"All space is relative. There is no such thing as size. The telescope and the microscope have produced a deadly leveling of great and small, far and near. The only little thing is sin, the only great thing is fear!"
For the hundredth time Professor Queirling repeated his
statement, and for the hundredth time we listened in silence, afraid to enter into a controversy with him. It was not the fact that he knew more than we did that kept us quiet, but the haunting fear that filled us when we listened to him or watched him at work.
Working at an unsolved problem, he seemed a soul detached, a spirit separated from its earthly home, a being living only in the realm of thought. His body sat motionless, his eyes catatonic, unwinking stared until his mind, satisfied, deigned to return to bone-bound cell. Then in magnificent condescension he would talk freely in limpid phrases of the things he had considered and the conclusions he had deduced. We, chosen scientists, university graduates, hailed him as our master and hated him for admitting his mastery.
We hoped some evil might befall him, and yet we admitted
that the success of the expedition depended upon his continued leadership. It was vitally necessary for our future: we were struggling young men with all life ahead of us, and if we failed in our first effort there would be no other opportunities for fame granted us.
In a specially constructed yacht, a veritable floating laboratory, we were south of Borneo, making a detailed study of microscopic sea life. In deep-sea nets we gathered the tiny organisms and then, with microscope, photography, and the cinema we observed them for the future instruction of the human race. There were hundreds of species, thousands of varieties, each to be identified, classified, described, studied, and photographed. We gathered in the morning, studied until midnight and slept restlessly until morning. The only thing in which we were agreed was ambition, our sole united emotion was hatred of the professor.
He knew how we felt and enjoyed taunting us:“I am your
leader because I willed it so,” he would say, speaking in a low
restrained voice. “With me the will to attain is synonymous
with accomplishment. I believe in myself and through this irreducible faith I succeed. There is nothing a strong man cannot do if he wills to do it and believes in his strength. Our ideas of space, size, and time are but the fanciful dreams of children. I am fifty-nine inches tall and fully clothed, weigh one hundred and ten pounds. If I desired I could make myself a colossus and swallow the earth as a child swallows a pill. If I willed it I could fly through space like a comet or hang suspended in the ether like the morning star. My will is greater than any other physical force, because I believe in it: I have confidence in my ability to do whateverI wish. So farI have conducted myself like an average man because I desire to so behave and not because of any limitations: Man has a soul and that ethereal force is greater than any law of nature that man ever thought of or any God ever created. He is purely and totally supreme—if he so desires.”
It was after such a defiant declaration to us that our chemist, Bullard, gathered courage to challenge his power. He stated his opinion sharply and to the point, “I do not believe you.”
“What is that that to me?” answered the professor.
“Simply this: You make a statement that you have certain
powers. I say that it is not true: Of what good to boast if you
know we think you a liar? Can you do these things? If you can, do them for us, and I for one, will hail you as greater than God. Fail to do them and I will brand you a boasting poseur.”
The professor looked steadily at the chemist. We waited
breathlessly for the blow to fall, but he only laughed.
“You want a sign? A proof? I have thought of just such a
thing and I would have proposed it myself had one of you not
asked for it. The thing must be visible to all of you, something
that I can demonstrate, a thing unheard of, an act all men consider impossible and yet I will do it. Listen to me.