problem. That non-science had failed to provide any answer beyond
the primitive one was self-evident.

To some, then, it became evident that the question must be reopened.
Through the long written history of man, here and there, by accident
often, sometimes by cerebration, the use of the brain with which he was
endowed, man found on occasion he could do things to his environment
that heretofore had been the province of the gods--and in the doing had
not become a god! To the courageous, the brave, the daring, the
foolhardy questions then that demanded new answers.

Perhaps the most daring and courageous question of all time was asked by
Copernicus: What if man is not at the center of the universe, the reason
for its creation?

He personally escaped the penalties for asking it. The question was too
new, too revolutionary for the men of his day to grasp, for the
non-science leaders, secure in their ascendancy at the center of things,
to see in it the threat to their ascendancy. It was on his followers,
those who saw sense in the question, that the wrath of non-science
descended. Non-science used the only method it had ever devised to
achieve the only result it had ever been able to countenance--torture
and force to make dissidents kneel in subservience.

But the question had been asked! And once asked, it could not be
erased!

Still, it was almost an accidental question. For the method of science,
as something understood and communicable, as a calculated point of view,
had not yet been discovered. The key that would unlock its door had not
yet been found.

Cal lay back on the rock to bathe in the warm rays of Ceti, almost to
doze, yet with thought running clear and unimpeded. The splashing and
the laughter of the colonists below the rock were no more than
accompanying music.

The key which opened the door to physical science was not discovered
until 1646 by a bunch of loafers, ne'er-do-wells, beatniks, who hung
around the coffee shops of London. Later, because non-science always
persecutes those who dare ask questions and thereby demonstrate some
subversion to subservience, many had to flee to Oxford which, at that
time, was sanctuary for those who differed from popular thought.

As he lay there drinking in the sun, the peacefulness, he sent his
vision back through the card index of his mind to find the reference,
the key that opened the door to physical science, the pregnant point of
view that would give birth