Henry squared his mental shoulders, stuck out his sixteen-year-old chin and thought—This is it!
"All right!" he said aloud, "how about a good hypothesis on novae, arrived at by extrapolation?"
Dr. Edwards slapped his knee in mock enthusiasm. "Just the information the world has been waiting for!" he exclaimed. "Go ahead!"
"I shall attempt to demonstrate that lightwaves produced by any given nova were produced long before their appearance, regardless of astronomical proximity to the observer, and that those waves actually were propagated through Time, along the Fourth Coordinate," Henry began, emphatically.
But there was an interruption.
"Well really!" exclaimed the Englishwoman, turning around to stare back at Henry, as if the emotional and physical expenditure required to deliver those two words were sufficient to handle the situation. She turned abruptly to a resumption of her magazine reading, while the plump, middle-aged governess beside her snored softly.
Henry's rather lean face lengthened as he contemplated the back of her persnickety-looking hat, which he thought was a ridiculous assembly of straw, lace and painted berries. He was blushing slightly as he looked back at Uncle Andy and Dr. Edwards, who wondered if he was going to ignore the lady's protest. When Henry looked at the three men behind him and noticed the all too knowing smirks on their faces, he gave up.
"Aw, skip it!" he said, and he got up, making his way to the aisle.
"Wait, Henry—!" Dr. Edwards started to say.
"Let him go," interrupted Uncle Andy. Those were the last words Henry caught as he hurried away down the aisle toward the stairway leading to the lower deck and the observation lounge and commissary.