"No," said Doc, "he didn't really tell me. But he said wouldn't it be fine if all those people in the plane should be found alive, and he did a lot of fretting about that poor trapped dog. He likes animals."
"I figure he just practiced up on a few small items," Charley suggested, "to find if he could do it. He's out for big game now."
Then good, solid, common sense came back to him and he said: "But, of course, it isn't possible."
"He's got help," said Doc. "Hasn't he told you about the help he's got?"
Charley shook his head.
"He doesn't know you well enough. I'm the only one he knows well enough to tell a thing like that."
"He's got help? You mean someone's helping . . . ?"
"Not someone," said Doc. "Something."
THEN Doc told Charley what Cooper had told him.
It had started four or five years before, shortly after he'd gone on his science fiction binge. He'd built himself an imaginary ship that he took out into space. First he'd traveled around our own Solar System—to Mars and Venus and all the others. Then, tiring of such backyard stuff, he had built in a gadget that gave his ship speed in excess of light and had gone out to the stars. He was systematic about it; you had to say that much for him. He worked things out logically, and he didn't skip around. He'd land on a certain planet and give that planet the full treatment before he went on to the next one.