een the deciding factor in Malcom Porter's subsequent life, but he had
a hunch that the two had been acting synergistically. It was likely that
the radical change in his way of life after his tenth year had as much
to do with his behavior as the possibility that the undeniably brilliant
mental characteristics of the Porter family had been modified by the
genes of the pretty but scatter-brained wife of Vanneman Porter.

Three times, only his grandmother's influence kept him from being
expelled from the exclusive prep school she had enrolled him in, and his
final grades were nothing to mention in polite society, much less boast
about.

In her own way, the old lady was trying to do her best for him, but she
had found it difficult to understand her own son, and his deviations
from the Porter norm had been slight in comparison with those of his
son. When the time came for Malcom to enter college, Grandmother Porter
was at a total loss as to what to do. With his record, it was unlikely
that any law school would take him unless he showed tremendous
improvement in his pre-law courses. And unless that improvement was a
general one, not only as far as his studies were concerned, but in his
handling of his personal life, it would be commercial suicide to put him
in any position of trust with Porter & Sons. It wasn't that he was
dishonest; he simply couldn't be trusted to do anything properly. He had
a tendency to follow his own whims and ignore everybody else.

The idea of his entering the clergy was never even considered.

It came almost as a relief to the old woman when Malcom announced that
he was going to study physics, as his father had done.

The relief didn't last long. By the time Malcom was in his sophomore
year, he was apparently convinced that his instructors were dunderheads
to the last man. That, Elshawe thought, was probably not unusual among
college students, but Malcom Porter made the mistake of telling them
about it.

One of the professors with whom Elshawe had talked had said: "He acted
as though he owned the college. That, I think, was what was his trouble
in his studies; he wasn't really stupid, and he wasn't as lazy as some
said, but he didn't want to be bothered with anything that he didn't
enjoy. The experiments he liked, for instance, were the showy,
spectacular ones. He built himself a Tesla coil, and a table with hidden
AC electromagnets in it that would make a metal plate float in the air.
But when