Thus far his half-whispered words were audible,—when El-Râmi came and stood beside him. Then he seemed to suddenly recollect himself, and, looking up, he rose to his feet and spoke in a perfectly calm and collected manner.
“You see”—he said, pointing to the disc with the air of a lecturer illustrating his discourse—“To begin with, there is the fine hair’s-breadth balance of matter which gives perpetual motion. Nothing can stop that movement save the destruction of the whole piece of mechanism. By some such subtly delicate balance as that, the Universe moves,—and nothing can stop it save the destruction of the Universe. Is not that fairly reasoned?”
“Perfectly,” replied El-Râmi, who was listening with profound attention.
“Surely that of itself,—the secret of perpetual motion,—is a great discovery, is it not?” questioned Kremlin eagerly.
El-Râmi hesitated.
“It is,” he said at last. “Forgive me if I paused a moment before replying,—the reason of my doing so was this. You cannot claim to yourself any actual discovery of perpetual motion, because that is Nature’s own particular mystery. Perhaps I do not explain myself with sufficient clearness,—well, what I mean to imply is this—namely, that your wonderful dial there would not revolve as it does if the Earth on which we stand were not also revolving. If we could imagine our planet stopping suddenly in its course, your disc would stop also,—is not that correct?”
“Why, naturally!” assented Kremlin impatiently. “Its movement is mathematically calculated to follow, in a slower degree, but with rhythmical exactitude, the Earth’s own movement, and is so balanced as to be absolutely accurate to the very half-quarter of a hair’s-breadth.”
“Yes,—and there is the chief wonder of your invention,” said El-Râmi quietly. “It is that peculiarly precise calculation of yours that is so marvellous, in that it enables you to follow the course of perpetual motion. With perpetual motion itself you have nothing to do,—you cannot find its why or its when or its how,—it is eternal as Eternity. Things must move,—and we all move with them—your disc included.”
“But the moving things are balanced—so!” said Kremlin, pointing triumphantly to his work—“On one point—one pivot!”
“And that point——?” queried El-Râmi dubiously.