EXCERPT FROM
CARLYLE TABAKOW'S DIARY:


Doctor Mortinson got back about two minutes after the cops arrested those two crazy men.  He had a large bandage on his forehead, just above the temple, and though he shrugged it off, I guessed that they'd taken a couple of stitches to close the wounds.

"What was all the commotion?" he asked.  "I just saw the police taking a pair of young men into custody."

"It's a good thing you weren't here," I said.  "I think they must have been some kind of terrorists.  I know they were looking for you."

I knew I was going to have to tell him sooner or later about the theory, but I was kind of hoping he'd be so upset that he'd go home first.  Not that I was afraid, but I just thought he'd had a hard enough day as it was.

But after a moment of sitting at his desk, he got up and went back to the video readout screen, like he's done maybe five thousand times in the past year.

I had shut it off after those hoodlums destroyed what was there, and the Doctor quickly turned to me and questioned me about it.

"I'm afraid one of those freaks the cops arrested got to the keyboard and ruined it.  I took it off the screen."

"My God!" he thundered.  "Three years of work down the drain!"

"I tried to stop them!" I protested.  "Really I did"

"I'm sure you did, Carlyle," he said, struggling to regain his composure.

"They kept talking as if they understood what it meant," I continued.  "Talking about half-lives and such.  You wouldn't have believed their gall."

"I hope you didn't erase it completely," said the Doctor.  "Perhaps I can salvage something from it."

"No," I said, glad to be able to give him some good news, no matter how small.  "It's in the memory bank.  But I don't think it's going to be of any use to you sir.  He ruined it.  I really would have stopped him, but the security guards warned me to leave them alone."

"I don't hold you responsible," he said in a tired voice.  "Please throw the formula, or what's left of it, on the screen."

I did so, and he stared at it, as if he'd never seen it before.  Then he took out a pocket calculator and began pressing buttons like crazy.  And while he was playing with his computer and staring at the formula, his face, which at first had been merely irritated, took on the oddest expression.  His eyes widened until I could see the whites all around the irises, and his jaw kind of hung slack.  Finally he put his calculator back in his pocket and just gaped at the screen.

"My God..." he muttered.

"I'm sorry," I said consolingly.  "I told you they ruined it."

He turned to me with a wild look in his eyes.  At first I thought losing the formula had unhinged him, that he had completely lost his reason, but then he began speaking  and his voice, though incredibly tense, sounded quite sane.

"Miss Tabakow," he said, using my last name for the first time in years, like he was so excited he had forgotten that he always called me Carlyle, "I want you to think very carefully.  Who did these two men say that they were?"