“If you wish, I’ll call my husband and ask him about it,” said the girl. “He’s the doorman over there.”
Dr. Hale sighed deeply, but his eyes still twinkled. “I think he’ll agree,” he said. “Here are the tickets, my dear, and you can take him. I find that I have work to do this evening.”
The girl’s eyes widened, but she took the rickets.
Dr. Hale went into the phone booth and called this home. His home, and Dr. Hale, were both run by his elder sister. “Agatha, I must remain at the office this evening,” he said.
“Milton, you know that you can work just as well in your study here at home. I heard your broadcast, Milton. It was wonderful.”
“It was sheer balderdash, Agatha. Utter rot. What did I say?”
“Why, you said that—uh—that the stars were—I mean, you were not—”
“Exactly, Agatha. My idea was to avert panic on the part of the populace. If I’d told them the truth, they’d have worried. But by being smug and scientific, I let them get the idea that everything was—uh—under control. Do you know, Agatha, what I mean by the parallelism of an entropy-gradient?”
“Why—not exactly.”
“Neither did I.”