Mr. Bondy shuddered. “Marek, this is frightful!”

“It is indeed,” said Marek sorrowfully. “Gradually I began to see that it wasn’t gas, but the Absolute. The symptoms were terrible. I could read people’s thoughts, light emanated from me, I had a desperate struggle not to become absorbed in prayer and preach belief in God. I tried to clog the Karburator up with sand, but I was seized with a bout of levitation. That machine won’t let anything stop it. I don’t sleep at home nowadays. Even in the factory there have been several serious cases of illumination among the workmen. I don’t know where to turn, Bondy. Yes, I’ve tried every possible isolating material that might prevent the Absolute from getting out of the cellar. Ashes, sand, metal walls, nothing can keep it back. I’ve even tried covering the cellar with the work of Professor Krejči, Spencer, Haeckel, and all the Positivists you can think of: would you believe it, the Absolute goes calmly through even that stuff! Even papers, prayer-books, Lives of the Saints, Patriotic Song-books, university lectures, best-sellers, political treatises, and Parliamentary Reports, present no obstacle to it. I’m simply desperate. You can’t shut it up, you can’t soak it up. It’s mischief let loose.”

“Oh, but why?” said Mr. Bondy. “Does it really mean such mischief? Even if all this were true . . . is it such a disaster?”

“Bondy, my Karburator is a terriffic thing. It will overturn the whole world, mechanically and socially. It will cheapen production to an unbelievable extent. It will do away with poverty and hunger. It will some day save our planet from freezing up. But, on the other hand, it hurls God as a by-product into the world. I implore you, Bondy, don’t underrate what it means. We aren’t used to reckoning with God as a reality. We don’t know what His presence may bring about—say, socially, morally, and so on. Why, man, this thing affects the whole of human civilization!”

“Wait a minute !” said Bondy thoughtfully. “Perhaps there’s some charm or other that would exorcise it. Have you called in the clergy?”

“What kind of clergy?”

“Any kind. The denomination probably makes no difference in this case, you know. Perhaps they could do something to stop it.”

“Oh, that’s all superstition!” burst out Marek. “Leave me alone with your parsons! Catch me giving them a chance to make a miraculous shrine out of my cellar! Me, with my views!”

“Very well,” declared Mr. Bondy. “Then I’ll call them in myself. You never can tell. . . . Come, it can’t do any harm, anyway. After all, I haven’t anything against God. Only He oughtn’t to interfere with business. Have you tried negotiating with Him in a friendly spirit?”

“No,” admitted the engineer.