The phone on Professor Osbert Osternak's desk rang. "Excuse me," the snowy-haired chief scientist of the Erwin Schrödinger Memorial Research Institute said to the younger man sitting across from him. "Yes? ... This is Professor Osternak, yes. Who is this, please? ... Oh?" The old man's eyebrows shot upward almost to his hairline. "Oh really? That is most interesting." He settled back in his chair and sent an apologetic shrug across the desk. It seemed that this was going to take a while. "Yes, that is true, quite true.... Yes. That is so. But how do you ... of course. Amazing! And so it happens.... So, what can I do for you?..."
Dr. Rudi Gorfmann, Osternak's deputy, wearing a black bow tie and dress shirt beneath his white lab coat, sighed impatiently. The old fool would be prattling on for half the evening now, and Gorfmann wanted to be on his way to Innsbruck for the Celebrity Club's charity fund-raising banquet. He stood up and turned to face away across the office. With its antiquated wooden bookshelves and -paneling--even a chalkboard!--it was as much of an anachronism as the person it belonged to. Gorfmann paced across to the window of the Gothic "Keep," which on its rocky eminence beneath the peaks of the Bavarian Alps, frosty against the darkening sky, formed an incongruous focal point for the Institute's modern laboratory blocks and reactor housings. His reflection stared back from the glass: a clean-shaven face, neatly groomed blond hair, gold-rimmed spectacles. Meanwhile, Osternak's voice babbled on behind. "This is unbelievable. When does he intend to do this? ... Ach, so.... Can we get together and talk about this?..."
Old scientists should be forcibly retired at forty, Gorfmann fumed to himself. Newton, Einstein, anyone of brilliance ... none had done anything useful beyond their twenties. All they had achieved after that was to place the seal of unchallengeable authority on ideas that had become outmoded, making further progress impossible until they died off and made room for new blood with new vigor. If it weren't for such tyranny of age and tradition, Columbus would have landed on the moon, Watt would have harnessed fusion energy, and the Wright brothers would have built the first starship. And Rudi Gorfmann would have ... He realized that Osternak had stopped talking on the telephone, and turned back to face the desk.
"I'm sorry," Osternak said, gesturing for Gorfmann to be seated again. "But it was rather important. I know you have a dinner to get to. Now, where were we?"
Gorfmann remained standing. "I protest at this policy of indecisiveness and timidity that you are imposing on the Institute," he repeated.
"But I'm not imposing anything, Rudi. The directors are in full agreement that--"
"On scientific issues they follow your lead, which makes it the same thing. My question is, are we scientists, dedicated to discovery in a spirit of boldness, with confidence in our own judgment? Or old women cowed by superstitions and frightened of anything we don't understand?" Gorfmann jabbed a finger in the direction of the window. "Outside, in that building down there, is what's probably the most significant breakthrough in the entire history of physics, maybe in entire history, period--a tested, proven, up-and-running transfer gate. We are talking about a working time machine! The implications are staggering. Everything we thought we knew about logic and causality will have to be revised. The very fundamentals of physics--space, time, energy, matter, charge--all take on new meanings. Unimaginable technologies will grow from it...."
"Rudi," the professor interrupted patiently. "I am aware of all this."
"What I'm saying is that it is ours!" Gorfmann said, punching a fist into his other palm. "Us--the scientists here at the Institute. It was our work that made this a reality. The rewards and the recognition that it deserves belong to us."
Osternak nodded. "And I'm sure that in time you will receive them."
Gorfmann snorted derisively. "When, with the snail's pace of the way things are moving? Fifty years from now? A century? What use is that to me? I am young, and I still have a life ahead of me that I mean to enjoy. I want the rewards and everything that goes with them, now. But all we get is restrictions, restrictions, this ridiculous blackout on publicity, and tests, tests, and more tests." He waved a hand in Osternak's direction. "Look, I'm sorry if this success has come a little late in life for you--there is nothing I can do about that. But it doesn't have to be that way for me. I say we should go public now. I would like to make the first official announcement during my speech tonight."
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