“Oh, leave me alone,” Mr. Bondy protested. “If it gives off poisonous gases, the authorities will prohibit it, and there’s an end of it. You know the wretched state of affairs here. Now in America . . .”

“It isn’t poisonous gases,” Marek exclaimed. “It’s something a thousand times worse. Mark what I tell you, Bondy, it’s something beyond human reason, but there’s not a scrap of deception about it. Well, then, my Karburator actually does burn up matter, causes its utter combustion, so that not even a grain of dust remains. Or rather, it breaks it up, crushes it, splits it up into electrons, consumes it, grinds it—I don’t know how to express it—in short, uses it up completely. You have no idea what a colossal amount of energy is contained in the atoms. With half a hundredweight of coal in the Karburaator you can sail right round the world in a steamship, you can light the whole city of Prague, you can supply power for the whole of a huge factory, or anything you like. A bit of coal the size of a nut will do the heating and the cooking for a whole family. And ultimately we shan’t even require coal; we can do our heating with the first pebble or handful of dirt we pick up in front of the house. Every scrap of matter has in it more energy than an enormous boiler; you’ve only to extract it. You’ve only to know how to secure total combustion! Well, Bondy, I can do it; my Karburator can do it. You’ll admit, Bondy, that it has been worth while toiling over it for twenty years.”

“Look here, Rudy,” Bondy began slowly, “it’s all very extraordinary—but I believe you, so to speak. On my soul, I do believe you. You know, when I stood in front of that Karburator of yours, I felt that I was in the presence of something overpoweringly great, something a man could not withstand. I can’t help it: I believe you. Down there in the cellar you have something uncanny, something that will overturn the whole world.”

“Alas, Bondy,” Marek whispered anxiously, “that’s just where the trouble is. Listen, and I’ll tell you the whole thing. Have you ever read Spinoza?”

“No.”

“No more had I. But now, you see, I am beginning to read that sort of thing. I don’t understand it—it’s terribly difficult stuff for us technical people—but there’s something in it. Do you by any chance believe in God?”

“I? Well, now. . .” G. H. Bondy deliberated. “Upon my word, I couldn’t say. Perhaps there is a God, but He’s on some other planet. Not on ours. Oh, well, that sort of thing doesn’t fit in with our times at all. Tell me, what makes you drag that into it?”