There was a great deal more to see and learn, Dr. Nagle told them, but the afternoon had grown late, and they were dismissed with the request to return the following morning. Montgomery felt shaken by what he had seen. And all the way back to the hotel he cursed the schoolboy fright that had kept him from accepting the headpiece of the visualizer cube. He had acted like a bashful kid at a party game and he couldn’t understand it. Nagle caught it, however. As if he understood exactly what was going on in Montgomery’s mind, he had taken the headpiece and changed the subject before anyone else could say anything. The director had been willing to spare him embarrassment, but it increased Montgomery’s irritation that it should have been so obvious to Nagle.
The prospect of making a telephone report to Dodge was another source of sharp irritation. He postponed it until after dinner, and then decided the colonel could just as well go without his report.
He took a long walk down to the beach and sat on the rocks until after it grew dark. Then, gradually, as if daring to peek through the crack of a door into some closet of nightmares, he allowed himself to consider what he had seen at the Institute that afternoon. He wanted to dismiss it all as trickery and a hoax, but it wouldn’t go away that easily. Norcross appeared perfectly honest in his part of the demonstration. Montgomery couldn’t see how he could have been duped after spending as long as he had at the Institute. Nor was there any purpose evident in such duping.
The only reasonable conclusion was that the engineer had been endowed with near-superhuman abilities during his slay. But Montgomery wasn’t prepared to accept this kind of answer without a struggle.
When he got back to the hotel a call from Dodge was awaiting him. He wished then that he had done the calling. He would have been better prepared with a story that would sound halfway reasonable. Certainly he couldn’t tell the truth over the phone. The colonel would think he’d gone crazy.
But Dodge was mostly interested in whether Montgomery was going to be admitted or not.
“I’m pretty sure they’re going to let me in,” said the major. "Nagle acted as if there would be no question about it at all.”
“Did you get a look at anything to give you an idea what’s going on?”
“No. I had a long talk with Nagle. He seems to be off on some kind of a phobia against schools. Apparently, if we burned down the buildings and fired all the teachers and professors everything would be all right, in his opinion.”
The colonel grunted. “That’s about the kind of thing Spindem thought we’d find. I’ve been thinking seriously of assigning him to come out there and work with you closely on this. The thing we need to know is how they manage to suck in the top talent of our military suppliers. They must have quite a trick to do that.”