercharged carton of honey and dynamite like Helen, you know the inevitable results. Love, with a capital boom!

Old MacDowell had a fit—ee-eye-ee-eye-oh! But it did him no good. His mood was one of kill and boo, but Helen's was one of bill and coo. It got so every time I saw Hank and Helen together they looked a reproduction of the Laocoön[2] group.

And then the ripples in the path of true love began to straighten out. The Isaminder Research Fund heard about Hank and granted him a five thousand dollar fellowship, and Dr. MacDowell snorted,

"Preposterous! They must be crazy!"

Then the Lowell Observatory made him an honorary member for his great help in unveiling the mystery of white dwarf stars, and MacDowell said,

"What do you think of that?"

Then the Advisory Council of Midwestern U. went over our prexy's head and offered Hank the chair of General & Practical Sciences, and MacDowell, bug-eyed, told me hopefully,

"You know, Jim, the first time I saw that young man I said he'd go places!"

And when the Nobel Committee voted to Hank Cleaver the annual awards for outstanding work in the fields of physics, astronomy and psychology, MacDowell capitulated completely. He rubbed his hands together, beamed like an April morning, and said,

"God bless you, my children! Would you like block letters or script on the announcements? Anything at all to please your little hearts!"

So it was arranged. A big church wedding for Helen and Hank, and of course I was to be best man. And Hank should have been the happiest guy alive. But was he? No. As the days narrowed toward the fateful one, he began to grow moody and thoughtful. Several times I caught him sitting by himself, pondering and shaking his head. Once I heard him mutter in a low under-tone,

"Mebbe it wouldn't exactly work like that—"

He was puzzling out some deep problem. Just what, I didn't know. I was too busy to quiz him about it. And then came the day when wedding bells were to peal.

I went to the church to see that everything was in apple-pie order. I left Hank wandering in a sort of daze, impressed on him the necessity of being there at eleven sharp, told him to take a drink and stop looking like Sydney Carton, and wondered if he'd stop the ceremony to tell the preacher his words were unreasonable.

Time zipped by. The guests began to arrive. The organist came in and started practicing. The preacher came. Helen arrived, surrounded by a bevy of chattering bridesmaids. But no Hank. I called the apartment; the phone continued to laugh at me. Dr. MacDowell came back to the vestry room and pouted,

"Where is he, Jim? It's getting near eleven."

"He must be on his way," I said hopefully.

But eleven came—and still no Hank. And then it was eleven-fifteen, and eleven-thirty, and people were beginning to cough and get restless. One of the bridesmaids got hysterical. Helen shot Emily Post to the four winds and came to me in the vestry room almost in tears.

"Jim," she pleaded, "he's not here! He must have been hurt or something. Can't you find out?"

"I'll try," I told her. She left, and her old man came in. He was upset, and I don't mean he had a hangover. His eyes bulged like bumps on a cucumber.

"Blakeson," he bellowed, "where's Cleaver?"

"Do I look like a crystal ball?" I snarled. "Sit tight and amuse the crowd with card tricks. I'm going out to find him." And I went ... but somehow I had a feeling that it was a futile gesture.

I hope the card tricks were good. They had to be to hold that crowd, because it took me three days to find my friend Hank. And I finally located him in—you've guessed it!—the south forty of his farm near Westville. Hank had reverted to the soil. Once again he was clad in coveralls and bulldog shoes. He had turned his back on civilization as a snake discards last year's skin, and the mouth that had once taught pedagogues was again clogged to the incisors with cut plug.

He saw me coming across the field, rose and dusted his knees, and shook his head dolefully.

"Nope, Jim," he said, "it ain't no use askin'. I ain't a-goin' back!"

"Man," I told him, "you're crazy! Don't you know the whole University's in a fever because you skipped out? Why did you go? Helen's all busted up. Don't you love her?"

He made a vain, twisting gesture with his hands. His eyes were bleak.

"Yup, Jim," he said.

"Then for goodness' sakes, why did you do it?"

He gulped wretchedly. "I—I can't marry her, Jim. I just can't. That's all there is to it."

"Why?" I was sore now. "For Satan's sake, why? Something like this deserves an explanation."

"On account," he said, "on account of it wouldn't work."

"It wouldn't—" I stared at him. "Come clean!"

He said, "I figgered it all out, an' it won't work. Say I married her, Awright. Purty soon, stands to reason, we'd have a youngster. A boy, I figger. Some more years'd pass, he'd grow up. Fust thing you know, he'd be a man hisself, an' he'd up an' fall in love with a girl.

"An' it just natcherally stands to reason that him bein' the kind of boy he'd be, an' me bein' the kind of man I am, we'd be sure to have a big ruckus, because—"

I stared at him. "Because?"

"'Cause the kind of girl he'd fall for," said Hank, "would be some durn chorus girl. An'"—Hank's voice was heavy with parental firmness—"they ain't no son of mine is gonna marry no chorus girl!"

I felt like yesterday's lettuce. I said faintly,

"But—but that's ridiculous, Hank. You can't know—"

"I do know, Jim. Afore I met Helen, I never worried none about the future, let every day take care of itself. But when we planned on gettin' hitched, I started figgerin' out the logical results, the results that had to be, by natcheral cause an' effect—"

He shrugged. "An' that's the answer. So it's better to never start the chain that'd make us all unhappy."

He held out a bronzed paw. "It's been nice knowin' you, Jim. You come visit me once in a while, will you? An' if you ever get in a jam an' I can help, just say the word."

I said, "So you mean it, then? The world offers you everything—fame, money, glory, love—and you're going to stay here in this—this cheesy little old turnip patch!"

"Don't say that, Jim!" said Hank swiftly. "This is the best place in the world for me. 'Cause I'm too durn logical. An' this is the one place where I'm at a disadvantage."

"What," I asked, wondering, "do you mean?"

He shook his head, dolefully this time.

"Turnips!" said Horse-sense Hank. "Everything else in the whole wide world I can figger the results of. But turnips is hell. It don't matter where you plant 'em or what you try, they don't never do what you expect 'em to."

[1] The two fundamental principles usually termed Mendelian are: (1) that of alternative inheritance, viz., that of two corresponding but contrasted pairs of characters of the parents, only one appears in the offspring. This is known as the dominant character; the character not appearing is the recessive character. (2) The law of segregation of characters, according to which both dominant and recessive characters reappear pure in 25% each of the offspring of hybrids.—Ed.

[2] Laocoön (lay-ock-o-on) was a priest of Apollo who warned the Trojans against the wooden horse of the Greeks. As a result he and his two sons were destroyed by serpents sent by Athene, who'd placed her bet on Greece. This mythological tragedy is portrayed in a magnificent statue now in the Vatican at Rome.—Ed.

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Table of Contents

- The Scientific Pioneer

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