"Don't you read? Forget it. Look, Doc, you're actually the only scientist I know, so I want to ask a couple of questions." "I'll try. But let's not lose sight of the fact that I'm not a credited scientist, as you put it. I'm a sort of cockeyed physicist whose job is to see that actors squinting through telescopes see Saturn at the right angle, and that birds looking through spectroscopes don't point at a blue triplet and call it the Sodium D Lines." "You might be even better than a real physicist of the research kind," said Dusty. "Thanks for them kind words, Dusty. Flattery will get you nowhere." "I'm not trying flattery. You've been in this make-believe business for a long time. That's why you might be able to think it out." "Go on, man. Spill your idea. What do you want me to do?" "Let's assume that Dusty Britton's wild tale about a man named Scyth Radnor, from Marandis, is right. And that this guy came out of a spacecraft parked in the ocean, sitting on the sill of the spacelock waiting for me. He talked about the death of the general relativity theory in favor of something called the machinus theory of space-time, phanobands, menslators and all sorts of things." "Yeah? We've been having space warps ever since the days of Jack Williamson." * * * * * Dusty grinned, perhaps for the first time in weeks. "Look," he said. "I know the patter well enough. Doc Smith invented the Bergenholm and Murray Leinster came along with the superdrive and George O. Smith developed the matter transmitter to a fare-thee-well, but all this guff is so much birdfood." "What are you getting at, Dusty?" "I wish I had studied a bit more science," said Dusty plaintively. "But dammit, I don't know a microfarad from a polysyllabic neutron. But I'm telling you that my so-called strange fancy is the God's Truth. Some time in the next couple of weeks the Earth is going to get itself transplanted. You can either help me now or you can come back later and tell me that you're damned sorry you tossed me out. Take it or leave it." "All right. So maybe I'll take it. I've only a couple of weeks to lose. What do you want me to say?" "Look, Doc, supposing that you were convinced that interstellar travel is possible; that these phanobands do exist. That this menslator is a commercial instrument. And so on. Take the first premise: faster-than-light travel is a commercial fact due to the development of a theory called the machinus theory of space-time. Can you do a bit of hypothetical theorization?" "Sure thing. I don't mind. We'll take this on the basis of plenic syllogistics. Our first premise will be that this menslator works as your pal Scyth claims." "It's Scyth. Not scythe."