Anthopology 101: The Best of Time and SpaceAnthopology 101: The Best of Time and SpaceBy Bud WebsterFor me, as with many people of my generation (give or take a few years),the primary source for science fiction and fantasy was the library, bothschool and public. My parents didn't read it; my mother read mysteriesand my father read only the daily paper, and my older sibs wouldn'tbegin reading sf or fantasy until much, much later, so I didn't have sfbooks or magazines around the house.But the library was sanctuary for me. Nobody would chase me, nobodywould yell at me, and best of all, nobody there would rag me for readingbooks. I'd have stayed there forever if I could have. It was quiet,cool, and it's where I became addicted to books, both as artifacts andbecause of the content.I was probably all of nine years old when I first found the thick, heavycollections of stories edited by Conklin and Healy & McComas for thefirst time. But there they were, that pair of behemoths: Adventuresin Time and Space (ed.

1. Raymond F Jones Noise Level Pdf Editor 1

Healy and Francis McComas, RandomHouse 1946) and The Best of Science Fiction (ed. Groff Conklin,Crown 1946).

Raymond Fisher Jones (15 November 1915 – 24 January 1994) was an American science fiction author. He is best known for his 1952 novel, This Island Earth, which was adapted into the eponymous 1955 film.An oral telling of the Sci-Fi story by Raymond F. A very, very important concept that each of us must deal with when learning radically new information. This is from an 8 part series on anti-gravity by Stan Deyo available on YouTube. To get what Stan has to say in his talk, you are definitely going to need to deal with your noise level. I highly recommend Stan's talk and his other worksyoutube /youtubeNOISE LEVELby Raymond F.

JonesDr Martin Nagle studied the paint on the ceiling of the outer anteroom of the Office of National Research. After ten minutes he was fairly certain which corner had been painted first, the direction of advance across the ceiling, and approximately how long it had taken.It was a new building and a new paint job, but these facts were evident in the brush marks and brush hairs left in the paint. On the whole, the job was something of an indication of how things were in general, he thought somewhat sadly.He studied the rug. Specifications should have been higher. The manufacturer undoubtedly operated on the principle of ‘don’t throw away seconds; you can always sell them to the Government.’His watch showed twenty-five minutes spent in the study of the anteroom. It was all he was going to give it. He picked up his briefcase and top coat and moved towards the door.He almost collided with a grey-suited figure, then backed away in pleasant recognition.‘Berk!’The face of Dr Kenneth Berkeley lighted as he gripped Martin Nagle’s free hand and clapped him on the shoulder.‘What are you doing out here in this waiting room.

Mart?’‘I got invited to some conference with all the top dogs and high brass, but the boys in blue wouldn’t let me in. I was just on the way back to California. But you’re one of the last I expected to meet here. What are you doing, Berk?’‘I work on ONR. I’m on this conference myself. They sent me out to look for you.

Everybody else has arrived.’‘I saw the parade from here. Dykstra of MIT, Collins of Harvard, and Mellon from Cal Tech. A high-powered bunch.’‘It is.

And they’re all waiting on you! We’ll talk later.’Mart jerked a thumb towards the office opening off the anteroom. ‘The boys in there seem to have doubts as to whether I can be trusted not to pass things on to the Comrades.

I can’t wait around. It’ll probably take six weeks to clear me. I thought all that would have been taken care of. Evidently it wasn’t. Give my regards to everybody, and tell Keyes I’m sorry I hadn’t been cleared for classified projects. I guess he didn’t know it.’‘No, wait - this is absolutely silly,’ said Berk. ‘We’ve got to have you in there.

Sit down and we’ll have this thing cleared in five minutes!’Mart sat down again. He had never worked on any classified projects. The fingerprinting and sleuthing into the past of his colleagues had always seemed distasteful to him. He knew Berk didn’t have a chance now. He’d seen more than one good man twiddle his thumbs for six months to a year while his dark past was unearthed.Rising voices from the inner office of the FBI agent became audible. Mart caught snatches of Berk’s baritone roar.

‘Utterly ridiculous. Top-drawer physicist. Electro fields. Got to have this man—’After the FBI office there were still the offices of Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence to hurdle.

It was a fantastic triple barrier they had woven about this conference. On coming in he had chuckled at this further evidence of frantic bureaucrats to button up the secrets of nature which lay visible to the whole world.In a moment Berk came striding out, red-faced and indignant. ‘You stay right there, Mart,’ he said furiously. ‘I’m going to get Keyes on this thing, and we’ll find out who’s got a right to get into this place besides the janitor!’‘Look, Berk - I don’t mind. I don’t think you ought to bother Keyes with this—’‘I’ll be right back. This thing has gone too far.’Mart felt rather foolish. It was not his fault he couldn’t get by the security officers, but that failure induced a faint sense of guilt.Berk returned within minutes.

With him were two men in uniform, a brigadier general, and a naval captain. With them was Dr Keyes, Director of ONR. Martin knew him only by reputation - which was very top-drawer indeed. Keyes approached with a direct friendly smile and offered his hand.‘I’m very sorry, Dr Nagle, regarding this delay. I had no idea that you would be stopped at the security desk. I issued instructions in plenty of time for the conference that everyone invited be properly cleared. Somehow this formality was overlooked in your case.

But I am sure that we shall be able to make satisfactory emergency arrangements within a few moments. If you will wait here while I confer with all these gentlemen—’They closed the door of the inner office, but Mart could not help straining his ears at the rumble of sounds that filtered through. He caught a phrase in a voice that belonged to one of the security officers: ‘.

Demanded these triple security screens yourself—’And another from Keyes: ‘. The one man who may be able to crack this thing for us—’Mart had come reluctantly. His wife had protested, and the two children had set up a tremendous wail that it might mean no summer vacation at all.He rather wished he had heeded their protests. The moment a man became involved in something so classified it required triple passes from the Army, Navy, and FBI he could say good-bye to freedom.

He wondered how Keyes had become involved in such a circuitous business. Keyes had done monumental work on electromagnetic radiation.And he wondered, too, what Kenneth Berkeley was doing here. It was way out of his field. Berk was a top psychologist in the mechanics of learning, and experimental training procedures.It looked to Mart as if both of them were wasting their time in security clearance wrangles.He was not particularly intrigued by the possible magnitude of the problem under consideration. A man sitting by a mountain stream under an open summer sky had the most ponderous problems of nature before him if he chose to consider them. None couched in hush-hush terms behind closed lab doors could have any greater import.At last the door opened.

Dr Keyes led the procession out of the room. All of the men were a little more strained in their expressions than when they went in, but Keyes took Mart’s arm.‘It’s all right.

You have full clearance now. Your papers will be issued and ready when you come out. But let’s get to the conference at once. We’ve kept the others waiting.’As Mart stepped inside the conference room he caught his breath involuntarily. Besides the brilliant array of his colleagues in fields closely allied to his own, there was a display of gold-splashed uniforms of all military services. He had quick recognition of several lieutenant generals, vice admirals, and at least one member of the JCS.Berk ushered him to a seat in the front row. He felt doubly guilty that these men had been kept waiting, although it was no direct fault of his.At the front of the room a projection screen was unrolled on the wall.

A sixteen mm. Projector was set up near the rear. On a table on the far side a tarpaulin covered some kind of irregular object.Keyes stepped to the front of the room and cleared his throat briefly.‘We will dispense with the formality of introducing each of you gentlemen. Many of you are acquainted, professionally or personally, and I trust that all will be before this project is many hours old.‘The top classification nature of the material we are about to discuss has been emphasized to you by the triple filter of security officers who have passed upon your admission to this room. That which is discussed here you will properly regard as worthy of protection with your own life, if such an extreme consideration should be forced upon you at some future time.’The military members of the audience remained immobile, but Martin Nagle observed an uneasy shifting among his fellow scientists. All of them were to some degree uncomfortable in the presence of the military assumption that you could lock up the secrets of nature when they lay all about like shells upon the seashore.But Keyes wasn’t a military man.

Mart felt his muscles become a little more rigid as the significance of this penetrated.‘Ten days ago,’ said Keyes very slowly, ‘we were approached by a young man, an inventor of sorts, who claimed to have produced a remarkable and revolutionary invention.‘His name was Leon Dunning. He had an unusual regard for his own abilities, and expected, apparently, that everyone else would have the same regard on sight. This trait led him to a rather unpleasant presentation of himself. He would talk with no one but the Director of the Office, and made such a nuisance that it became a question of seeing him or calling the police.‘His case was drawn to my attention, and I finally chose to see him. He had some rather startling claims. He claimed to have solved the problem of producing an anti-gravity machine.’Martin Nagle felt a sudden sinking sensation within him - and an impulse to laugh.

For this he had cancelled the kids’ summer vacation! Maybe it wasn’t too late to get back—He glanced at his colleagues. Dykstra was bending over and rubbing his forehead to hide the smile that appeared on his lips. Lee and Norcross gave each other smiles of pitying indulgence. Berkeley, Mart noted, was almost the only scientist who did not move or smile. But, of course, Berk was a psychologist,‘I see that some of you gentlemen are amused,’ continued Keyes. I wondered what was the best means of getting rid of this obnoxious crackpot who had forced his way into my office.

Again, it was a question of listening until the ridiculousness of his claims became self-evident, or having him thrown out. I listened.‘I tried to draw him out regarding the theories upon which his device operated, but he refused to discuss this in detail. He insisted such discussion could be held only after a demonstration of his device.‘With a free Saturday afternoon that week, I agreed to watch.

Dunning insisted that certain military personnel also be invited and that films and tape recording equipment be available. Having gone as far as I had, I agreed also to this and rounded up some of the gentlemen who are with us this afternoon.‘He wanted no other kind of publicity, and so we arranged to meet at the small private airfield at the Dover club. That was just one week ago today. He demonstrated.‘A small pack was attached to his shoulders by straps. I assisted him in putting it on.

It weighed perhaps thirty-five or forty pounds. It had no visible means of propulsion such as propeller or jets, and no connection to an external power source.

Seeing it, I felt extremely ridiculous for having invited my military guests to such a futile performance.‘We stood in a circle about ten feet in diameter around him. When the pack was fastened, he gave us a kind of pitying smile, it seemed, and pressed a switch at his belt.‘Instantly, he rose straight up into the air in a smoothly accelerated climb. We spread apart to watch him. At about five hundred feet, he came to a stop and hung motionless for a moment. Then he dropped back down to the centre of the circle.’Keyes paused. ‘I see a variety of expressions on your faces.

I presume some of you consider us who observed it as victims of hallucinations or out and out liars. We agreed afterwards that it was very fortunate that Dunning insisted on motion pictures of the demonstration. These we have for your inspection. If you will, please—’He signalled to his assistants. The shades were drawn and the projector at the rear started with a whirr. Mart found himself leaning forward, his hand clutching the desk arm of the chair.

This was something he didn’t even want to believe, he thought!On the screen there appeared a scene of the encircling men. In the centre, Dunning appeared to be in his late twenties. Mart could detect at once the type that Keyes had described -a snotty young jerk who knew he was good and figured others better catch on to that real fast.

Mart knew the type. You run into them in senior engineering classes in every school in the country.He watched the circle back from Dunning.

There was a clear shot of the alleged inventor standing with the weird pack on his back. He fumbled a moment with the key switch at his belt, then rose abruptly from the ground.Mart stared. The picture panned up jerkily as the operator evidently retreated for a longer range view. He watched closely for any sign of emanation from the pack.

He had to remind himself of the foolishness of looking for such. There was certainly no type of jet that could operate this way.But anti-gravity - Mart caught a feeling that was a cross between a prickle and a chill moving slowly along the upper length of his spine.The motion on the screen came to a halt. Then slowly Dunning lowered himself to the middle of the circle once more.The screen went dark, and lights flashed on in the room.

Mart jerked, as if waking from a hypnotic spell.‘We paused at this point,’ said Keyes. ‘Dunning became more talkative and discussed somewhat the basic theories of his machine. For this we used the tape recorder he had insisted on us bringing along.‘Unfortunately, the record is so poor due to high noise level and distortion that it is next to unintelligible, but we will play it for you in a moment.‘Following the discussion, he agreed to make another demonstration showing an additional factor, horizontal flight control. We’ll have the movie of this, now.’He touched the light button.

The scene appeared once more. This time the circle opened at one side and Dunning rose in a rather steep arc and levelled off. Against the background, he seemed about as high as the roof of the hangar beyond. For about a hundred feet he drifted slowly, then accelerated his pace. Mart felt a wholly irrational impulse to laugh.

It was Buck Rogers in full attack.Abruptly the screen flared. A puff of light exploded from the pack on Dunning’s back. For a terrible moment he seemed suspended in an attitude of violent agony. Then he plunged like a dropped stone.The camera lost him for an instant, but it caught the full impact of his body on the field. During the fall, he turned over.

The pack was beneath him as he crashed. His body bounced and rolled a short way and lay still.Keyes moved to the light switch, and signalled for the raising of the shades. Someone rose to do this. No one else moved. The room seemed caught in a suspension of time.‘There you have it, gentlemen,’ said Keyes in a quiet voice. ‘You will begin to understand why you were called here today.

Dunning had it - anti-gravity. Of that we are absolutely sure. And Dunning is dead.’He drew a corner of the canvas from the table by the far wall.

‘The remains of the device are here for your examination. So far, we see only burned and bloody wreckage in it. Under your Supervision it will be carefully photographed and dismantled.’He dropped the cover and returned to the centre of the platform. ‘We went immediately to Dunning’s house with a crew of investigators from ONR assisted by security officers of the services.‘Dunning’s quite evident paranoia was carried out in an utter lack of notes.

He must have lived in constant fear that his work would be stolen. His laboratory was excellent for a private worker. What his income was we don’t know as yet.‘He also had an astonishing library - astonishing in that it covered almost every occult field as well. This, too, remains somewhat of a mystery.‘We investigated his college background.

He appears to have had difficulty in getting along at any one college, and attended at least four. His curriculum was as varied as his library. He studied courses in electrical engineering, comparative religion, advanced astronomy, Latin, the theory of groups, general semantics and advanced comparative anatomy.‘We managed to contact about twenty of his instructors and fellow students. Their uniform opinions describe him as paranoid.

He was utterly without intimates of any kind. If he communicated his theories to anyone, we do not know about it.‘So the only record we have of the expressions of the man who first devised an anti-gravity machine is this poor-quality tape.’He nodded again to the operator at the rear of the room.

The latter turned on the recorder whose output was fed to a speaker on the table in front.At once the room was rilled with a hissing, roaring garble. The sound of planes taking off - the everyday noise of the airport. Beneath the racket was the dead man’s voice, a thin, rather high-pitched sound carrying through the background noise a tone of condescension and impatient tolerance.Mart listened with ears strained to make sense of the garble. His eyes caught Berk’s and reflected his despair of ever getting anything out of the mess. Keyes signalled the operator.‘I see that you are impatient with this recording, gentlemen.

Perhaps there is no purpose in playing it in this conference. But each of you will be given a copy. In the privacy of your own laboratories you will have opportunity to make what you can of it. It is worth your study simply because, as far as we know, it contains the only clues we possess.’Mart raised a hand impatiently. ‘Dr Keyes, you and the others at the demonstration heard the original discussion. Can’t you give us more than is on the tape?’Keyes smiled rather bitterly. ‘I wish that we could, Dr Nagle.

Unfortunately, at the time it seemed that the semantic noise in Dunning’s explanation was as high as the engineering noise on the tape. We have, however, filled in to the best of our recollection on the written transcript, which we will give you.‘This transcript gives what has been pieced together by phonetic experts who have analysed the tape.

Observers’ additions are in parentheses. These were added only if all observers agreed independently, and may or may not be accurate. Is there any other question?’There were, they all knew, but for the moment the impact seemed to have stifled the response of the whole audience.Keyes took a step forward.

‘I wonder if there is any one of you who underestimates the seriousness of this problem now. Is there anyone who does not understand that this secret must be regained at all cost?‘We know that within the field of present knowledge there lies the knowledge necessary to conquer gravity - to take us beyond the Earth, to the stars, if we wish to go.‘We know that if one young American could do it, some young Russian could also. We have to duplicate that work of Dunning’s.‘The full facilities of ONR are at your disposal.

Access to Dunning’s laboratory and library and the remains of his machine will be granted, of course. Each of you has been selected, out of all whom we might have called, because we believed you possess some special qualification for the task. You cannot fail.‘We will meet again this evening, gentlemen.

I trust you understand now the necessity for absolute security on this project.’.IIA long time afterwards, Martin Nagle recalled that he must have been in a partial stupor when he left that conference room. He felt a vague and unpleasant sensation about his head as if it had been beaten repeatedly with a pillow.He and Kenneth Berkeley went out together. They paused only long enough to make polite greetings to his fellow physicists whom he had not seen for a long time. But he was in a hurry to leave. To get rid of that feeling in his head.In front of the ONR building he stopped with his hands in his pockets and looked over the unpleasant grey of the city’s buildings.

He could close his eyes and still see a man rising straight up into the air - soaring at an angle - dropping like a plummet.All at once he realized he hadn’t even stopped to examine the remains of the instrument under the tarpaulin. He turned suddenly on Berkeley.‘The psychology of this thing - is that where you’re in on it, Berk?’His companion nodded. ‘Keyes called me in when he wanted an investigation into Dunning’s past. I’m staying, I guess.’‘You know it’s impossible, don’t you?’ said Mart.

‘Utterly and completely impossible! There’s nothing in our basic science to explain this thing, let alone duplicate it.’‘Impossible? Meaning what?’‘Meaning that I’ve got to. That every one of us has got to shift gears, back up, retrace who knows how far - twenty years of learning - five hundred years of science? Where did we go off the track?

Why was it left to a screwball like Dunning to hit it right?’‘He was an odd character,’ mused Berk. ‘Astrology, mysticism, levitation. There’s quite a bit in the tape about levitation. That’s not so far removed from the concept of anti-gravity at that, is it?’Mart made a rough noise in his throat. ‘I expect to hear any moment that his first successful flight was aboard a broomstick.’‘Well, there’s quite a bit of lore about broomsticks - also magic carpets and such. Makes you wonder how it all got started.’The shock was slow in wearing down.

Martin returned to the hotel after the evening conference, which was spent mostly in examination of the wreckage.It was as Keyes had said, hopeless. But there was an indefinable something about gazing upon the remains of what had been the realization of an impossible dream. Mart felt a kind of frantic yearning to reach out and touch that mass and convert it back to the instrument it had once been by sheer force of will. As if believing it possible would make it so.And wasn’t there some essence of truth in this, he thought? Dunning had believed it could be done and had done it. Reputable men in science didn’t believe such things possible—Now, in his hotel room, Mart sat on the edge of the bed looking out of the window and across the night lights of the city. There were certain things you had to accept as impossible.

The foundation of science was built upon the concept of the impossible as well as the possible.Perpetual motion.The alchemist’s dream - as the alchemist dreamed it, anyway.Anti-gravity—All man’s experience in attempting to master nature showed these things could not be done. You had to set yourself some limitations. You had to let your work be bounded by certain Great Impossibles or you could spend a lifetime trying to solve the secret of invisibility or of walking through a brick wall.Or trying to build a magic carpet.He stood up and walked to the window. There had been growing all afternoon a sense of faint panic. And now he identified it.

Where could you draw the line? It had to be drawn. He was sure of that.It had been drawn once before, quite definitely. In the 1890s they had closed the books. Great minds believed then that science had encompassed the universe. All that was not known belonged to the Great Impossibles.Then had come radium, the Roentgen tube, relativity, cosmic rays.The line vanished. Where was it now?

A few hours ago he would have said he could define it with fair accuracy. Tonight he did not know.He went to bed. After an hour he got up and called Kenneth Berkeley. The clock said almost midnight.

It didn’t matter.‘Berk,’ he said into the phone. I’ve just been thinking. The whole crowd will be going through Dunning’s lab and his library. What’s the chance of you getting me out there first thing in the morning? Just the two of us. I’d like to beat the crowd.’‘I think I can arrange it,’ said Berk.

‘Keyes wants each of you to work as you wish. I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow. I’ll call you as early as I can.’It rained during the night, and when Berk called for Mart in his car, the city was dismal with fog, lessening even further the reality surrounding them.‘Keyes wasn’t much in favour of this,’ said Berk as they drove away from the hotel. ‘It’s liable to make some of the others mad, but frankly, I’m sure he’s convinced that you’re the member of the class mostly likely to succeed.’Mart grunted. ‘Least likely, I’d say. I’m not sure that I’m convinced yet that Dunning didn’t have some terrific joker in here somewhere.’‘I know what you mean, but you will. It comes gradually.

And easier for you. You’re the youngest of the group. Keyes thinks some of the older men may spend all their time proving Dunning couldn’t do it. How do you feel about that? Is that the way you’re heading, or are you going to try to find out what Dunning did?’‘Anything a jerk like Dunning can do, Nagle can do double - once Nagle is convinced that Dunning did it.’Berk threw back his head and laughed.

‘Keyes will love you, boy. He’s been afraid he wouldn’t find a single top John in the country who would really try.’Dunning’s place was in the shabby, once fashionable sector of town where the owners of the gingerbread monsters were no longer able to meet the upkeep or sell them to anyone who was.It had been learned that the house actually belonged to an uncle of Dunning, but so far he had not been located.A guard was on duty at the front entrance. He nodded as Berk and Mart showed their passes.‘Dunning’s laboratories and shops are on the first floor,’ said Berk.

‘Upstairs, is his library. Progenesis samespots. He slept in one of the third-floor bedrooms, but the rest are vacant. A lot of cooking seemed to have been done in the back kitchen. He left a well stocked larder.

Where do you want to start?’‘A quick look through the labs to begin. I want to get the feel of the layout.’On the right of the entrance hallway, they came into a small but extremely well equipped chemistry laboratory. The place seemed well used, but immaculate. A complex fractionating set up was on the worktable.‘Almost the only piece of writing in the whole place was found on a small pad here,’ said Berk. ‘A bit of scratch work computation without any formulas or reactions.’Mart grunted and moved on to the adjacent room. Here was the more familiar hodgepodge of the electronic experimenter, but even in this there was instantly apparent the mark of a careful workman. Breadboard layouts were assembled with optimum care.

Test leads were carefully made of rubber-covered or shielded wire and equipped with clips instead of being the usual random lengths of coloured connecting wire hastily stripped and tied to a terminal.A sizeable bank of rack and panel mounted equipment was not recognizable at once as to function. It appeared to be a set-up that might belong to any careful experimenter who had no regard for his bank account.This would need further study, but Mart continued moving through to the next room, a machine shop, as well equipped for its functions as the previous rooms. A six-inch lathe, a large drill press, and a milling machine were the chief items.Mart whistled softly as he stood in the middle of the room and looked back the way they had come.‘When I was a kid in high school,’ he said, ‘this is exactly the kind of a place I thought Heaven would be.’‘And it had to belong to a person like Dunning, eh?’ said Berk with a slow smile.Mart turned sharply.

His voice became low and serious. ‘Berk - whatever Dunning may have been, he was no jug-head. A paranoid, maybe, but not a jug-head. He could do things. Look at this.’He picked up a weird looking assembly from a nearby-table and held it up in the light.

It gleamed with a creamy sheen. A silver-plated bit of high-frequency plumbing.‘That’s beautiful,’ said Mart. ‘There’re not more than three or four university shops in the whole country that can turn out a piece like that.

I’ve had to fight for weeks to get our machinists to come up with anything that complex and then it would be way out of tolerance.’He hefted the piece of plumbing lightly. He knew it was just right. It had the feel of being made right.Berk led the way across the hall. He opened the door for Mart. There, against the walls of the room, were panels of a compact digital computer, and on the other side an analogue computer.‘But you haven’t seen anything yet,’ said Berk. ‘The surprise of your life is upstairs.’Gravity was a force, Mart thought as he climbed the stairs. You only lick force with force - in the world of physics, at least.

In politics and human relations, force might yield to something more subtle, but if Dunning had licked gravity it was with some other - and presently known - force. Physics was at least aware of every force that existed. There were no gaps except perhaps the one temporarily occupied by the elusive neutrino.Dunning’s machine was ingenious. But it could be nothing but a clever application of well-known laws and forces. There was no miracle, no magic in it. Having decided this on a slow, verbal basis, Mart felt somewhat more at ease.

He followed Berk into the library.There was not simply one room of it, but an entire suite had been converted and shelved. There were certainly several thousand volumes in the place.‘This is the one that may interest you most.’ Berk stepped into the nearest room on his left. ‘A is for Astrology,’ he said. He gestured towards a full section of shelving.Mart scanned the titles: Astrology for the Novice, Astrology and the Infinite Destiny, The Babylonian Way, The Course of the Stars.He hopefully pulled the latter volume from the shelf against the possibility it might be an astronomy text.

He quickly put it back with its fellows.‘Well read, too,’ said Berk. ‘We examined quite a number and they have copious notations in Dunning’s handwriting. This may be the one place we can find real clues to his thinking - in such marginal notes.’Mart waved a hand in violent rejection of the sombre volumes and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. ‘Junk!’ he muttered. ‘This has no bearing on Keyes’ problem at all, of course. But it certainly ought to be a problem of interest to you.’‘A guy would need two separate heads to hold an interest in the things downstairs and in this nonsense at the same time.’‘But Dunning had only a single head,’ said Berk quietly.

‘Maybe it’s all part of a whole that we don’t see - and that Dunning did.’Mart pursed his lips and looked at the psychologist.‘I’m serious,’ said Berk. ‘My field is primarily the human mind, and only secondarily the subjects with which the mind deals. But we see in Dunning a single mind that can whip the matter of anti-gravity, that can hold an interest in the fields represented by the laboratories below, and can digest the material of this library.‘Now, actually, there is no true schizophrenia. In the skull of each of us is only a single individual, and anyone examined closely enough can be found to have a remarkably consistent goal, no matter how apparently erratic his activities.‘Perhaps much of the material Dunning found in both the library and in the laboratory proved redundant, but I would say that Dunning’s genius apparently lay in his ability to extract relevant material from the redundant without categorically rejecting entire areas of human thought.’Mart smiled tolerantly and turned away.

He found himself facing a section of shelves covered with works on East Indian philosophy. Six of eight feet of space was devoted to the subject of Levitation. Mart jabbed a finger at the titles.‘Anything those boys can do by hocus-pocus Nagle can do twice as fast by x’s and y’s and by making electrons jump through hoops.’‘That’s all Keyes wants.

How soon can you deliver?.IIIAfter lunch, they returned to ONR. Mart was assigned an office and given a copy of the Dunning tape.

He put aside the prepared transcript, as Keyes had suggested, and prepared to listen, unbiased.He turned on the recorder and winced at the garble of sound that blared forth again. With one hand on the volume control he rested his chin on his arm in front of the speaker and strained to hear through the noise the scarcely audible voice of Dunning.Near the beginning, he caught the word ‘levitation’ mentioned many times.

There was a full phrase, ‘levitation which was first successfully demonstrated to the Western world by the English medium—’ The buzz of a plane cut off the rest of it.Mart rewound the tape and listened to that much of it again. At each mention of levitation an image flared up in Mart’s mind. An image of a dirty, scrawny Indian fakir equipped with a filthy turban, a coil of rope over one arm, and a basket with a snake in the other hand.But Dunning had produced anti-gravity.What semantic significance had he found in the word?Mart growled to himself in irritation and let the tape run on.

There was nothing more in those first few feet of it. He perked up his ears at a phrase ‘earth effect’ separated by a garble from ‘distribution of sunspots unexplained to date by astronomers, and politely ignored by all experts—’It struck a faint bell of recollection in Mart’s mind. He scratched a note on a pad to check on it.The sound dissolved again to hissing and roaring, through which the dead man seemed to taunt him. He gathered that much talk was on the subject of ‘planetary configurations—.’ Astrology. He groaned aloud and closed his eyes through a comparatively long stretch of audibility: ‘Magnetic storms on Earth predictable through movements of the planets in terms of quadrature - fields of data observed through thousands of years and do not fit explanations now accepted for other phenomena.’It shifted apparently, after many minutes, to comparative religion.

‘Galileo and Newton,’ Dunning said, ‘affected man’s thinking more than they knew. They clipped from religion its miracles and from physics its imagination. Of India there’s more conquest of the physical universe than in a score of American research laboratories.’And that was the last of it. The tape fizzled out in a long garble of buzzing planes and faulty recording. Mart turned off the machine.That was it. The mind and work of the first man to directly conquer gravity!With an almost physical weariness he turned to the transcript and scanned through it.

There was more, but it was astonishing how little additional information was actually added from the memories of the original observers. Mart supposed Dunning’s words were such a shock to those military and scientific minds that they were stunned into semi-permanent amnesia in respect to the things he said.He leaned back in the chair, summing up what he had heard.

Dunning’s thesis seemed to be that much sound data had been excluded by conventional scientists from standard theories. The dead man had believed much of this data could be found and explained in the various realms of astrology, East Indian mysticism, movements of sunspots, the levitation of mediums, and a host of other unorthodox areas.Where was the thread of rational thought that could find its way through this? He closed his eyes again, trying to feel for a starting point.There came a knock on the door, and a voice. ‘May I come in, Dr Nagle?’It was Keyes. Mart rose and offered a chair. ‘I have just finished the tapes and transcription. There is very little to go on.’‘Very little indeed,’ said Keyes.

‘When you were a youngster entering a contest for the first time you had a feeling for it. You know what I mean. It’s in your throat and chest, and in your stomach. It goes all the way through your legs to your toes.‘It’s the feeling of your entire organism - a feeling that you haven’t got a chance to win - or that you are going to acquit yourself to the maximum ability within you, regardless of the strength of others. Do you understand me?’Mart nodded.‘What kind of a feeling do you have about this, Dr Nagle?’Mart relaxed and leaned back with his eyes half closed. He understood Keyes.

He had gone through the range of all possible feelings since yesterday afternoon. Which one of them had remained with him?‘I can do it,’ he said quietly to Keyes. ‘I could wish for more data, and I’m not wholly in sympathy with Dunning’s approach. But I can examine the data he had, and re-examine the data I have. And I can do it.’‘Good!’ Keyes stood up. ‘That’s what I came in to find out. And your answer is what I hoped to hear.

You may expect that your reaction is not quite universal among your colleagues, although I feel all will co-operate. But some of them will be licked before they start, because they will feel, and persist in feeling, that the thing ought not to be.’Dr Kenneth Berkeley had never ceased to wonder at the constitution of man. When he was very young he had wondered why some of his fellows believed in fairies, and others did not. He wondered why some could believe the moon was made of green cheese, and others were equally sure it could not be so.He grew to wonder intensely just how man knew anything for sure, and that long road of wonder led to the present moment of his status as fellow in psychology at ONR.He was grateful for the privilege of being on this project under the leadership of Dr Keyes.

Keyes appreciated more than any other physicist that he had known the importance of the fact that an individual is a man first and a scientist second - that there is no true objectivity in science. There is no divorcing the observer from the observed, and every scientific theory and law, no matter how conscientiously propounded and objectively proved is nevertheless coloured by the observer.Berkeley was intrigued by the study of the physicists’ reactions to the situation in which Dunning’s discovery and death had placed them.Martin Nagle had reacted approximately as Berkeley expected. They had known each other well during undergraduate days in college, drifting apart later as their professions diverged.Through the day Berkeley conducted the rest of the scientists through the house. A number of them had made requests to go privately as Mart had done. Others went in groups of three or four. But by the end of the day all had visited the place except Professor Wilson Dykstra.During the first day, Dykstra confined himself to a study of the tape and transcription.

He did not present himself for a visit to the Dunning house until the following morning.Berk called at his hotel. He kept the psychologist waiting fifteen minutes before he finally appeared through the revolving doors.Dykstra was a small, round man in his late sixties, owlish in heavy framed glasses.

His jutting lower lip seemed to signify his being perpetually on the defensive, as if he couldn’t believe the world were really as he saw it. But Berk knew he was a great man in his own field. He had contributed much to the elucidation of Einstein’s work in relation to gravity, which was the reason for his being invited to participate in the project.The sky was threatening, and Dykstra clutched a black umbrella to his chest as he emerged from the hotel.

Berk waited with the car door open.‘Good morning, Dr Dykstra. It looks as if we’ll be alone this morning. Everyone else took a visit to Dunning’s yesterday.’Dykstra grunted and got in. ‘That’s the way I wanted it. I spent a full day yesterday going over that ridiculous tape recording.’Berk moved the car out into the line of traffic.

He had rather felt from the very first that the project could get along just as well without Dykstra.‘Were you able to derive anything at all from it?’‘I have reached no conclusion as yet, Dr Berkeley. But when I do, I do not believe it is going to be that young Dunning was the unadulterated genius some of you people consider him. Surely you, a psychologist, can understand the type of mind that would produce such a mixture of unrelated and irrelevant, not to say mythological, material!’‘There are many strange things about the human mind, which we do not know,’ said Berk.

‘One of the least understood is the point at which genius ends and nonsense begins.’‘In physics the march is steadily upwards! We have no doubt as to which way lies progress.’Berk let that one ride. A man who saw in the world such terrible simplicity might ultimately find Dunning’s mystery completely transparent. He couldn’t risk that possibility by arguing.They drew up to the old mansion Dunning had occupied.

Dykstra surveyed it from the car. ‘The kind of a place you would expect,5 he grunted.It was difficult to estimate what was going on in the physicist’s mind as he came into the laboratories.In the first room he scanned the shelves of reagents. He took down a dozen bottles and examined their labels closely. Of some he removed the stoppers and sniffed cautiously, then replaced them all on the shelf in mild disdain.He spent a long time examining the fractionating set-up in the centre of the room. He spotted the pad of computations left there and drew an old envelope from his pocket and did some comparison scribbling.In the electronics room he turned to look through the doorway.

‘Why would any man want two such laboratories as these?’His inspection was much more thorough than that of any of the others, including Martin Nagle. Berk supposed that Mart and many of the others would be back, but Dykstra was going through with a fine-toothed comb the first time.He poked through the machine shop. ‘Well equipped,’ he muttered, ‘for a man who likes to tinker.’But he was highly impressed by the computer room. He examined the settings of the instruments and the chart papers.

He opened every desk drawer and shuffled through the scattering of papers inside.Red-faced, he turned to Berk. ‘This is absurd! Certainly there would be charts, papers, or something showing the man’s calculations.

These instruments are not here for show; they’ve obviously been used. Someone has removed the computational material from this room!’‘It’s just as we found it,’ said Berk. ‘We don’t understand it any better than you.’‘I don’t believe it,’ said Dykstra flatly.The reaction of the physicist to the library was the thing Berk was most interested in. He let Dykstra look at will over the strange and exotic collection of volumes.At first Dykstra reacted like a suddenly caged animal. He ran from the shelves of mythology, got a glance at the section on astrology, hurried from there to the books on faith-healing, and made a spiral turn that brought him up against the region of material on East Indian philosophy.‘What is this,’ he bellowed hoarsely, ‘a joke?’The pudgy figure seemed to swell visibly with indignation.‘The next room would interest you most, perhaps,’ said Berk.Dykstra almost ran through the adjoining door as if escaping some devil with whom he had come face to face. Then, catching sight of the titles here, he began to breathe easily and with an audible sighing of relief.

He was among friends.With an air of reference, he took down a worn copy of Weyl’s Space Time Matter, and a reissue of the relativity papers.‘It isn’t possible,’ he murmured, ‘that Dunning owned and understood both of these libraries.’‘He understood and conquered gravity,’ said Berk. ‘And this is the last of the clues we have to show you.’Dykstra put the books carefully back on the shelves. ‘I don’t like it.’ He glanced back to the other room as if it were a place of terror.‘There’s something wrong,’ he murmured. Whoever heard of such a thing? And how could it come out of a place like this?’.IVThat afternoon, they met again in conference. There was agreement that they would tackle the problem.

Only Professor Dykstra exhibited a continuing belligerence towards the affair, yet he made no move to withdraw.Full cooperation of military facilities was pledged by the representatives of the services. The centre of investigation was to be at ONR, however, with branching research wherever needed.No one had conceived even a tentative starting point which he cared to discuss with his colleagues. Most of them had spent the morning re-reading the relativity papers and staring at the ceiling of their respective offices. They agreed to work as loosely or as closely as the problem demanded. Until some working programme could be initiated by some of them, it was decided to hold daily seminars to try to spark each other into creative thought.A minor honour came to Mart in his election as chairman of the seminar.

It gave him uneasiness because he was junior in age and profession to all of them. But his eminence in electro-fields made him a likely coordinator of the project.Mart selected a representative sample from the occult section of Dunning’s library and took it to his own office.

He settled down amid an aura of astrology, spiritualism, mysticism, religion, sunspot data, and levitation. He had no specific purpose, only to expose his own mind to the atmosphere in which Dunning had operated.

Raymond F Jones Noise Level Pdf Editor 1

Dunning had found the goal. The tracks he walked in had to be located, no matter where they were picked up.Some of the stuff was boring, much could be nothing but sheer delusion. Yet his dogged pursuit left him intrigued by some of the material.The reports on poltergeism at Leander Castle near London, for example. They were well reported.

Independent cross references verified each other very well. The works on levitation were far more difficult to credit. Then do what most people do & wait for the movie to come out.Oh! Wait, the 5min movie oral telling of the Sci-Fi story (by Raymond F. Jones) as told by Stan Deyo is posted. Just watch that.

Too easy.Plus, it's a dirty job, but some one has to give RAA a Quentin (God bless him) a run for his moneyP.S. Did I or did I not mention in the title the words 'Short Story'. It is actually short as far was written stories go. When was the last time you guy picked up a novel (What's a novel they ask. For fuck's sake )Next time when you have 20min, In between pleasuring yourselves & you have nothing else to do, maybe give reading it a go. You crazy kids LMAOTruth be told, it is a bit of a read. One of those things you need to be in the mood.

Good story though.-. Metatron wrote: Then do what most people do & wait for the movie to come out.Oh! Wait, the 5min movie oral telling of the Sci-Fi story (by Raymond F. Jones) as told by Stan Deyo is posted. Just watch that.

Too easy.Plus, it's a dirty job, but some one has to give RAA a Quentin (God bless him) a run for his moneyP.S. Did I or did I not mention in the title the words 'Short Story'. It is actually short as far was written stories go.

When was the last time you guy picked up a novel (What's a novel they ask. For fuck's sake )Next time when you have 20min, In between pleasuring yourselves & you have nothing else to do, maybe give reading it a go. You crazy kids LMAOTruth be told, it is a bit of a read. One of those things you need to be in the mood. Good story though.-.ROTFLMFAO.