"I think it would be lovely," she said. Later on, he said to her, "You may think this impertinent of me, but you make me envy you. If I were braver, I should wish that I were blind. You actually see more than I do." * * * * * Katherine was intrigued. She had been told this before, but always with mystical and pseudo-religious implications. This man, with the attractive voice and smell, had no trace of the mystic. "Let me tell you a fable to illustrate what I mean," he went on. "There was a man who was born blind, and he went to work as a coal miner because the darkness was no hindrance to him. One day while he was working alone in an unlighted gallery, his sight was miraculously given to him.... He shouted out in amazement and awe, and the other miners came stumbling to him in the total darkness. "'What is it?' they cried. 'What's the matter?' "'I can see!' he told them. But they were puzzled, for they had brought no lights. "'What can you see?' they asked. 'There is nothing to be seen here in the dark.' "'I see _black_!' he said. 'In front of my face is blackness--however, at the back of my head, I'm still blind and I see nothing.'" Katherine was delighted. "I'm not quite sure I understand." "Why, to the blind there are no shadows," Farley said. "Another drink?" "I think it would be lovely," she had said, and since she could see no shadows, she had begun to fall in love. Doctor Russell Chalmers Farley looked up at Phil and smiled. It was a charming smile and it was as genuine as a guaranteed, ten-carat, real, honest-to-goodness zircon. "As Katherine has probably told you," he said, "what you are doing is completely over my bowed head. I am enormously impressed and at the same time unable to comprehend." "I find it hard to comprehend, too," Phil Kaufman said. "And I suppose that's what leads me on." "Well, the thing is," Farley continued, "Washington seems to have gotten wind of it, and you know how they are. They don't like things to be over their heads." Phil Kaufman looked at him in astonishment and sat on a lab stool. "I don't understand. How can they possibly be interested in what I'm doing? It's purely theoretical research." "Surely you don't deny that Lisa Meitner's researches began by being theoretical? And look what _they_ led to. The point is, Kaufman, that I have been informed that we are about to receive a visit from a man from the A.E.C. He's arriving here sometime this afternoon." "But that's absurd! I'm not _doing_ anything to atoms. I'm merely examining them!" Katherine frowned when he said this. Phil knew better. Worse yet, so did she. "When the A.E.C. hears of somebody working in atomic research," Farley said, "they want to know what's cooking. I hate you to be subjected to this, but it won't do any harm to be polite to the fellow and let him, as it were, look over your shoulder." "I'm damned if I see why I should!" Phil said. "What does he expect to do? Classify me?"