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believe, although I’m not much of an engineer myself. Latzarel is planning a voyage into the pool off Palos Verdes sometime next month.”
    “Good old Squires,” William said. “I’ve got some ideas I’d like to try out on him. I’ve been reading Einstein, and have a plot for a first-rate story. Hard science, too. Rock hard. That’swhy I think Squires is the man to try it on.” William scratched the end of his nose. “Is the maze room intact?”
    “Of course,” said Edward.
    “Then I’ll just put in a few hours.” William shoved fresh tobacco into his pipe, lit it, and stood up puffing. “Mice all dead?”
    “No,” said Edward. “I’ve got a new lot. All white. Absolutely innocent. And there’s three that just gave birth.”
    “Grand!” cried William, elated. “I’m going to put some of the litter in with that big
bufo morinus
. If we keep him full of horsemeat maybe he’ll leave them alone long enough for them to imprint. We’ll be halfway home then.”
    ‘The bufo died two months ago. But there’s an axolotl as big as a rabbit out there that will work just as well.”
    William nodded, caught up in the spirit of science. ‘That will do nicely,” he said. “Very nicely. External gills too. Very pretty items. How is Giles Peach these days, by the way?”
    “Amazing. He’s onto something big, I think. John Pinion has an eye on him.”
    But Edward was sorry he’d said it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. “Pinion!” William gasped. “Pinion can keep his filthy hands off Giles Peach! Peach is ours!”
    “Of course,” said Edward. “Of course. I’ve said as much. Damn Pinion.” And finally William, wearing a leather apron, went out the back door, muttering to himself. He got about halfway to the maze shed, stopped, turned, shoved back in, and shouted something incoherent into the kitchen. All Edward could make out were the words “Pinion” and “travesty,” but he let the matter slide and didn’t ask for clarification.

Chapter 3

    The Newtonian Society met every month, more often if an excuse could be found. Two years back it had been called the Blake Society and had met to discuss literary matters. William Hastings, at the time, hadn’t yet turned the corner; he was merely an eccentric professor of Romantic literature at Eagle Rock University who possessed an amazing library and who had, one Sunday afternoon, run out of shelf space in the living room, and so had pressed the refrigerator into use, shoving a copy of Herodotus and
The White Oaks of Jalna
, for some inexplicable reason, in among jars of salad peppers and pickle relish.
    The Newtonian Society was formed after William Hastings’ disappearance into what Oscar Pallcheck cheerfully referred to as “the hatch.” Literature was abandoned for science—specifically for the investigation of Professor Latzarel’s theories. On the Saturday evening following William Hastings’ surprise arrival, then, Giles Peach and his friend Jim hurried down the sidewalk toward Jim’s home, anxious to attend the meeting and especially to hear Latzarel’s opinions on the little tidepool hand.
    Professor Latzarel’s vehicle—Jim couldn’t think of a better word for it—ground to a halt at the curb just as the two of them drew up to the house. It was an old Land Rover station wagon, a tremendous square thing that appeared from almost every angle to be built entirely of wood—wood covered in a coat of gray dust like the sarcophagus of an Egyptian pharaoh that had sat in the desert for a dozen centuries until, perhaps byosmosis, the wood itself had begun to metamorphose into dust. A day would come, Jim was certain of it, when the machine, wheezing along one of the interlacing highways of the southwest desert, would complete the transmutation and crumble into a quick heap to be blown across the sands by a wind devil spawned by the sudden cessation of motion. The driver of a pursuing automobile, not quite believing in the