"No, as a matter of fact, I can't."
"Oh! Then I can throw out all these old papers?"
"What old papers?"
"Oh, I don't know, Haroldkin," Kate said. "You made such a fuss about failing that silly medical exam that you never let me touch your desk when you graduated in physics."
"Physics!"
"Yes," said Kate, throwing paper after paper onto the carpet. She made sweeping motions in the air and dumped a mass of notes into her lap. They appeared on her fingertips, but they stayed in existence when she dropped them on the carpet.
"How did I die?" I asked, bending down and thumbing rapidly over the papers.
"A bomb went off," she said. "I really don't want to talk about it. But you were so eminent, Haroldkin!"
I must have been very soft in the discrimination to have allowed that revolting nickname, I thought, but it was clear from the papers I was holding that I knew my physics. And there it was, printed in an issue of the Commission's Journal that never existed in my time-space, the whole equation I was looking for. It was so obvious when I read it that I could not understand how I failed to think of it for myself—for my own myself, that is.
When I looked up, this probable Kate had gone. I wanted to thank her, but the evening would do. Meanwhile, here was the ultra-uranium fourth octave equation.