“Sure I’ve heard of him. Covered a hassle he got into some years ago. A nice guy.” “I’ll bet,” Larry said. “What does he invent, something to do with printing presses, or something?” “Printing presses? Don’t you remember the story about him?” “Brief me,” Larry said. “Well—briefly does it—it got out a couple of years ago that some of our rocketeers had bought a solid fuel formula from an Italian research outfit for the star probe project. Paid them a big hunk of Uncle’s change for it. So Self sued.” Larry said, “You’re being _too_ brief. What d’ya mean, he sued? Why?” “Because he claimed he’d submitted the same formula to the same agency a full eighteen months earlier and they’d turned him down.” “Had he?” “Probably.” Larry didn’t get it. “Then why’d they turn him down?” Sam said, “Oh, the government boys had a good alibi. Crackpots turn up all over the place and you have to brush them off. Every cellar scientist who comes along and says he’s got a new super-fuel developed from old coffee grounds can’t be given the welcome mat. Something was wrong with his math or something and they didn’t pay much attention to him. Wouldn’t even let him demonstrate it. But it was the same formula, all right.” Larry Woolford was scowling. “Something wrong with his math? What kind of a degree does he have?” Sam grinned in memory. “I got a good quote on that. He doesn’t have any degree. He said he’d learned to read by the time he’d reached high school and since then he figured spending time in classrooms was a matter of interfering with his education.” “No wonder they turned him down. No degree at all. You can’t get anywhere in science like that.” Sam said, “The courts rejected his suit but he got a certain amount of support here and there. Peter Voss, over at the university, claims he’s one of the great intuitive scientists, whatever that is, of our generation.” “Who said that?” “Professor Voss. Not that it makes any difference what he says. Another crackpot.” After Sam’s less than handsome face was gone from the phone, Larry walked over to the bar with his empty glass and stared at the mixer for several minutes. He began to make himself another flip, but cut it short in the middle, put down the ingredients and went back to the phone to dial _Records_ again. He went through first the brief and then the full dossier on Professor Peter Luther Voss. Aside from his academic accomplishments, particularly in the fields of political economy and international law, and the dozen or so books accredited to him, there wasn’t anything particularly noteworthy. A bachelor in his fifties. No criminal record of any kind, of course, and no military career. No known political affiliations. Evidently a strong predilection for Thorstein Veblen’s theories. And he’d been a friend of Henry Mencken back when that old nonconformist was tearing down contemporary society seemingly largely for the fun involved in the tearing.