CHAPTER XVI

Coverly reported to Cameron’s office on Monday morning. He clearly recalled his first encounter with the old genius. This had been in the mountains, three hundred miles north of Talifer, where Coverly had gone skiing one weekend with some other men from the office. They reached the place late in the afternoon and would have time for only one run before dark. They were waiting for the chair lift when they were asked to step aside. It was Cameron.

He was with two generals and a colonel. They were all much bigger and younger than he. There was an appreciable stir at his arrival but he was, after all, a legendary skier. His contribution to the theory of thermal heat had been worked out from his observation of the molecular action on the base of his skis. He wore fine ski clothes and had a scarlet headband above his famous eyebrows. His eyes were brilliant that afternoon and he moved toward the lift with the preciseness and grace (Coverly thought) of someone who enjoys unchallenged authority. He went up the mountain, followed by his retinue and then by Coverly and his friends. There was a hut or refuge at the summit where they stopped to smoke. There was no fire in the refuge. It was very cold. When Coverly had adjusted his bindings he found that he and Cameron were alone. The others had gone down. The presence of Cameron made Coverly uneasy. Without speaking, without making a sound, he seemed to project around him something as palpable as an electromagnetic field. It was late, it would be dark very soon but all the mountain peaks, all of them buried in snow, still stood in the canted light of day like the gulfs and trenches of an ancient sea bed. What moved Coverly in the scene was its vitality. Here was a display of the inestimable energies of the planet; here in the last light was a sense of its immense history. Coverly knew enough not to speak of this to the doctor. It was Cameron who spoke. His voice was harsh and youthful. “Isn’t it remarkable,” he said, “to think that only two years ago it was generally thought that the heterosphere was divided into two regions.”

“Yes,” Coverly said.

“First of course we have the homosphere,” the doctor explained. He spoke with the forced courtesy of some professors. “Within the homosphere the primary components of air are uniformly mixed in their standard proportions by weight of 76 percent nitrogen, 23 percent oxygen and one percent argon, apart from water vapor.” Coverly turned to see him. His face was drawn by the intense cold. His breath smoked. His habit of explanation seemed impervious to the majesty of their circumstances. Coverly felt that he barely saw the light and the mountains. “We have within the homosphere,” he went on, “the troposphere, the stratosphere and the mesosphere with, beyond the mesopause, oxygen and nitric acid, ionized by Lyman Beta components and above this oxygen and some nitric oxide, ionized by short ultraviolet ray. The electronic density above the mesopause is 100,000 a cubic centimeter. Above this it rises to 200,000 and then to a million. Then the gross density of atoms becomes so low that the electron density diminishes. . . .”

“I think we’d better go down,” Coverly said. “It’s getting dark. Would you like to go first?”

Cameron refused and called good luck to Coverly as Coverly poled off. He made the first turn and the second but the third turn was already dark and he took a spill. He was not hurt but, getting to his feet, he happened to look overhead and saw Dr. Cameron descending sedately in the chair lift.

Coverly met his friends below the chair-lift station and went on to an inn where they had a drink in the bar. Cameron and his retinue came in a few minutes later and took a table in a corner. It was no trouble to hear what Cameron was saying. It seemed that he could not control the penetrativeness of his voice. He was talking about running the trail and talking about it in detail; the hairpin turns, the long stretch of washboard, the icy schusses and the drifted snow. Here was a man responsible in a sense for the security of the nation, who could not be counted upon to tell the truth about his skiing. He was notorious for his insistence upon demonstrable truths and yet in this matter was a consummate liar. Coverly was fascinated. Had he brought another and a finer sense of truth to the face of the mountain? Had he judged from the chair lift that the trail was too steep and swift for his strength? Had he guessed that if he admitted to judicious timidity he might have impaired the respectfulness of his team? Had his disregard for the common truth involved some larger sense of truth? Coverly didn’t know whether or not he had been seen from the chair lift.

A secretary led Coverly into Cameron’s office that morning. “Your interest in poetry,” the old man began at once, “is my principal reason for asking you here, for what could be more poetic than those hundred thousand million suns that make up the glittering jewelry of our galaxy? This vastness of power is utterly beyond our comprehension. It seems certain that we are receiving light from more than a hundred billion billion suns. It is conservatively estimated that one star in a thousand carries a planet hospitable to some form of life. Even if this estimate should prove a million times too big there would still be a hundred billion such planets in the known universe. Would you like to work for me?” the doctor asked.

“I don’t think you understand, Dr. Cameron,” Coverly said. “You see, my only training is in taping and preprogramming. When I was transferred from Remsen the machine made a slip-up and I ended in public relations; but I don’t think you understand that—”

“Don’t you tell me what I understand and what I don’t understand,” Cameron shouted. “If what you’re trying to tell me is that your ignorance is limpid and abysmal, you’re trying to tell me something I already know. You’re a blockhead. I know it. That’s why I want you. Blockheads are difficult to find these days. On your way out tell Miss Knowland to have you transferred to my staff. Write me a twenty-minute commencement address along the lines of what I’ve just said and plan to leave with me for Atlantic City next week. What time is it?”

“Quarter to ten,” Coverly said.

“Hear that bird?” the doctor asked.

“Yes,” Coverly said.

“What is he saying?” the doctor asked.

“I’m not sure,” Coverly said.

“He’s calling my name,” said Cameron, a little angrily. “Can’t you hear it? He’s calling my name. Cameron, Cameron, Cameron.”

“It does sound like that,” said Coverly.

“Do you know the constellation Pernacia?”

“Yes,” said Coverly.

“Did you ever notice that it contains my initials?”

“I’d never thought of it that way,” Coverly said. “I see now, I see it now.”

“How long can you hold your breath?” Cameron asked.

“I don’t know,” Coverly said.

“Well, try.” Coverly took a deep breath and Cameron looked at his wristwatch. He held his breath for a minute and eight seconds. “Not bad,” Cameron said. “Now get out of here.”