Virginia shook her head unhappily. "Why, oh why did this thing happen?"
Bronson smiled tolerantly. "Because of the chances," he said thoughtfully. "I'm no believer in a great and benevolent god who interferes with his subjects. I'm more inclined to look upon God as an intellect interested in the problems of his subjects and quite willing to let them work out their own destiny—if for no other reason than to discover whether He had built well.
"You cannot know how good your toy is if you insist upon helping it over the difficult places with your hands. It must run of itself to be a good model.
"Now I'm not exactly convinced that Nature or God was baffled by this thing that His toy built and therefore held His benevolent—but baffled—hand in the stream of time to see which was the best.
"I'm inclined to think there was a good scientific explanation of why time should have split three ways—why in one case the earth entered fission, why the thing worked properly in another time-stream and why the Alamogordo Bomb fizzled in a third."
"Can you find out why—and what it could have been?" she asked.
He laughed shortly. "It isn't mumbo-jumbo or magic," he said. "All of the things attributed to mumbo-jumbo are based upon facts not known to those who observe the effects. The very fact that there was some doubt about the outcome of the Alamogordo Bomb proved that the best brains knew their knowledge of nuclear physics was incomplete."
Virginia nodded brightly. "So you think that some unknown factor caused the trouble?"
"Obviously. We know that fissionable materials do operate. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were of different types of material, giving us at least two different proofs of its operation. We have too little knowledge of Earth Three but I'm reasonably certain that, once the original experiment failed, fissionable reactions took place and are taking place now. We know even less of the affair of Earth Two. We don't know but can assume that later attempts would turn out properly."