Too close to the forest

By Bryce Walton & Al Reynolds
The dazzling difference between failure and success hung from a spidery thread. And established a barrier no ESP could sever.
We roll out the red carpet for Bryce Walton and Al Reynolds. New to us—but not to you. Their's is the delicate tale of a sensitive mind, the mind of Dr. Marsten who tried frantically to reach his colleagues. Only to prove that over-familiarity with a subject, reiteration of detail, may obliterate the essential vital point to success of a great scientific experimentation.
I won't forget that evening of the big experiment. If the truth is ever known about that evening maybe the world will never forget it either. I got there first, and went into the hall they'd let Dr. Marsten have for the evening on the Revere University Campus. Dr. Marsten was sitting there alone behind a table with a few papers in front of him. A single lamp burned that spotlighted his face like some old classic sculpture in a gallery.
That's the way I remember him. Small, with delicate yet lined features, and his hair, still dark, and his eyes bright and even darker from peering beyond the frontiers of the human mind.
I never saw him again after that night, not in any way I want to remember.
He offered his hand. It was hot and damp and shaking a little. Tension had drawn his mouth tight, even when he managed to smile at me and indicate a chair. I sat down.
I'm so glad you're here, Max, he said. It is right that you share in this triumph. I could feel the tension behind his words. It was the climax of his life. He would either vindicate himself or go, disgraced, into oblivion.
He didn't have to explain any of this to me. I guess I was closer to Dr. Marsten than anyone had ever been, except his wife, of course. She had died ten years before. From that time on he lived for his work in experimental psychology. Until finally, much to everyone's shock and disbelief, he turned to para psychology. And I worked with him against the heartbreakingly rigid demands of the scientific method.