"But if Earth Three wins—as it seems certain to do?" she insisted.
"That would be bad," he said.
"Why?"
"Virginia," he said soberly, "I don't quite know what it is but there's something very wrong with Earth Three. Confound it, it's simple enough, too, but for the life of me I cannot see it."
"What can be wrong with a world where science and knowledge are not suppressed?"
"I don't know," he said irritably. "But there's something wrong with Earth Three." He turned back to the gear again. "The one thing we must be on the watch for is the day when Kingston sends word for his trustees to assemble his space-resonant materials into a supercritical mass.
"Also we must watch to see that he does not use yours. I'm going to duplicate this equipment first and then your job will be to keep an eye on Kingston all the time while I work out this stuff."
Bronson looked around him with a cynical smile. "Books, data, equipment, and supplies," he said. "This is not like finding the science of an ancient culture. This is a man finding a complete means of study of a science of his own civilization removed but a few years to the future.
"I've often laughed," he went on cheerfully, "at what Volta and Henry might think if they saw a modern circuit. But give them books, equipment and material and they would work it out soon enough.
"Radio, for instance, would have had its inception in the middle of the nineteenth century if twentieth century measuring and testing equipment and books had been handy. So," he strode over to a bookcase and took out a heavy tome, "we work this out."