“It did tonight,” said Alice, with a sly glance at me.
I wondered what Dr. Weatherby wanted us for. He had not hinted at it. He had spoken of a morning meal, and then we must have some sleep.
Then, abruptly he said, “I should not have sent for you unless it was important. It is. The fact that I need you—” He stopped as suddenly as he had begun.
I don’t know why a great tenseness should have fallen upon us all. But it did. I felt it. And in the insuing silence little Dolores left Jim and crept to her grandfather, leaning against him.
I began, lamely, “We came, of course—”
Dr. Weatherby was staring off at the stars moodily, with a look so far away I could have fancied he was gazing, not at the stars, but beyond them. And then he tore himself back, and smiled, lighting a cigarro, flipping the torch at me and asking me to step on it.
“I have so much to tell you,” he said. “I hardly know how or where to begin. You know, of course, something of my life, my work.
“Leonard, and you, Jim, I believe you’re familiar in a general way with what the physicists think of the atom? Radiant matter—these electro-rays that seem to solve everything and yet only add to the mystery?
“You know that savants would tell us that space is curved; so Einstein told us years ago? Well, I will tell you this. To-morrow, after you have slept, I believe I can make clear to you the real construction of our material universe.”