The call was answered.

"Hello, Senator MacNeill?" he said. "How would you like to be guest of honor at a party?"

Brinton peered through the ring of reporters over to the head table where Senator MacNeill was speaking, and speaking, and speaking.

"He's on his home state," Dr. Brinton said. "About half an hour to go. Now, gentlemen, you were asking about the new fuel. You all received press handouts containing the information. You will probably receive copies of the Senator's speech. And the broadcast from our first men on the Moon went out over several networks hours ago. It seems to me that you have enough for several stories."

One of the reporters asked bewilderedly, "What is a tesseract? I read the handout twice and I still don't understand."

"A mathematician would be better qualified to explain," said Dr. Brinton, "but I'll try. A tesseract is a fourth dimensional cube. A line has one dimension, a square has two, a cube has three, and a tesseract has four. A cube can be unfolded into six squares, and a tesseract unfolds to eight cubes. The new fuel had a molecular structure resembling an unfolded tesseract. When pressure is applied, it folds up into a tesseract so that it takes up less room and relieves the pressure.

"The practical application is that we can get eight pounds of it into a one pound can. The other seven pounds of it are riding around in the fourth dimension. As soon as it starts to burn, the structure is destroyed, so that it comes back out of the fourth dimension. Several people have assured me that it can't work. They're probably right, except that it does. Oh, I'll be back in a minute."

He went over to another group and spoke to one of its members. The man addressed nodded his head and left. Dr. Brinton returned.

"If there are no more questions, I suggest we do some serious drinking. I am now out of a job and I want to celebrate."

Promptly at seven-thirty, a relay clicked and the alarm clock went into its usual daily routine with the chimes, window, lights, and bath water.

Dr. Brinton woke up enough to reach out a lazy arm and flip a newly installed toggle switch beside his bed. Everything returned to normal. The light and the chimes both faded away, the window reopened, and a soft gurgling came from the bathroom.

A slight gurgling also came from the bed, where Dr. Brinton, with a happy little smile on his face, had gone peacefully back to sleep, perfectly satisfied that he had worked himself into unemployment by finding the fuel that would power spaceships to—and from—any part of the Solar System.

—JACK McKENTY

Transcriber's Note

This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.