For a week, there was nothing else to talk about in the world. Three billion people probably discussed, thought about and dreamed of nothing else. There had been no more dramatic happening since the creation of the earth and sun than the appearance of Farnsworth’s eye.

But two people, out of those three billion, thought of something else. They thought of the unchangeable, preset space-time continuum, moving at the rate of one minute for every day that passed here on our side of the pentaract, while that vast Oliver Farnsworth and I, in the other-space, other-time, were staring at the cube that contained our world, lying on their floor.

On Wednesday, we could say, Now he’s gone to the telephone. On Thursday, Now he’s looking through the book. On Saturday, By now he must be dialing the operator…

And on Tuesday morning, when the sun came up, we were together and saw it rise, for we spent our nights together by then, because we did not want to be alone; and when the day had begun, we didn’t say it, because we couldn’t. But we thought it.

We thought of a colossal, cosmic Farnsworth saying, “I’ll show you!” and shoving, pushing and twisting, forcing with all of his might, into the little round hole, a brilliantly glowing, hissing, smoking, red-hot poker.

12. The Scholar's Disciple

THE SCHOLAR’S DISCIPLE

He appeared to be no more than twenty-five, and his eyes were bright orange. Except for these he would have looked like an ordinary, somewhat handsome young man. He stood in the center of the chalked diagram on Webley’s kitchen linoleum and shifted his weight from one small foot to the other. He was dressed impeccably in an Oxford gray suit and he wore a “peace” button in his lapel.

Webley sat motionless on the kitchen stool for a moment, not knowing exactly what to say. This sort of… person was not at all what he had expected. His guest glanced uneasily at the two plastic mixing bowls that sat just inside the chalked lines. Finally he blinked his orange eyes and looked at Webley.

“Well?” Webley said.

“Yes, sir?” The fellow’s voice was polite; it had the controlled tone of a proper young graduate student’s.

Webley cleared his throat. “Aren’t you going to drink the blood?” he said, “or do something with the entrails?”

The other shuddered. “No, sir.”

Webley began to feel irritated; it had taken a great deal of work to gather the things. “Then why in Heaven’s name are they in the… invocation?”

“In whose name, sir?” The young fellow blushed, averting his eyes.

“Sorry. In the name of Hell, then.”