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.The script in Henry's notebook was close and crabbed, with a curtness to it, much like the manhimself.His symbols and his equations were a triumph of clarity, but the written words had a curiousbackward, petulant slant and the phrases that he used were laconic to the point of rudeness althoughwhom he was being rude to, unless it were himself, was left a matter of conjecture.Maitland closed the book with a snap and shoved it away from him, out into the center of the table."So that was it," he said.They sat in quietness, their faces pale and drawn, as if in bitter fact they might have seen the ghost ofCraven's hinting."That's the end of it," snapped Sifford."I won't ""You won't what?" asked Lodge.Sifford did not answer.He just sat there with his hands before him on the table, opening and closingthem, making great tight fists of them, then straightening out his fingers, stretching them as if he meant bysheer power of will to bend them back farther than they were meant to go."Henry was crazy," said Susan Lawrence curtly."A man would have to be to dream up that sort ofevidence.""As a medical person," Maitland said, "we could expect that reaction from you.""I work with life," said Susan Lawrence."I respect it and it is my job to preserve it as long as it canbe kept within the body.I have a great compassion for the things possessing it.""Meaning we haven't?""Meaning you have to live with it and come to know it for its power and greatness, for the fine thingthat it is, before you can appreciate or understand its wondrous qualities.""But, Susan ""And I know," she said, rushing on to head him off."I know that it is more than decay andbreakdown, more than the senility of matter.It is something greater than disease.To argue that life is thefinal step to which matter is reduced, the final degradation of the nobility of soil and ore and water is toargue that a static, unintelligent, purposeless existence is the norm of the universe.""We're getting all tangled up semantically," suggested Forester."As living things the terms we usehave no comparative values with the terms that might be used for universal purpose, even if we knewthose universal terms.""Which we don't," said Helen Gray."What you say would be true especially if what Henry hadthought he had found was right.""We'll check Henry's notes," Lodge told them grimly."We'll follow him step by step.I think he'swrong, but on the chance he isn't, we can't pass up an angle."Sifford bristled."You mean even if he were right you would go ahead? That you would use even sohumanly degrading a piece of evidence to achieve our purpose?""Of course I would," said Lodge."If life is a disease and a senility, all right, then, it is disease andsenility.As Kent and Helen pointed out, the terms are not comparative when used in a universal sense.What is poison for the universe is well, is life for us.If Henry was right, his discovery is no more thanthe uncovering of a fact that has existed since time untold.""You don't know what you're saying," Sifford said."But I do," Lodge told him bluntly."You have grown neurotic.You and some of the others.Maybe I,myself.Maybe all of us.We are ruled by fear you by the fear of your job, I by the fear that the job will notbe done.We've been penned up, we've been beating out our brains against the stone walls of our conscienceand a moral value suddenly furbished up and polished until it shines like the shield of Galahad.Back onthe Earth you wouldn't give this thing a second thought.You'd gulp a little, maybe, then you'd swallow it,if it were proved true, and you'd go ahead to track down that principle of decay and of disease wehappen to call life.The principle itself would be only one more factor for your consideration, one moretool to work with, another bit of knowledge.But here you claw at the wall and scream.""Bayard!" shouted Forester."Bayard, you can't ""I can," Lodge told him, "and I am.I'm sick of all their whimpering and baying.I'm tired of spoonfedfanatics who drove themselves to their own fanaticism by their own synthetic fears.It takes men andwomen with knife-sharp minds to lick this thing we're after.It takes guts and intelligence."Craven was white-lipped with fury."We've worked," he shouted."Even when everything within us,even when all our djecency and intelligence and our religious instincts told us not to work, we worked.And don't say you kept us at it, you with your mealy words and your kidding and your back slapping.Don't say you laughed us into it."Forester pounded the table with a fist."Let's quit this arguing," he cried."Let's get down to cases."Craven settled back in his chair, face still white with anger.Sifford kept on making fists."Henry wrote a conclusion," said Forester."Well, hardly a conclusion.Let's call it a suspicion.Nowwhat do you want to do about it? Ignore it, run from it, test it for its proof?""I say, test it," Craven said."It was Henry's work.Henry's gone and can't speak for his own beliefs.We owe at least that much to him.""If it can be tested," Maitland qualified."To me it sounds more like philosophy than science.""Philosophy runs hand in hand with science," said Alice Page."We can't simply brush it off because itsounds involved.""I didn't say involved," Maitland objected."What I meant was oh, hell, let's go ahead and check it.""Check it," Sifford said.He swung around on Lodge."And if it checks out, if it comes anywhere near to checking, if we can'tutterly disprove it, I'm quitting.I'm serving notice now.""That's your privilege, Sifford, any time you wish.""It might be hard to prove anything one way or the other," said Helen Gray."It might not be anyeasier to disprove than prove."Lodge saw Sue Lawrence looking at him and there was grim laughter and something of grudgingadmiration and a touch of confused cynicism in her face, as if she might be saying to him, Well, you'vedone it again.I didn't think you would not this time, I didn't.But you did.Although you won't alwaysdo it.There'll come a time."Want to bet?" he whispered at her.She said, "Cyanide."And although he laughed back at her, he knew that she was right righter than she knew.For thetime had already come and this was the end of Life Team No.3
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