you. I don’t remember, quite, your objection to the Electron Pump. Could you tell me?”
Denison’s head bent. The silence lengthened itself and the Commissioner-Appointee did not interrupt. He even stifled a small clearing of the throat.
Denison said, “Truly, it was nothing. It was a guess I made; a fear about the alteration in the intensity of the strong nuclear field. Nothing!”
“Nothing?” Gottstein did clear his throat now. “Please don’t mind if I strive to understand this. I told you that you interested me at the time. I was unable to follow it up then and I doubt that I could dig the information out of the records now. The whole thing is classified—the senator did very poorly at the time and he isn’t interested in publicity over it. Still, some details come back. You were once a colleague of Hallam’s; you were not a physicist.”
“That’s right. I was a radiochemist. So was he.”
“Stop me if I remember incorrectly, but your early record was a very good one, right?”
“There were objective criteria in my favor. I had no illusions about myself. I was a brilliant worker.”
“Amazing how it comes back. Hallam, on the other hand, was not.”
“Not particularly.”
“And yet afterward things did not go well with you. In fact, when we interviewed you—I think you volunteered to see us—you were working for a toy manufacturer—”
“Cosmetics,” said Denison, in a strangled voice. “Male cosmetics. That didn’t help gain me a respectful hearing.”
“No, it wouldn’t. I’m sorry. You were a salesman.”
“Sales manager. I was still brilliant. I rose to vice-president before breaking off and coming to the Moon.”
“Did Hallam have something to do with that? I mean with you leaving science?”
“Commissioner,” said Denison. “Please! It really doesn’t matter any longer. I was there when Hallam first discovered the tungsten conversion and when the chain of events began that led to the Electron Pump. Exactly what would have happened if I had not been there, I can’t say. Hallam and I might both have been dead of radiation poisoning a month later or of a nuclear explosion six weeks later. I don’t know. But I was there and, partly because of me, Hallam is what he is now; and because of my part in it, I am what I am now. The hell with the details. Does that satisfy you? Because it will have to.”
“I think it satisfies me. You had a personal grudge against Hallam, then?”
“I certainly had no affection for him, in those days. I have no affection for him now, for that matter.”
“Would you say, then, that your objection to the Electron Pump was inspired by your anxiety to destroy Hallam.”
Denison said, “I object to this cross-examination.”
“Please? Nothing of what I ask is intended to be used against you. This is for my own benefit because I am concerned about the Pump and about a number of things.”
“Well, then, I suppose you might work out some emotional involvement. Because I disliked Hallam I was ready to believe that his popularity and greatness had a false foundation. I thought about the Electron Pump, hoping to find a flaw.”
“And you therefore found one?”
“No,” said Denison forcefully, bringing his fist down on the arm of the chair and moving perceptibly upward from his seat in reaction. “Not ‘therefore.’ I found a flaw but it was an honest one. Or so it seemed to me. I certainly didn’t invent a flaw merely to puncture Hallam.”
“No question of inventing, Doctor,” said Gottstein soothingly.
“I don’t dream of making such an implication. Yet we all know that in trying to determine something on the boundary lines of the known, it is necessary to make assumptions. The assumptions can be made over a gray area of uncertainty and one can shade them in one direction or another with perfect honesty, but in accord with—uh—the emotions of the moment. You made your assumptions, perhaps, on the anti-Hallam edge of the possible.”
“This is a profitless discussion, sir. At the time, I thought I had a valid point. However, I am not a physicist. I am—was—a radiochemist.”
“Hallam was a radiochemist, too, but he is now the most famous physicist in the world.”
“He’s still a radiochemist. A quarter-century out of date.”
“Not so, you. You worked hard to become a physicist.”
Denison smoldered. “You really investigated me.”
“I told you; you impressed me. Amazing how it comes back. But now I’ll pass on to something a little different. Do you know a physicist named Peter Lamont?”