What The Left Hand Was Doing Part 5

Taggert raised his heavy head from the couch. "Sure, Leo," he said to the senator. "Don't you see? We _need_ Ch'ien on this interstellar project. He absolutely _must_ dope out the answer somehow, and no one else can do it as quickly."

"With the previous information," the senator said, "we would have been able to continue."

"Yeah?" Taggert said, sitting up. "Has anyone been able to dope out Fermat's Last Theorem without Fermat? No. So why ruin Ch'ien?"

"It would ruin him," Candron broke in, before the senator could speak.

"If he saw, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that levitation and teleportation were possible, he would have accepted his own senses as usable data on definite phenomena. But, limited as he is by his scientific outlook, he would have tried to evolve a scientific theory to explain what he saw. What else could a scientist _do_?"

Senator Kerotski nodded, and his nod said: "I see. He would have diverted his attention from the field of the interstellar drive to the field of psionics. And he would have wasted years trying to explain an inherently nonlogical area of knowledge by logical means."

"That's right," Candron said. "We would have set him off on a wild goose chase, trying to solve the problems of psionics by the scientific, the logical, method. We would have presented him with an unsolvable problem."

Taggert patted his knees. "We would have given him a problem that he could not solve with the methodology at hand. It would be as though we had proved to an ancient Greek philosopher that the cube _could_ be doubled, and then allowed him to waste his life trying to do it with a straight-edge and compa.s.s."

"We know Ch'ien's psychological pattern," Candron continued. "He's not capable of admitting that there is any other thought pattern than the logical. He would try to solve the problems of psionics by logical methods, and would waste the rest of his life trying to do the impossible."

The senator stroked his chin. "That's clear," he said at last. "Well, it was worth a cracked jaw to save him. We've given him a perfectly logical explanation of his rescue and, simultaneously, we've put the Chinese government into absolute confusion. They have no idea of how you got out of there, Candron."

"That's not as important as saving Ch'ien," Candron said.

"No," the senator said quickly, "of course not. After all, the Secretary of Research needs Dr. Ch'ien--the man's important."

Spencer Candron smiled. "I agree. He's practically indispensable--as much as a man can be."

"He's the Secretary's right hand man," said Taggert firmly.

THE END