“Quite impossible! The simplest computation and I cite it to you to show you how intricate the whole problem has to be--is one you can perhaps understand. If an electric stream transverse another of equal strength so as to bisect it perpendicularly, the arrestation of the speed of the bisector can be nicely calculated. But if you vary the relative potency of the two streams and the angle of the crossing you naturally must have different variations.” “Oh, naturally,” I replied drawing a long breath. “That is simple, isn’t it?” “All theories are simple, if you don’t try to understand them,” I said gravely. “Well, would you believe that is only the abc’s of the problem. We know now that space is a great electric sea, of which the currents are formed by myriads of light rays, crossing and recrossing, impinging on each other, causing countless intricate refractions and deviations. It is to bring order into these formerly undivided factors--the unsuspected, seemingly irrelative factors, that we have had to promulgate our new theory. The Einstein theory was founded on new principles of relativity, the new theory is, of course, based on the discovery that nothing in creation is irrelative to the consideration of the properties of an apparent mass. When you realize, Bogardus, that the rays from the star Abacadabrun must traverse the paths of hundreds of thousands of planets’ streams--but you are perhaps a mathematician?” “Thank God, no!” I exclaimed holding my head. “My dear Stella, show me everything, but for heaven’s sake don’t, don’t, I beg you, try to explain anything!” “Thanks, Bogardus, my head is reeling too,” said Acquilla, and to my amazement, she began to laugh. Stella noticed it and gazed at her in alarm. “Acquilla you are in pain!” “No, no, it is nothing,” said Acquilla hastily, making me a sign to be silent. “I never could understand mathematics, anyhow. But now Stella, leaving us outside the higher knowledge, explain to Bogardus the organization of your plant.” Stella, abandoning the subject rather reluctantly, drew my attention to a great number of doors leading to a hundred receiving rooms in each of which one could follow on a circular glass plate the observations of the different telescopes (these observations were likewise radioed to the receiving sets in the home theatres). Whenever it was desirable to concentrate on some unusual phenomena, the moving picture record was placed in the great magnifiers underneath the floor and the projection thrown on the top of the dome above our heads. “But you will see for yourself,” said Stella breaking off. “We have just time--” At this moment, like the voice of the call boy in the theatre, a mechanical voice cried: “Ten minutes before the explosion!”