Dr. Robert Stadler paced his office, wishing he would not feel the cold. Spring had been late in coming. Beyond the window, the dead gray of the hills looked like the smeared transition from the soiled white of the sky to the leaden black of the river. Once in a while, a distant patch of hillside flared into a silver-yellow that was almost green, then vanished. The clouds kept cracking for the width of a single sunray, then oozing closed again. It was not cold in the office, thought Dr. Stadler, it was that view that froze the place.  It was not cold today, the chill was in his bones-he thought-the stored accumulation of the winter months, when he had had to be distracted from his work by an awareness of such a matter as inadequate heating and people had talked about conserving fuel. It was preposterous, he thought, this growing intrusion of the accidents of nature into the affairs of men: it had never mattered before, if a winter happened to be unusually severe; if a flood washed out a section of railroad track, one did not spend two weeks eating canned vegetables; if an electric storm struck some power station, an establishment such as the State Science Institute was not left without electricity for five days. Five days of stillness this winter, he thought, with the great laboratory motors stopped and irretrievable hours wiped out, when his staff had been working on problems that involved the heart of the universe. He turned angrily away from the window-but stopped and turned back to it again. He did not want to see the book that lay on his desk.  He wished Dr. Ferris would come. He glanced at his watch: Dr. Ferris was late-an astonishing matter-late for an appointment with him-Dr. Floyd Ferris, the valet of science, who had always faced him in a manner that suggested an apology for having but one hat to take off.  This was outrageous weather for the month of May, he thought, looking down at the river; it was certainly the weather that made him feel as he did, not the book. He had placed the book in plain view on his desk, when he had noted that his reluctance to see it was more than mere revulsion, that it contained the element of an emotion never to be admitted. He told himself that he had risen from his desk, not because the book lay there, but merely because he had wanted to move, feeling cold. He paced the room, trapped between the desk and the window. He would throw that book in the ash can where it belonged, he thought, just as soon as he had spoken to Dr. Ferris.  He watched the patch of green and sunlight on the distant hill, the promise of spring in a world that looked as if no grass or bud would ever function again. He smiled eagerly-and when the patch vanished, he felt a stab of humiliation, at his own eagerness, at the desperate way he had wanted to hold it. It reminded him of that interview with the eminent novelist, last winter. The novelist had come from Europe to write an article about him-and he, who had once despised interviews, had talked eagerly, lengthily, too lengthily, seeing a promise of intelligence in the novelist's face, feeling a causeless, desperate need to be understood. The article had come out as a collection of sentences that gave him exorbitant praise and garbled every thought he had expressed. Closing the magazine, he had felt what he was feeling now at the desertion of a sunray.  All right-he thought, turning away from the window-he would concede that attacks of loneliness had begun to strike him at times; but it was a loneliness to which he was entitled, it was hunger for the response of some living, thinking mind. He was so tired of all those people, he thought in contemptuous bitterness; he dealt with cosmic rays, while they were unable to deal with an electric storm.  He felt the sudden contraction of his mouth, like a slap denying him the right to pursue this course of thought. He was looking at the book on his desk. Its glossy jacket was glaring and new; it had been published two weeks ago. But I had nothing to do with it!-he screamed to himself; the scream seemed wasted on a merciless silence; nothing answered it, no echo of forgiveness. The title on the book's jacket was Why Do You Think You Think?  There was no sound in that courtroom silence within him, no pity, no voice of defense-nothing but the paragraphs which his great memory had reprinted on his brain: "Thought is a primitive superstition. Reason is an irrational idea. The childish notion that we are able to think has been mankind's costliest error."  "What you think you think is an illusion created by your glands, your emotions and, in the last analysis, by the content of your stomach."  "That gray matter you're so proud of is like a mirror in an amusement park which transmits to you nothing but distorted signals from a reality forever beyond your grasp."  "The more certain you feel of your rational conclusions, the more certain you are to be wrong. Your brain being an instrument of distortion, the more active the brain the greater the distortion."  "The giants of the intellect, whom you admire so much, once taught you that the earth was flat and that the atom was the smallest particle of matter. The entire history of science is a progression of exploded fallacies, not of achievements."  "The more we know, the more we learn that we know nothing."  "Only the crassest ignoramus can still hold to the old-fashioned notion that seeing is believing. That which you see is the first thing to disbelieve."  "A scientist knows that a stone is not a stone at all. It is, in fact, identical with a feather pillow. Both are only a cloud formation of the same invisible, whirling particles. But, you say, you can't use a stone for a pillow? Well, that merely proves your helplessness in the face of actual reality."  "The latest scientific discoveries-such as the tremendous achievements of Dr. Robert Stadler-have demonstrated conclusively that our reason is incapable of dealing with the nature of the universe. These discoveries have led scientists to contradictions which are impossible, according to the human mind, but which exist in reality nonetheless. If you have not yet heard it, my dear old-fashioned friends, it has now been proved that the rational is the insane."  "Do not expect consistency. Everything is a contradiction of everything else. Nothing exists but contradictions."  "Do not look for 'common sense.' To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense. The only crusaders for 'sense' are the studious type of adolescent old maid who can't find a boy friend, and the old-fashioned shopkeeper who thinks that the universe is as simple as his neat little inventory and beloved cash register."  "Let us break the chains of the prejudice called Logic. Are we going to be stopped by a syllogism?"  "So you think you're sure of your opinions? You cannot be sure of anything. Are you going to endanger the harmony of your community, your fellowship with your neighbors, your standing, reputation, good name and financial security-for the sake of an illusion? For the sake of the mirage of thinking that you think? Are you going to run risks and court disasters-at a precarious time like ours-by opposing the existing social order in the name of those imaginary notions of yours which you call your convictions? You say that you're sure you're right? Nobody is right, or ever can be. You feel that the world around you is wrong? You have no means to know it. Everything is wrong in human eyes-so why fight it? Don't argue. Accept. Adjust yourself. Obey."  The book was written by Dr. Floyd Ferris and published by the State Science Institute.  "I had nothing to do with it!" said Dr. Robert Stadler. He stood still by the side of his desk, with the uncomfortable feeling of having missed some beat of time, of not knowing how long the preceding moment had lasted. He had pronounced the words aloud, in a tone of rancorous sarcasm directed at whoever had made him say it.  He shrugged. Resting on the belief that self-mockery is an act of virtue, the shrug was the emotional equivalent of the sentence: You're Robert Stadler, don't act like a high-school neurotic. He sat down at his desk and pushed the book aside with the back of his hand.  Dr. Floyd Ferris arrived half an hour late. "Sorry," he said, "but my car broke down again on the way from Washington and I had a hell of a time trying to find somebody to fix it-there's getting to be so damn few cars out on the road that half the service stations are closed."  There was more annoyance than apology in his voice. He sat down without waiting for an invitation to do so. Dr. Floyd Ferris would not have been noticed as particularly handsome in any other profession, but in the one he had chosen he was always described as "that good-looking scientist." He was six feet tall and forty-five years old, but he managed to look taller and younger.  He had an air of immaculate grooming and a ballroom grace of motion, but his clothes were severe, his suits being usually black or midnight blue. He had a finely traced mustache, and his smooth black hair made the Institute office boys say that he used the same shoe polish on both ends of him. He did not mind repeating, in the tone of a joke on himself, that a movie producer once said he would cast him for the part of a titled European gigolo. He had begun his career as a biologist, but that was forgotten long ago; he was famous as the Top Co-ordinator of the State Science Institute.  Dr. Stadler glanced at him with astonishment-the lack of apology was unprecedented-and said dryly, "It seems to me that you are spending a great deal of your time in Washington."  "But, Dr. Stadler, wasn't it you who once paid me the compliment of calling me the watchdog of this Institute?" said Dr. Ferris pleasantly.  "Isn't that my most essential duty?"  "A few of your duties seem to be accumulating right around this place. Before I forget it, would you mind telling me what's going on here about that oil shortage mess?"  He could not understand why Dr. Ferris' face tightened into an injured look, "You will permit me to say that this is unexpected and unwarranted," said Dr. Ferris in that tone of formality which conceals pain and reveals martyrdom. "None of the authorities involved have found cause for criticism. We have just submitted a detailed report on the progress of the work to date to the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources, and Mr. Wesley Mouch has expressed himself as satisfied. We have done our best on that project. We have heard no one else describe it as a mess. Considering the difficulties of the terrain, the hazards of the fire and the fact that it has been only six months since we-"  "What are you talking about?" asked Dr. Stadler.  'The Wyatt Reclamation Project. Isn't that what you asked me?"  "No," said Dr. Stadler, "no, I . . . Wait a moment. Let me get this straight. I seem to recall something about this Institute taking charge of a reclamation project. What is it that you're reclaiming?"  "Oil," said Dr. Ferris. "The Wyatt oil fields."  "That was a fire, wasn't it? In Colorado? That was . . . wait a moment . . . that was the man who set fire to his own oil wells."  "I'm inclined to believe that that's a rumor created by public hysteria," said Dr. Ferris dryly. '"A rumor with some undesirable, unpatriotic implications. I wouldn't put too much faith in those newspaper stories. Personally, I believe that it was an accident and that Ellis Wyatt perished in the fire."  "Well, who owns those fields now?"  "Nobody-at the moment. There being no will or heirs, the government has taken charge of operating the fields-as a measure of public necessity-for seven years. If Ellis Wyatt does not return within that time, he will be considered officially dead."  "Well, why did they come to you-to us, for such an unlikely assignment as oil pumping?"  "Because it is a problem of great technological difficulty, requiring the services of the best scientific talent available. You see, it is a matter of reconstructing the special method of oil extraction that Wyatt had employed. His equipment is still there, though in a dreadful condition; some of his processes are known, but somehow there is no full record of the complete operation or the basic principle involved. That is what we have to rediscover."  "And how is it going?"  "The progress is most gratifying. We have just been granted a new and larger appropriation. Mr. Wesley Mouch is pleased with our work.  So are Mr. Balch of the Emergency Commission, Mr. Anderson of Crucial Supplies and Mr. Pettibone of Consumers' Protection. I do not see what more could be expected of us. The project is fully successful."  "Have you produced any oil?"  "No, but we have succeeded in forcing a flow from one of the wells, to the extent of six and a half gallons. This, of course, is merely of experimental significance, but you must take into consideration the fact that we had to spend three full months just to put out the fire, which has now been totally-almost totally-extinguished. We have a much tougher problem than Wyatt ever had, because he started from scratch while we have to deal with the disfigured wreckage of an act of vicious, anti-social sabotage which . . . I mean to say, it is a difficult problem, but there is no doubt that we will be able to solve it."  "Well, what I really asked you about was the oil shortage here, in the Institute. The level of temperature maintained in this building all winter was outrageous. They told me that they had to conserve oil. Surely you could have seen to it that the matter of keeping this place adequately supplied with such things as oil was handled more efficiently."  "Oh, is that what you had in mind, Dr. Stadler? Oh, but I am so sorry!" The words came with a bright smile of relief on Dr. Ferris'  face; his solicitous manner returned. "Do you mean that the temperature was low enough to cause you discomfort?"  "I mean that I nearly froze to death."  "But that is unforgivable! Why didn't they tell me? Please accept my personal apology, Dr. Stadler, and rest assured that you will never be inconvenienced again. The only excuse I can offer for our maintenance department is that the shortage of fuel was not due to their negligence, it was-oh, I realize that you would not know about it and such matters should not take up your invaluable attention-but, you see, the oil shortage last winter was a nation-wide crisis."  "Why? For heaven's sake, don't tell me that those Wyatt fields were the only source of oil in the country!"  "No, no, but the sudden disappearance of a major supply wrought havoc in the entire oil market. So the government had to assume control and impose oil rationing on the country, in order to protect the essential enterprises. I did obtain an unusually large quota for the Institute-and only by the special favor of some very special connections-but I feel abjectly guilty if this proved insufficient. Rest assured that it will not happen again. It is only a temporary emergency. By next winter, we shall have the Wyatt fields back in production, and conditions will return to normal. Besides, as far as this Institute is concerned, I made all the arrangements to convert our furnaces to coal, and it was to be done next month, only the Stockton Foundry in Colorado closed down suddenly, without notice-they were casting parts for our furnaces, but Andrew Stockton retired, quite unexpectedly, and now we have to wait till his nephew reopens the plant."  "I see. Well, I trust that you will take care of it among all your other activities." Dr. Stadler shrugged with annoyance. "It is becoming a little ridiculous-the number of technological ventures that an institution of science has to handle for the government."  "But, Dr. Stadler-"  "I know, I know, it can't be avoided. By the way, what is Project X?"  Dr. Ferris' eyes shot to him swiftly-an odd, bright glance of alertness, that seemed startled, but not frightened. "Where did you hear about Project X, Dr. Stadler?"  "Oh, I heard a couple of your younger boys saying something about it with an air of mystery you'd expect from amateur detectives. They told me it was something very secret."  "That's right, Dr. Stadler. It is an extremely secret research project which the government has entrusted to us. And it is of utmost importance that the newspapers get no word about it."  "What's the X?"  "Xylophone. Project Xylophone. That is a code name, of course.  The work has to do with sound. But I am sure that it would not interest you. It is a purely technological undertaking."  "Yes, do spare me the story. I have no time for your technological undertakings."  "May I suggest that it would be advisable to refrain from mentioning the words 'Project X' to anyone, Dr. Stadler?"  "Oh, all right, all right. I must say I do not enjoy discussions of that kind."  "But of course! And I wouldn't forgive myself if I allowed your time to be taken up by such concerns. Please feel certain that you may safely leave it to me." He made a movement to rise. "Now if this was the reason you wanted to see me, please believe that I-"  "No," said Dr. Stadler slowly. "This was not the reason I wanted to see you."  Dr. Ferris volunteered no questions, no eager offers of service; he remained seated, merely waiting.  Dr. Stadler reached over and made the book slide from the corner to the center of his desk, with a contemptuous flick of one hand. "Will you tell me, please," he asked, "what is this piece of indecency?"  Dr. Ferris did not glance at the book, but kept his eyes fixed on Stadler's for an inexplicable moment; then he leaned back and said with an odd smile, "I feel honored that you chose to make such an exception for my sake as reading a popular book. This little piece has sold twenty thousand copies in two weeks."  "I have read it."  "And?"  "I expect an explanation."  "Did you find the text confusing?"  Dr. Stadler looked at him in bewilderment. "Do you realize what theme you chose to treat and in what manner? The style alone, the style, the gutter kind of attitude-for a subject of this nature!"  "Do you think, then, that the content deserved a more dignified form of presentation?" The voice was so innocently smooth that Dr.  Stadler could not decide whether this was mockery.  "Do you realize what you're preaching in this book?"  "Since you do not seem to approve of it, Dr. Stadler, I'd rather have you think that I wrote it innocently."  This was it, thought Dr. Stadler, this was the incomprehensible element in Ferris' manner: he had supposed that an indication of his disapproval would be sufficient, but Ferris seemed to remain untouched by it "If a drunken lout could find the power to express himself on paper," said Dr. Stadler, "if he could give voice to his essence-the eternal savage, leering his hatred of the mind-this is the sort of book I would expect him to write. But to see it come from a scientist, under the imprint of this Institute!"  "But, Dr. Stadler, this book was not intended to be read by scientists. It was written for that drunken lout."  "What do you mean?"  "For the general public."  "But, good God! The feeblest imbecile should be able to see the glaring contradictions in every one of your statements."  "Let us put it this way, Dr. Stadler: the man who doesn't see that, deserves to believe all my statements."  "But you've given the prestige of science to that unspeakable stuff! It was all right for a disreputable mediocrity like Simon Pritchett to drool it as some sort of woozy mysticism-nobody listened to him. But you've made them think it's science. Science! You've taken the achievements of the mind to destroy the mind. By what right did you use my work to make an unwarranted, preposterous switch into another field, pull an inapplicable metaphor and draw a monstrous generalization out of what is merely a mathematical problem? By what right did you make it sound as if I-I!--gave my sanction to that book?"  Dr. Ferris did nothing, he merely looked at Dr. Stadler calmly; but the calm gave him an air that was almost patronizing. "Now, you see, Dr. Stadler, you're speaking as if this book were addressed to a thinking audience. If it were, one would have to be concerned with such matters as accuracy, validity, logic and the prestige of science. But it isn't. It's addressed to the public. And you have always been first to believe that the public does not think." He paused, but Dr, Stadler said nothing.  "This book may have no philosophical value whatever, but it has a great psychological value."  "Just what is that?"  "You see, Dr. Stadler, people don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue-a highly intellectual virtue-out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt."  "And you propose to pander to that?"  "That is the road to popularity."  "Why should you seek popularity?"  Dr. Ferris' eyes moved casually to Dr. Stadler's face, as if by pure accident. "We are a public institution," he answered evenly, "supported by public funds."  "So you tell people that science is a futile fraud which ought to be abolished!"  "That is a conclusion which could be drawn, in logic, from my book. But that is not the conclusion they will draw."  "And what about the disgrace to the Institute in the eyes of the men of intelligence, wherever such may be left?"  "Why should we worry about them?"  Dr. Stadler could have regarded the sentence as conceivable, had it been uttered with hatred, envy or malice; but the absence of any such emotion, the casual ease of the voice, an ease suggesting a chuckle, hit him like a moment's glimpse of a realm that could not be taken as part of reality; the thing spreading down to his stomach was cold terror.  "Did you observe the reactions to my book, Dr. Stadler? It was received with considerable favor."  "Yes-and that is what I find impossible to believe." He had to speak, he had to speak as if this were a civilized discussion, he could not allow himself time to know what it was he had felt for a moment.  "I am unable to understand the attention you received in all the reputable academic magazines and how they could permit themselves to discuss your book seriously. If Hugh Akston were around, no academic publication would have dared to treat this as a work admissible into the realm of philosophy."  "He is not around."  Dr. Stadler felt that there were words which he was now called upon to pronounce-and he wished he could end this conversation before he discovered what they were.  "On the other hand," said Dr, Ferris, "the ads for my book-oh, I'm sure you wouldn't notice such things as ads-quote a letter of high praise which I received from Mr. Wesley Mouch."  "Who the hell is Mr. Wesley Mouch?"  Dr. Ferris smiled. "In another year, even you won't ask that question, Dr. Stadler. Let us put it this way: Mr. Mouch is the man who is rationing oil-for the time being."  "Then I suggest that you stick to your job. Deal with Mr. Mouch and leave him the realm of oil furnaces, but leave the realm of ideas to me."  "It would be curious to try to formulate the line of demarcation," said Dr. Ferris, in the tone of an idle academic remark. "But if we're talking about my book, why, then we're talking about the realm of public relations." He turned to point solicitously at the mathematical formulas chalked on the blackboard. "Dr. Stadler, it would be disastrous if you allowed the realm of public relations to distract you from the work which you alone on earth are capable of doing."  It was said with obsequious deference, and Dr. Stadler could not tell what made him hear in it the sentence: "Stick to your blackboard!"  He felt a biting irritation and he switched it against himself, thinking angrily that he had to get rid of these suspicions.  "Public relations?" he said contemptuously. "I don't see any practical purpose in your book. I don't see what it's intended to accomplish."  "Don't you?" Dr. Ferris1 eyes flickered briefly to his face; the sparkle of insolence was too swift to be identified with certainty.  "I cannot permit myself to consider certain things as possible in a civilized society," Dr. Stadler said sternly.  "That is admirably exact," said Dr. Ferris cheerfully. "You cannot permit yourself."  Dr. Ferris rose, being first to indicate that the interview was ended.  "Please call for me whenever anything occurs in this Institute to cause you discomfort, Dr. Stadler," he said. "It is my privilege always to be at your service."  Knowing that he had to assert his authority, smothering the shameful realization of the sort of substitute he was choosing, Dr. Stadler said imperiously, in a tone of sarcastic rudeness, "The next time I call for you, you'd better do something about that car of yours."  "Yes, Dr. Stadler. I shall make certain never to be late again, and I beg you to forgive me." Dr. Ferris responded as if playing a part on cue; as if he were pleased that Dr. Stadler had learned, at last, the modern method of communication. "My car has been causing me a great deal of trouble, it's falling to pieces, and I had ordered a new one sometime ago, the best one on the market, a Hammond convertible-but Lawrence Hammond went out of business last week, without reason or warning, so now I'm stuck. Those bastards seem to be vanishing somewhere. Something will have to be done about it."  When Ferris had gone, Dr. Stadler sat at his desk, his shoulders shrinking together, conscious only of a desperate wish not to be seen by anyone. In the fog of the pain which he would not define, there was also the desperate feeling that no one-no one of those he valued-would ever wish to see him again.  He knew the words which he had not uttered. He had not said that he would denounce the book in public and repudiate it in the name of the Institute. He had not said it, because he had been afraid to discover that the threat would leave Ferris unmoved, that Ferris was safe, that the word of Dr. Robert Stadler had no power any longer. And while he told himself that he would consider later the question of making a public protest, he knew that he would not make it.  He picked up the book and let it drop into the wastebasket.  A face came to his mind, suddenly and clearly, as if he were seeing the purity of its every line, a young face he had not permitted himself to recall for years. He thought: No, he has not read this book, he won't see it, he's dead, he must have died long ago. . . . The sharp pain was the shock of discovering simultaneously that this was the man he longed to see more than any other being in the world-and that he had to hope that this man was dead.  He did not know why-when the telephone rang and his secretary told him that Miss Dagny Taggart was on the line-why he seized the receiver with eagerness and noticed that his hand was trembling. She would never want to see him again, he had thought for over a year. He heard her clear, impersonal voice asking for an appointment to see him.  "Yes, Miss Taggart, certainly, yes, indeed. . . . Monday morning?  Yes-look, Miss Taggart, I have an engagement in New York today, I could drop in at your office this afternoon, if you wish. . . . No, no -no trouble at all, I'll be delighted. . . . This afternoon, Miss Taggart, about two-I mean, about four o'clock."  He had no engagement in New York. He did not give himself time to know what had prompted him to do it. He was smiling eagerly, looking at a patch of sunlight on a distant hill.  Dagny drew a black line across Train Number 93 on the schedule, and felt a moment's desolate satisfaction in noting that she did it calmly. It was an action which she had had to perform many times in the last six months. It had been hard, at first; it was becoming easier.  The day would come, she thought, when she would be able to deliver that death stroke even without the small salute of an effort. Train Number 93 was a freight that had earned its living by carrying supplies to Hammondsville, Colorado.  She knew what steps would come next: first, the death of the special freights-then the shrinking in the number of boxcars for Hammondsville, attached, like poor relatives, to the rear end of freights bound for other towns-then the gradual cutting of the stops at Hammondsville Station from the schedules of the passenger trains-then the day when she would strike Hammondsville, Colorado, off the map. That had been the progression of Wyatt Junction and of the town called Stockton.  She knew-once word was received that Lawrence Hammond had retired-that it was useless to wait, to hope and to wonder whether his cousin, his lawyer or a committee of local citizens would reopen the plant. She knew it was time to start cutting the schedules.  It had lasted less than six months after Ellis Wyatt had gone-that period which a columnist had gleefully called "the field day of the little fellow." Every oil operator in the country, who owned three wells and whined that Ellis Wyatt left him no chance of livelihood, had rushed to fill the hole which Wyatt had left wide open. They formed leagues, cooperatives, associations; they pooled their resources and their letter heads, "The little fellow's day in the sun," the columnist had said. Their sun had been the flames that twisted through the derricks of Wyatt Oil. In its glare, they made the kind of fortunes they had dreamed about, fortunes requiring no competence or effort. Then their biggest customers, such as power companies, who drank oil by the trainful and would make no allowances for human frailty, began to convert to coal -and the smaller customers, who were more tolerant, began to go out of business-the boys in Washington imposed rationing on oil and an emergency tax on employers to support the unemployed oil field workers-then a few of the big oil companies closed down-then the little fellows in the sun discovered that a drilling bit which had cost a hundred dollars, now cost them five hundred, there being no market for oil field equipment, and the suppliers having to earn on one drill what they had earned on five, or perish-then the pipe lines began to close, there being no one able to pay for their upkeep-then the railroads were granted permission to raise their freight rates, there being little oil to carry and the cost of running tank trains having crushed two small lines out of existence-and when the sun went down, they saw that the operating costs, which had once permitted them to exist on their sixty-acre fields, had been made possible by the miles of Wyatt's hillside and had gone in the same coils of smoke. Not until their fortunes had vanished and their pumps had stopped, did the little fellows realize that no business in the country could afford to buy oil at the price it would now take them to produce it. Then the boys in Washington granted subsidies to the oil operators, but not all of the oil operators had friends in Washington, and there followed a situation which no one cared to examine too closely or to discuss.  Andrew Stockton had been in the sort of position which most of the businessmen envied. The rush to convert to coal had descended upon his shoulders like a weight of gold: he had kept his plant working around the clock, running a race with next winter's blizzards, casting parts for coal-burning stoves and furnaces. There were not many dependable foundries left; he had become one of the main pillars supporting the cellars and kitchens of the country. The pillar collapsed without warning. Andrew Stockton announced that lie was retiring, closed his plant and vanished. He left no word on what he wished to be done with the plant or whether his relatives had the right to reopen it.  There still were cars on the roads of the country, but they moved like travelers in the desert, who ride past the warning skeletons of horses bleached by the sun: they moved past the skeletons of cars that had collapsed on duty and had been left in the ditches by the side of the road. People were not buying cars any longer, and the automobile factories were closing. But there were men still able to get oil, by means of friendships that nobody cared to question. These men bought cars at any price demanded. Lights flooded the mountains of Colorado from the great windows of the plant, where the assembly belts of Lawrence Hammond poured trucks and cars to the sidings of Taggart Transcontinental. The word that Lawrence Hammond had retired came when least expected, brief and sudden like the single stroke of a bell in a heavy stillness. A committee of local citizens was now broadcasting appeals on the radio, begging Lawrence Hammond, wherever he was, to give them permission to reopen his plant. There was no answer.  She had screamed when Ellis Wyatt went; she had gasped when Andrew Stockton retired; when she heard that Lawrence Hammond had quit, she asked impassively, "Who's next?"  "No, Miss Taggart, I can't explain it," the sister of Andrew Stockton had told her on her last trip to Colorado, two months ago. "He never said a word to me and I don't even know whether he's dead or living, same as Ellis Wyatt. No, nothing special had happened the day before he quit. I remember only that some man came to see him on that last evening. A stranger I'd never seen before. They talked late into the night-when I went to sleep, the light was still burning in Andrew's study."  People were silent in the towns of Colorado. Dagny had seen the way they walked in the streets, past their small drugstores, hardware stores and grocery markets: as if they hoped that the motions of their jobs would save them from looking ahead at the future. She, too, had walked through those streets, trying not to lift her head, not to see the ledges of sooted rock and twisted steel, which had been the Wyatt oil fields. They could be seen from many of the towns; when she had looked ahead, she had seen them in the distance.  One well, on the crest of the hill, was still burning. Nobody had been able to extinguish it. She had seen it from the streets: a spurt of fire twisting convulsively against the sky, as if trying to tear loose. She had seen it at night, across the distance of a hundred clear, black miles, from the window of a train: a small, violent flame, waving in the wind.  People called it Wyatt's Torch.  The longest train on the John Galt Line had forty cars; the fastest ran at fifty miles an hour. The engines had to be spared: they were coal burning engines, long past their age of retirement. Jim obtained the oil for the Diesels that pulled the Comet and a few of their transcontinental freights. The only source of fuel she could count on and deal with was Ken Danagger of Danagger Coal in Pennsylvania.  Empty trains clattered through the four states that were tied, as neighbors, to the throat of Colorado. They carried a few carloads of sheep, some corn, some melons and an occasional farmer with an overdressed family, who had friends in Washington. Jim had obtained a subsidy from Washington for every train that was run, not as a profit making carrier, but as a service of "public equality."  It took every scrap of her energy to keep trains running through the sections where they were still needed, in the areas that were still producing. But on the balance sheets of Taggart Transcontinental, the checks of Jim's subsidies for empty trains bore larger figures than the profit brought by the best freight train of the busiest industrial division.  Jim boasted that this had been the most prosperous six months in Taggart history. Listed as profit, on the glossy pages of his report to the stockholders, was the money he had not earned-the subsidies for empty trains; and the money he did not own-the sums that should have gone to pay the interest and the retirement of Taggart bonds, the debt which, by the will of Wesley Mouch, he had been permitted not to pay. He boasted about the greater volume of freight carried by Taggart trains in Arizona-where Dan Conway had closed the last of the Phoenix-Durango and retired; and in Minnesota-where Paul Larkin was shipping iron ore by rail, and the last of the ore boats on the Great Lakes had gone out of existence.  "You have always considered money-making as such an important virtue," Jim had said to her with an odd half-smile. "Well, it seems to me that I'm better at it than you are."  Nobody professed to understand the question of the frozen railroad bonds; perhaps, because everybody understood it too well. At first, there had been signs of a panic among the bondholders and of a dangerous indignation among the public. Then, Wesley Mouch had issued another directive, which ruled that people could get their bonds "defrozen" upon a plea of "essential need": the government would purchase the bonds, if it found the proof of the need satisfactory. There were three questions that no one answered or asked: "What constituted proof?" "What constituted need?" "Essential-to whom?"  Then it became bad manners to discuss why one man received the grant defreezing his money, while another had been refused. People turned away in mouth-pinched silence, if anybody asked a "why?" One was supposed to describe, not to explain, to catalogue facts, not to evaluate them: Mr. Smith had been defrozen, Mr. Jones had not; that was all. And when Mr. Jones committed suicide, people said, "Well, I don't know, if he'd really needed his money, the government would have given it to him, but some men arc just greedy."  One was not supposed to speak about the men who, having been refused, sold their bonds for one-third of the value to other men who possessed needs which, miraculously, made thirty-three frozen cents melt into a whole dollar; or about a new profession practiced by bright young boys just out of college, who called themselves "defreezers" and offered their services "to help you draft your application in the proper modern terms." The boys had friends in Washington, Looking at the Taggart rail from the platform of some country station, she had found herself feeling, not the brilliant pride she had once felt, but a foggy, guilty shame, as if some foul kind of rust had grown on the metal, and worse: as if the rust had a tinge of blood. But then, in the concourse of the Terminal, she looked at the statue of Nat Taggart and thought: It was your rail, you made it, you fought for it, you were not stopped by fear or by loathing-I won't surrender it to the men of blood and rust-and I'm the only one left to guard it.  She had not given up her quest for the man who invented the motor.  It was the only part of her work that made her able to bear the rest.  It was the only goal in sight that gave meaning to her struggle. There were times when she wondered why she wanted to rebuild that motor.  What for?-some voice seemed to ask her. Because I'm still alive, she answered. But her quest had remained futile. Her two engineers had found nothing in Wisconsin. She had sent them to search through the country for men who had worked for Twentieth Century, to learn the name of the inventor. They had learned nothing. She had sent them to search through the files of the Patent Office; no patent for the motor had ever been registered.  The only remnant of her personal quest was the stub of the cigarette with the dollar sign. She had forgotten it, until a recent evening, when she had found it in a drawer of her desk and given it to her friend at the cigar counter of the concourse. The old man had been very astonished, as he examined the stub, holding it cautiously between two fingers; he had never heard of such a brand and wondered how he could have missed it. "Was it of good quality, Miss Taggart?" "The best I've ever smoked." He had shaken his head, puzzled. He had promised to discover where those cigarettes were made and to get her a carton.  She had tried to find a scientist able to attempt the reconstruction of the motor. She had interviewed the men recommended to her as the best in their field. The first one, after studying the remnants of the motor and of the manuscript, had declared, in the tone of a drill sergeant, that the thing could not work, had never worked and he would prove that no such motor could ever be made to work. The second one had drawled,, in the tone of an answer to a boring imposition, that he did not know whether it could be done or not and did not care to find out. The third had said, his voice belligerently insolent, that he would attempt the task on a ten-year contract at twenty-five thousand dollars a year-"After all, Miss Taggart, if you expect to make huge profits on that motor, it's you who should pay for the gamble of my time." The fourth, who was the youngest, had looked at her silently for a moment and the lines of his face had slithered from blankness into a suggestion of contempt. "You know, Miss Taggart, I don't think that such a motor should ever be made, even if somebody did learn how to make it. It would be so superior to anything we've got that it would be unfair to lesser scientists, because it would leave no field for their achievements and abilities. I don't think that the strong should have the right to wound the self esteem of the weak." She had ordered him out of her office, and had sat in incredulous horror before the fact that the most vicious statement she had ever heard had been uttered in a tone of moral righteousness.  The decision to speak to Dr. Robert Stadler had been her last recourse.  She had forced herself to call him, against the resistance of some immovable point within her that felt like brakes slammed tight. She had argued against herself. She had thought: I deal with men like Jim and Orren Boyle-his guilt is less than theirs-why can't I speak to him?  She had found no answer, only a stubborn sense of reluctance, only the feeling that of all the men on earth, Dr. Robert Stadler was the one she must not call.  As she sat at her desk, over the schedules of the John Galt Line, waiting for Dr. Stadler to come, she wondered why no first-rate talent had risen in the field of science for years. She was unable to look for an answer. She was looking at the black line which was the corpse of Train Number 93 on the schedule before her.  A train has the two great attributes of life, she thought, motion and purpose; this had been like a living entity, but now it was only a number of dead freight cars and engines. Don't give yourself time to fee], she thought, dismember the carcass as fast as possible, the engines are needed all over the system, Ken Danagger in Pennsylvania needs trains, more trains, if only- "Dr. Robert Stadler," said the voice of the interoffice communicator on her desk.  He came in, smiling; the smile seemed to underscore his words: "Miss Taggart, would you care to believe how helplessly glad I am to see you again?"  She did not smile, she looked gravely courteous as she answered, "It was very kind of you to come here." She bowed, her slender figure standing tautly straight but for the slow, formal movement of her head.  "What if I confessed that all I needed was some plausible excuse in order to come? Would it astonish you?"  "I would try not to overtax your courtesy." She did not smile. "Please sit down, Dr. Stadler."  He looked brightly around him. "I've never seen the office of a railroad executive. I didn't know it would be so . . . so solemn a place. Is that in the nature of the job?"  "The matter on which I'd like to ask your advice is far removed from the field of your interests, Dr. Stadler. You may think it odd that I should call on you. Please allow me to explain my reason."  "The fact that you wished to call on me is a fully sufficient reason. If I can be of any service to you, any service whatever, I don't know what would please me more at this moment." His smile had an attractive quality, the smile of a man of the world who used it, not to cover his words, but to stress the audacity of expressing a sincere emotion.  "My problem is a matter of technology," she said, in the clear, expressionless tone of a young mechanic discussing a difficult assignment. "I fully realize your contempt for that branch of science. I do not expect you to solve my problem-it is not the kind of work which you do or care about. I should like only to submit the problem to you, and then I'll have just two questions to ask you. I had to call on you, because it is a matter that involves someone's mind, a very great mind, and"-she spoke impersonally, in the manner of rendering exact justice-"and you are the only great mind left in this field."  She could not tell why her words bit him as they did. She saw the stillness of his face, the sudden earnestness of the eyes, a strange earnestness that seemed eager and almost pleading, then she heard his voice come gravely, as if from under the pressure of some emotion that made it sound simple and humble: "What is your problem, Miss Taggart?"  She told him about the motor and the place where she had found it; she told him that it had proved impossible to learn the name of the inventor; she did not mention the details of her quest. She handed him photographs of the motor and the remnant of the manuscript.  She watched him as he read. She saw the professional assurance in the swift, scanning motion of his eyes, at first, then the pause, then the growing intentness, then a movement of his lips which, from another man, would have been a whistle or a gasp. She saw him stop for long minutes and look off, as if his mind were racing over countless sudden trails, trying to follow them all-she saw him leaf back through the pages, then stop, then force himself to read on, as if he were torn between his eagerness to continue and his eagerness to seize all the possibilities breaking open before his vision. She saw his silent excitement, she knew that he had forgotten her office, her existence, everything but the sight of an achievement-and in tribute to his being capable of such reaction, she wished it were possible for her to like Dr. Robert Stadler.  They had been silent for over an hour, when he finished and looked up at her. "But this is extraordinary!" he said in the joyous, astonished tone of announcing some news she had not expected.  She wished she could smile in answer and grant him the comradeship of a joy celebrated together, but she merely nodded and said coldly, "Yes."  "But, Miss Taggart, this is tremendous!"  "Yes."  "Did you say it's a matter of technology? It's more, much, much more than that. The pages where he writes about his converter-you can see what premise he's speaking from. He arrived at some new concept of energy. He discarded all our standard assumptions, according to which his motor would have been impossible. He formulated a new premise of his own and he solved the secret of converting static energy into kinetic power. Do you know what that means? Do you realize what a feat of pure, abstract science he had to perform before he could make his motor?"  "Who?" she asked quietly.  "I beg your pardon?"  "That was the first of the two questions I wanted to ask you, Dr. Stadler: can you think of any young scientist you might have known ten years ago, who would have been able to do this?"  He paused, astonished; he had not had time to wonder about that question. "No," he said slowly, frowning, "no, I can't think of anyone.  . . . And that's odd . . . because an ability of this kind couldn't have passed unnoticed anywhere . . . somebody would have called him to my attention . . . they always sent promising young physicists to me. . . . Did you say you found this in the research laboratory of a plain, commercial motor factory?"  "Yes."  "That's odd. What was he doing in such a place?"  "Designing a motor."  "That's what I mean. A man with the genius of a great scientist, who chose to be a commercial inventor? I find it outrageous. He wanted a motor, and he quietly performed a major revolution in the science of energy, just as a means to an end, and he didn't bother to publish his findings, but went right on making his motor. Why did he want to waste his mind on practical appliances?"  "Perhaps because he liked living on this earth," she said involuntarily.  "I beg your pardon?"  "No, I . . . I'm sorry, Dr. Stadler. I did not intend to discuss any . . . irrelevant subject."  He was looking off, pursuing his own course of thought, "Why didn't he come to me? Why wasn't he in some great scientific establishment where he belonged? If he had the brains to achieve this, surely he had the brains to know the importance of what he had done. Why didn't he publish a paper on his definition of energy? I can see the general direction he'd taken, but God damn him!-the most important pages are missing, the statement isn't here! Surely somebody around him should have known enough to announce his work to the whole world of science. Why didn't they? How could they abandon, just abandon, a thing of this kind?"  "These are the questions to which I found no answers."  "And besides, from the purely practical aspect, why was that motor left in a junk pile? You'd think any greedy fool of an industrialist would have grabbed it in order to make a fortune. No intelligence was needed to see its commercial value."  She smiled for the first time-a smile ugly with bitterness; she said nothing.  "You found it impossible to trace the inventor?" he asked.  "Completely impossible-so far."  "Do you think that he is still alive?"  "I have reason to think that he is. But I can't be sure."  "Suppose I tried to advertise for him?"  "No. Don't."  "But if I were to place ads in scientific publications and have Dr. Ferris"-he stopped; he saw her glance at him as swiftly as he glanced at her; she said nothing, but she held his glance; he looked away and finished the sentence coldly and firmly-"and have Dr. Ferris broadcast on the radio that I wish to see him, would he refuse to come?"  "Yes, Dr. Stadler, I think he would refuse."  He was not looking at her. She saw the faint tightening of his facial muscles and, simultaneously, the look of something going slack in the lines of his face; she could not tell what sort of light was dying within him nor what made her think of the death of a light.  He tossed the manuscript down on the desk with a casual, contemptuous movement of his wrist. 'Those men who do not mind being practical enough to sell their brains for money, ought to acquire a little knowledge of the conditions of practical reality."  He looked at her with a touch of defiance, as if waiting for an angry answer. But her answer was worse than anger: her face remained expressionless, as if the truth or falsehood of his convictions were of no concern to her any longer. She said politely, "The second question I wanted to ask you was whether you would be kind enough to tell me the name of any physicist you know who, in your judgment, would possess the ability to attempt the reconstruction of this motor."  He looked at her and chuckled; it was a sound of pain. "Have you been tortured by it, too, Miss Taggart? By the impossibility of finding any sort of intelligence anywhere?"  "I have interviewed some physicists who were highly recommended to me and I have found them to be hopeless."  He leaned forward eagerly. "Miss Taggart," he asked, "did you call on me because you trusted the integrity of my scientific judgment?"  The question was a naked plea.  "Yes," she answered evenly, "I trusted the integrity of your scientific judgment."  He leaned back; he looked as if some hidden smile were smoothing the tension away from his face. "I wish I could help you," he said, as to a comrade. "I most selfishly wish I could help you, because, you see, this has been my hardest problem-trying to find men of talent for my own staff. Talent, hell! I'd be satisfied with just a semblance of promise -but the men they send me couldn't be honestly said to possess the potentiality of developing into decent garage mechanics. I don't know whether I am getting older and more demanding, or whether the human race is degenerating, but the world didn't seem to be so barren of intelligence in my youth. Today, if you saw the kind of men I've had to interview, you'd-"  He stopped abruptly, as if at a sudden recollection. He remained silent; he seemed to be considering something he knew, but did not wish to tell her; she became certain of it, when he concluded brusquely, in that tone of resentment which conceals an evasion, "No, I don't know anyone I'd care to recommend to you."  "This was all I wanted to ask you, Dr. Stadler," she said. "Thank you for giving me your time."  He sat silently still for a moment, as if he could not bring himself to leave.  "Miss Taggart," he asked, "could you show me the actual motor itself?"  She looked at him, astonished. "Why, yes . . . if you wish. But it's in an underground vault, down in our Terminal tunnels."  "I don't mind, if you wouldn't mind taking me down there. I have no special motive. It's only my personal curiosity. I would like to see it-that's all."  When they stood in the granite vault, over a glass case containing a shape of broken metal, he took off his hat with a slow, absent movement-and she could not tell whether it was the routine gesture of remembering that he was in a room with a lady, or the gesture of baring one's head over a coffin.  They stood in silence, in the glare of a single light refracted from the glass surface to their faces. Train wheels were clicking in the distance, and it seemed at times as if a sudden, sharper jolt of vibration were about to awaken an answer from the corpse in the glass case.  "It's so wonderful," said Dr. Stadler, his voice low. "It's so wonderful to see a great, new, crucial idea which is not mine!"  She looked at him, wishing she could believe that she understood him correctly. He spoke, in passionate sincerity, discarding convention, discarding concern for whether it was proper to let her hear the confession of his pain, seeing nothing but the face of a woman who was able to understand: "Miss Taggart, do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's  achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own-they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal- for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes, thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them-while you'd give a year of your life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity., because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be............