didn't help my reputation. However, I felt a great
deal better when I saw the evening papers; the _Baikal_, flying at the
north edge of the eastbound lane to avoid a storm, had locked wings with
a British fruitship and all but a hundred of her five hundred
passengers were lost. I had almost become "the late Mr. Wells" in a
grimmer sense.

I'd made an engagement for the following week with old van Manderpootz.
It seems he'd transferred to N.Y.U. as head of the department of Newer
Physics--that is, of Relativity. He deserved it; the old chap was a
genius if ever there was one, and even now, eight years out of college,
I remember more from his course than from half a dozen calculus, steam
and gas, mechanics, and other hazards on the path to an engineer's
education. So on Tuesday night I dropped in an hour or so late, to tell
the truth, since I'd forgotten about the engagement until mid-evening.

He was reading in a room as disorderly as ever. "Humph!" he grunted.
"Time changes everything but habit, I see. You were a good student,
Dick, but I seem to recall that you always arrived in class toward the
middle of the lecture."

"I had a course in East Hall just before," I explained. "I couldn't seem
to make it in time."

"Well, it's time you learned to be on time," he growled. Then his eyes
twinkled. "Time!" he ejaculated. "The most fascinating word in the
language. Here we've used it five times (there goes the sixth time--and
the seventh!) in the first minute of conversation; each of us
understands the other, yet science is just beginning to learn its
meaning. Science? I mean that _I_ am beginning to learn."

I sat down. "You and science are synonymous," I grinned. "Aren't you one
of the world's outstanding physicists?"

"One of them!" he snorted. "One of them, eh! And who are the others?"

"Oh, Corveille and Hastings and Shrimski--"

"Bah! Would you mention them in the same breath with the name of van
Manderpootz? A pack of jackals, eating the crumbs of ideas that drop
from my feast of thoughts! Had you gone back into the last century,
now--had you mentioned Einstein and de Sitter--there, perhaps, are names
worthy to rank with (or just below) van Manderpootz!"

I grinned again in amusement. "Einstein was considered pretty good,
wasn't he?" I remarked. "After all, he was the first to tie time and
space to the laboratory. Before him they were just philosophical
concepts."

"He didn't!" rasped the professor. "Perha