For an interminable instant there was silence in the courtroom. Complete silence. Stunned incredulity. It was followed by a collective gasp, which Walhfred Anderson could hear echoing around the world. Cyber IX had been more than beaten; it had failed to solve a problem. The gasp gave way to unrestrained cheering. But the Professor brought quiet again by raising his bony hand. Now there was a strange, incongruous air of dignity about his thin figure. "Please," he said, "please understand one thing.... The purpose of this demonstration and my question was not to discredit Cyber IX, which is truly a great machine, a wonder of science. "Cyber IX could not know the magnitudes of a dream ... because it cannot dream. "As a matter of fact, I do not know the magnitudes of a dream, but that is not important ... because I _can_ dream! "The dream is the difference.... The dream born in man, as the poet said, 'with a sudden, clamorous pain' ..." There was no movement or sound in the courtroom. Walhfred Anderson held the Professor's last written answer between his fingers, as if fearing that even the small movement to release it might shatter something delicate and precious. "The dream is the difference!" There it was. So clear and true and beautiful. He looked at Holmes, and Holmes seemed to be smiling under his gray mustache. Yes, Holmes had known the dream. In the sound-proof booths, the announcers had stopped speaking; all mike lines were open to carry Professor Neustadt's words to five hundred million people. "Perhaps there are no magnitudes of such a dream ... no coordinates! Or it may be that we are not yet wise enough to know them. The future may tell us, for the dream is the rainbow bridge from the present and the past to the future." Professor Neustadt's eyes were half-closed again, and his head was cocked back, bird-like. "Copernicus dreamed a dream.... So did da Vinci, Galileo and Newton, Darwin and Einstein ... all so long ago.... "Cyber IX has not dreamed a dream.... Nor have Cyber VIII, VII, VI, V, IV, III, II, I. "But they can free men to dream. "Remember that, if you forget all else: They can free men to dream! "Man's knowledge has grown so vast that much of it would be lost or useless without the storage and recall capacity of the Cybers--and man himself would be so immersed in what he knows that he would never have time to dream of that which he does not yet know, but must and can know. "Why should not the scientist use the past without being burdened by it? Why should not the lawyer and the judge use the hard-won laws of justice without being the slave of dusty law books?"