While Martin turned on Wickett with a “Who the devil are you?” expression, Gottlieb went on:
“The fact is, Martin, you can do nothing till you know a little mathematics. If you are not going to be a cook-book bacteriologist, like most of them, you must be able to handle some of the fundamentals of science. All living things are physico-chemical machines. Then how can you make progress if you do not know physical chemistry, and how can you know physical chemistry without much mathematics?”
“Yuh,” said Wickett, “you’re lawn-mowing and daisy-picking, not digging.”
Martin faced them. “But rats, Wickett, a man can’t know everything. I’m a bacteriologist, not a physicist. Strikes me a fellow ought to use his insight, not just a chest of tools, to make discoveries. A good sailor could find his way at sea even if he didn’t have instruments, and a whole Lusitania-ful of junk wouldn’t make a good sailor out of a dub. Man ought to develop his brain, not depend on tools.”
“Ye-uh, but if there were charts and quadrants in existence, a sailor that cruised off without ’em would be a chump!”
For half an hour Martin defended himself, not too politely, before the gem-like Gottlieb, the granite Wickett. All the while he knew that he was sickeningly ignorant.
They ceased to take interest. Gottlieb was looking at his note-books, Wickett was clumping off to work. Martin glared at Gottlieb. The man meant so much that he could be furious with him as he would have been with Leora, with his own self.
“I’m sorry you think I don’t know anything,” he raged, and departed with the finest dramatic violence. He slammed into his own laboratory, felt freed, then wretched. Without volition, like a drunken man, he stormed to Wickett’s room, protesting, “I suppose you’re right. My physical chemistry is nix, and my math rotten. What am I going to do—what am I going to do?”
The embarrassed barbarian grumbled, “Well, for Pete’s sake, Slim, don’t worry. The old man and I were just egging you on. Fact is, he’s tickled to death about the careful way you’re starting in. About the math—probably you’re better off than the Holy Wren and Tubbs right now; you’ve forgotten all the math you ever knew, and they never knew any. Gosh all fish-hooks! Science is supposed to mean Knowledge—from the Greek, a handsome language spoken by the good old booze-hoisting Helleens—and the way most of the science boys resent having to stop writing little jeweled papers or giving teas and sweat at getting some knowledge certainly does make me a grand booster for the human race. My own math isn’t any too good, Slim, but if you’d like to have me come around evenings and tutor you— Free, I mean!”
Thus began the friendship between Martin and Terry Wickett; thus began a change in Martin’s life whereby he gave up three or four hours of wholesome sleep each night to grind over matters which every one is assumed to know, and almost every one does not know.