him because his theory might possibly have some bearing on our infrared observations last week."
"Think I could understand him if I did hear him?"
"Oh, probably not but then that goes for a lot of the rest of us, too."
Stoddard reached for the wiring diagram. "Well, I'll see if I can manage it. But you know what I think of these high-powered theoretical fellows."
Arnold laughed. "I've been briefed on that before." He got up and started for the door. "Room 201 at four-thirty. I'll save a seat for you."
The meeting was already in progress when Stoddard opened the door and slippd to his seat without creating any more commotion than a horse backing into a stall. As usual, the front rows were occupied by the hardened campaigners among the faculty, the grizzled veterans of a thousand seminars: Fosberg and Ballantyne from the math department, Blacker and Tinsdale from the radiation laboratory, and Denning the nuclear physicist. The remainder of the audience in the rear was composed of a miscellaneous rabble of graduate students and professors from neighboring institutions of learning and culture.
"Who's ahead?" asked Stoddard, sinking into the chair beside his partner.
"You should have heard Friedmann put old Blacker in his place a minute ago," Arnold whispered with evident relish. "He sure slapped him down plenty that time."
To Stoddard, all theoretical physicists were strange creatures far removed from the rest of mankind. It was his experience that they could be divided with remarkable uniformity into two types, A and B. A typical specimen of Type A, for example, is mentally accessible only with the greatest difficulty. As a general rule, he moves through life with the vague detached air of a confirmed somnambulist. Should you summon the courage to ask his opinion on a paper, he regards it with much the same expression of critical disapproval that a secondhand car dealer instinctively assumes when inspecting a battered automobile brought in for sale. Everything is in a pretty bad state. It is possible, however, that a little progress may be made along the following lines, et cetera. A pure Type B, on the other hand, gives the impression of being always on the point of boiling over. He trembles with suppressed excitement. One of his former pupils has just proposed a theory that constitutes a tremendous advance. Where there was only darkness before now all is sunshine and light. As soon as a few odds and ends are cleared up the whole problem will be practically solved, et cetera, et cetera.
Stoddard classified Friedmann as predominantly Type A with a few overtones of Type B thrown in. He was a tall, thin man of about thirty, with sharp angular features, and a way of looking at you as if his eyes were focused on a point ten feet be-
