A NEW YEAR'S
FABLE
247
harm to speed up your tempo. One never knows what might
happen ..."
We were working, both of us, on the same problem, but
were pursuing different approaches. One of us was on the right
track, the other on the wrong one. But the problem was a very
important one, and even an error might help to lead others on
the right path. We were investigating the way to condense
sunlight. The substance which he hoped to extract would
ensure months and years of bright sunlight and warmth for a
remote continent whose inhabitants were strangers to the sun.
The sun never lights one side of our planet. There it is always
night and winter. The fact that my colleague was grappling
with precisely this important problem was additional proof to
me that I had before me this extraordinary bandit leader, who
was in such great haste to live faster. Would he succeed in com–
pleting his plan within a year or even two?
Mter all, I am a person who views things soberly. I mark
time year after year, pondering all the time from which angle
to set off, because to begin a research project implies putting
everything else aside and burying oneself in work a good ten
years or so.
If
only we could harness the whole laboratory to
the task! But the Lord be thanked that at least we have been
given the go-ahead to concentrate on this idea. We had many
opponents. Almost all the members of the Scientific Council
regarded us as visionaries.
So
that was it: ten years to go . . . .
How could he do the
work
in two years?
But, as it turned out, this man had only a few hours left
at
his
disposal rather than two years. The next morning the
hospital rang me up. The previous night my extraordinary
bandit had been discovered lying all covered with blood near the
entrance to our house (he lived
in
the same building). There
were several deep knife wounds in his back. The whole of our
Institute was in an uproar; they began telephoning to the
polyclinic for the best-known doctors. But it was too late. By
