experimental models had been unsuccessful at converting all of the radioactivity into light, and had, of necessity, been heavily shielded.
Right now, two of his colleagues back in the laboratory would still be searching for the right combination of fluorescent material and radioactive salts with which to make the simple, efficient, self-contained lighting unit that he was holding in his hand at this moment!
But this is impossible! he thought. We’re the only company that’s working on this, and it’s secret. There can’t be any in actual production!
And even if one had actually been successfully produced, how would it have fallen into the possession of POSAT, an Ancient Secret Society, The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth?
The conviction grew in Don’s mind that here was something much deeper and more sinister than he would be able to cope with. He should have asked for help, should have stated his suspicions to the police or the F.B.I. Even now—
With sudden decision, he thrust the lighting tube into his pocket and stepped swiftly to the outer door. He grasped the knob and shook it impatiently when it stuck and refused to turn. He yanked at it. His impatience changed to panic. It was locked!
A soft sound behind him made him whirl about. The secretary had entered again through the inner door. She glanced at the vacant light bracket, then significantly at his bulging pocket. Her gaze was still as bland and innocent as when he had entered, but to Don she no longer seemed ordinary. Her very calmness in the face of his odd actions was distressingly ominous.
“Our Grand Chairman will see you now,” she said in a quiet voice.
Don realized that he was half crouched in the position of an animal expecting attack. He straightened up with what dignity he could manage to find.
She opened the inner door again and Don followed her into what he supposed to be the office of the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Instead he found himself on a balcony along the side of a vast room, which must have been the interior of the warehouse that he had noted outside. The girl motioned him toward the far end of the balcony, where a frosted glass door marked the office of the Grand Chairman.
But Don could not will his legs to move. His heart beat at the sight of the room below him. It was a laboratory, but a laboratory the like of which he had never seen before. Most of the equipment was unfamiliar to him. Whatever he did recognize was of a different design than he had ever used, and there was something about it that convinced him that this was more advanced. The men who bent busily over their instruments did not raise their eyes to the figures on the balcony.
“Good Lord!” Don gasped. “That’s an atomic reactor down there!” There could be no doubt about it, even though he could see it only obscurely through the bluish-green plastic shielding it.
His thoughts were so clamorous that he hardly realized that he had spoken aloud, or that the door at the end of the balcony had opened.
He was only dimly aware of the approaching footsteps as he speculated wildly on the nature of the shielding material. What could be so dense that only an inch would provide adequate shielding and yet remain semitransparent?
His scientist’s mind applauded the genius who had developed it, even as the alarming conviction grew that he wouldn’t—couldn’t—be allowed to leave here any more. Surely no man would be allowed to leave this place alive to tell the fantastic story to the world!
“Hello, Don,” said a quiet voice beside him. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Dr. Crandon!” he heard his own voice reply. “You’re the Grand Chairman of POSAT?”
He felt betrayed and sick at heart. The very voice with which Crandon had spoken conjured up visions of quiet lecture halls and his own youthful excitement at the masterful and orderly disclosure of scientific facts. To find him here in this mad and treacherous place—didn’t anything make sense any longer?
“I think we have rather abused you, Don,” Dr. Crandon continued. His voice sounded so gentle that Don found it hard to think there was any evil in it. “I can see that you are suspicious of us, and—yes—afraid.”
Don stared at the scene below him. After his initial glance to confirm his identification of Crandon, Don could not bear to look at him.
Crandon’s voice suddenly hardened, became abrupt. “You’re partly right about us, of course. I hate to think how many laws this organization has broken. Don’t condemn us yet, though. You’ll be a member yourself before the day is over.”
Don was shocked by such confidence in his corruptibility.
“What do you use?” he asked bitterly. “Drugs? Hypnosis?”
Crandon sighed. “I forgot how little you know, Don. I have a long story to tell you. You’ll find it hard to believe at first. But try to trust me. Try to believe me, as you once did. When I say that much of what POSAT does is illegal, I do not mean immoral. We’re probably the most moral organization in the world. Get over the idea that you have stumbled into a den of thieves.”
Crandon paused as though searching for words with which to continue.
“Did you notice the paintings in the waiting room as you entered?”
Don nodded, too bewildered to speak.
“They were donated by the founder of our Organization. They were part of his personal collection—which, incidentally, he bought from the artists themselves. He also designed the atomic reactor we use for power here in the laboratory.”
“Then the pictures are modern,” said Don, aware that his mouth was hanging open foolishly. “I thought one was a Titian—”
“It is,” said Crandon. “We have several original Titians, although I really don’t know too much about them.”
“But how could a man alive today buy paintings from an artist of the Renaissance?”
“He is not alive today. POSAT is actually what our advertisements claim—an ancient secret society. Our founder has been dead for over four centuries.”
“But you said that he designed your atomic reactor.”
“Yes. This particular one has been in use for only twenty years, however.”
Don’s confusion was complete. Crandon looked at him kindly. “Let’s start at the beginning,” he said, and Don was back again in the classroom with the deep voice of Professor Crandon unfolding the pages of knowledge in clear and logical manner. “Four hundred years ago, in the time of the Italian Renaissance, a man lived who was a super-genius. His was the kind of incredible mentality that appears not in every generation, or even every century, but once in thousands of years.
“Probably the man who invented what we call the phonetic alphabet was one like him. That man lived seven thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, and his discovery was so original, so far from the natural course of man’s thinking, that not once in the intervening seven thousand years has that device been rediscovered. It still exists only in the civilizations to which it has been passed on directly.
“The super-genius who was our founder was not a semanticist. He was a physical scientist and mathematician. Starting with the meager heritage that existed in these fields in his time, he began tackling physical puzzles one by one. Sitting in his study, using as his principal tool his own great mind, he invented calculus, developed the quantum theory of light, moved on to electromagnetic radiation and what we call Maxwell’s equations—although, of course, he antedated Maxwell by centuries—developed the special and general theories of relativity, the tool of wave mechanics, and finally, toward the end of his life, he mathematically derived the packing fraction that describes the binding energy of nuclei—”
“But it can’t be done,” Don objected. “It’s an observed phenomenon. It hasn’t been derived.” Every conservative instinct that he possessed cried out against this impossible fantasy. And