Everyone knew the equation E = MC², but few could implement it to build an atomic power plant.
Perhaps the reactions of Tom, that taking away the concept of a balanced equation destroyed all certainty, and therefore was not to be countenanced, was a reflection of his own reaction, willing though he might be to consider something else.
In his wanderings about the island, picking fruits and nuts, stems and leaves, catching fish when he hungered, drinking the clear water of the stream when he thirsted, yet so enrapt that he was unaware he was taking care of his body's needs, Cal built up whole structures of alien philosophies on the nature of the universe, and saw them topple of their own weight.
Until, at last, he realized the basic flaw in all his reasoning. He was too well-grounded in the essence of physical science, and all physical science was built on the balanced equation. Even in trying to consider the unbalanced equation, he had been attempting to determine the exact nature of the unbalance, and to supply it as an X factor on the other side of the equation to restore balance.
To restore balance was to maintain the status quo of physical reality. To turn the key in the lock, to open the door, he must change the physical reality to balance the equation, rather than supply the X factor to keep reality unchanged.
But how to do it still eluded him.
At times, as if seeing partial diagrams, he seemed very close to a solution. At times it seemed the printed card of an electronic wiring was necessary only because the human mind could not visualize the whole without that aid, that music did not come through because in incomplete visualization some little part was left dangling, unconnected. And the long history of non-science belief in the magic properties of cabalistic signs and designs rose up to taunt him, to goad him with the possibility that perhaps man had once come close to the answer of how to control physical properties without the use of tools; that the development of a physical science had taken man down a sidetrack instead of farther along the direct route toward his goal.
Or that man had once been shown, and never understood, or forgot. Yet kept alive the memory that physical shifts could be changed if he could only draw the right design.
Through his wanderings, one fact gradually intruded upon his mind. It seemed the farther inland he roamed, the closer he came to grasping the problem; the nearer the seashore, the more it eluded him.
One morning he looked up at the glittering heights of Crystal Palace Mountain, and suddenly he resolved to climb it. Perhaps the winds of the mountain being stronger, the fuzziness of his thought would be blown away? Perhaps the arrangement of the crystalline structures, the arches and spires, might catch his brain waves, modulate them, transform them, strengthen them, feed them back, himself a part of the design instead of outside it?