Part 3 (1/2)

Then he had begun his lecture by remarking that they were behind schedule and would have to catch up. He had been speaking less than five minutes when a student by the name of Marvin Green jumped to his feet in great excitement, waving his hand and shouting, ”Dr. Grant! Dr. Grant!”

Dr. Grant had stopped his lecture and frowned darkly, then said, ”If you will please take your seat--”

”But Dr. Grant!” Marvin Green had interrupted him excitedly. ”I've got it! I've got it!”

What had happened then was impossible for the mind to accept. Marvin Green had simply ceased to be.

There had been a stunned silence. And in that silence, it went on.

Student after student popping out of existence in what seemed to be a chain reaction.

He wasn't aware when Dr. Grant vanished. All he knew was that when at last he was alone he looked toward the podium and the professor was also gone.

He kept waiting to go himself. When he didn't, he lost the fear that had rooted him to the spot, and rushed to the exit where he at first tried to break down the door and make his escape, then subsided into pounding and shouting for help when he realized his physical strength was insufficient for the job.

Questioning didn't bring out any additional fact, nor alter any statement. There had been no sound to the vanis.h.i.+ng, no movement of the person that could be considered significant, no flashes of light, no strange odors. Nothing.

Fred Grant got the flash on his hot rod radio on the way home from high school.

At the end of the report Fred wrote down Mark Smythe's address on a sc.r.a.p of paper, and drove home to be with his mother. It was three days before he could get away.

On the morning of the third day, his aunt Emily arrived to take charge of things, and he was able to slip away. He drove immediately to Mark Smythe's address. It was one of the better cla.s.s rooming houses near the campus. The land-lady wasn't going to let him in nor announce him until he explained he was the son of the professor who had vanished. She immediately swung to the other extreme and didn't bother to find out if Mark wanted to see him.

”My father was your teacher,” Fred said.

”Oh? Come on in.”

There were tennis rackets. On the bookshelves there were tennis books.

On a table there was a tennis trophy. Otherwise there was just a bed, a rug, and two or three chairs.

”I don't know what I can tell you more than I've already told the police and the reporters,” Mark said apologetically. ”I guess it's tough, losing your father....”

”Yeah,” Fred agreed. ”I wanted to ask you something though. Dad gave a lecture on his new theory a few days ago, didn't he?”

Mark looked at him blankly. Then, ”Oh! I guess he did. As a matter of fact I didn't pay much attention to it.” He grinned. Then he remembered he should be solemn and stopped grinning. ”I--I sort of slipped by it.

He made the mistake of telling us ahead of time it was off the course and no questions on it would be in the finals, so I more or less rested up during the period for a tennis match afterwards. Why?”

”Didn't you get any of what he said?” Fred persisted.

”Oh, a little,” Mark admitted. ”It was about some system of arriving at the basic laws of nature by pure logic, only what you arrived at didn't agree with facts. Some kind of intellectual curiosity.” He thought a minute. ”Oh,” he said, ”I see what you want. Didn't he leave any notes on it? It would be too bad if his theory was lost to the world now that--” He left the rest unsaid.

”Maybe you can remember something,” Fred coaxed. ”Anything. Did he talk about his theory again?”

”Next day he gave a lecture on the necessity of unbelief in modern science. It was pretty good. He overemphasized it, though. Some of the kids thought he was making a religion of unbelief.”

”What did they say about his theory?” Fred asked quickly.

”Oh, they were quite impressed. Two of them live--lived here in the rooming house. They were up here that evening tossing it back and forth.