"Can that actually be done?" the scientist asked. For the first time, he became really interested in the proceedings.
"Very easily, Doctor Cheswick," Garlock replied. "We could do it ourselves with scarcely any effort and at very small cost. You are familiar, I suppose, with the phenomenon of ball lightning?"
"Somewhat. Its mechanism has never been elucidated in any very satisfactory mathematics."
"Well, we have at our disposal a field some...."
"Hold it, Clee," James warned. "Do you want to put out that kind of stuff around here?"
"Um ... m ... m. What do you think?"
James studied Cheswick's mind. "Better than I thought," he decided. "He has made two really worthwhile intuitions—a genius type. He's been working on what amounts almost to the Coupler Theory for ten years. He's almost got it, but you know intuitions of that caliber can't be scheduled. He might get it tomorrow—or never. I'd say push him over the hump."
"Okay with me. We'll take a vote—one blackball kills it. Brownie? Just the link, of course. A few hints, perhaps, at application, but no technological data."
"I say give it to him. He's earned it. Besides, he isn't young and may die before he gets it, and that would lose them two or three hundred years."