Day of a Scientist 169 



it turned out that four of the sHdes gave total counts of 

 five to eight per minute, one varied from seven to nine, and 

 three fell in the nine-to-twelve range. After looking at these 

 figures for a while, Bill said with a rather half-hearted 

 attempt at calmness, "I guess the next step is to find 

 Barbara and ask her about that code." 



Barbara was almost as excited as they were when they 

 showed her the figures, and she fumbled a bit as she pulled 

 the envelope containing the code out of the pocket of her 

 lab coat. She didn't know much neurophysiology, but the 

 general outline of the experiment had been explained to 

 her, and she liked both men well enough to share their 

 obvious excitement and pleasure. After a glance at the code 

 Bill turned to Barbara with a quick "Those were damn 

 good sections you made, little girl — let's go have lunch." 



There would be time later to figure out why one of the 

 preparations fell in between the others, and of course more 

 experiments would be necessary to establish statistical sig- 

 nificance, but it looked as if their Rube Goldberg bubble 

 gadget was going to work. 



Together they went into the adjoining conference room 

 where most of the department had already gathered. Some 

 of the people were half through their sandwiches, and the 

 coffee had just about finished perking over in a corner. 

 Associate Professor Work looked up as they came in and 

 irreverently inquired, "Well, how are the two hermits today? 

 Everything go well up in the clouds?" 



Nick merely grinned and turned off further inquiries with 

 "Yeh, the dew point did pretty good today," and asked if 

 someone had a spare sandwich for Bill. A couple of the 

 girls at the end of the table who were trying to reduce 

 filled the request for the newcomers. 



An intense-looking assistant professor took up the thread, 

 "As I was saying when we were interrupted by the arrival 



