"But I can't forestall its development. I must be true to its present findings. Of course, I may extrapolate the course of research a little. I may feel fairly confident that we shall in time possess the whole solar system, or control human inheritance. But I must not open the door to wild superstition and romantic fantasy. To do that would be to betray my most sacred values." "Oh!" I remarked. "So you have sacred values?" He answered gravely, "For me personally, intellectual integrity is sacred. But I have no wish to impose my own subjective standards on others."

*****

We sipped our coffee. Betweenwhiles the young man blew perfect smoke rings, projecting some of them through their widening predecessors. He was justifiably proud of this feat; and he enjoyed my smiling admiration.

He said, "I am creating universes, one after another. The primal nebula, each time, is shot into existence from my divine lips, assuming the form they give it. Then it passes through determinate changes, imposed on it by its own physical nature, spawning galaxies of stars, and a few intelligent races. Little by little the law of entropy irons out all differences of potential, freezes out all its intelligences. The frostbound worlds roll aimlessly on. Here and there, maybe, the smothered ruins of a city runcle the snow blanket. Little by little the galaxies disintegrate. The whole universe is dissipated. Meanwhile I have already created its successor."

"A good symbol!" I said. "You should have been a poet." He answered with emphasis, "I prefer more serious work, and better paid."

I remarked that his universes had a creator. "Yes," he said. "And he creates them not in order that they may achieve developed mentality or spiritual awareness or whatnot, but for lack of anything better to do; and perhaps to show off."

At this, a destructive impulse seized him. Scarcely had each annular cloud started on its career when he annihilated it with a wave of his hand.

I suggested that perhaps the great universe itself might also have a creator. "The hypothesis," he said, "is unnecessary. There seems to have been some sort of a beginning to the present order; but before that, probably something like a reverse process held, with contrary natural laws. Anyhow, what matter? We cannot reach back that far. And if there was a creator, he must have been less intelligent even than this one. At least, I see no evidence that he had any intelligence at all." I suggested that, if indeed there was in any sense a creator, his intelligence probably so far outranged human intelligence that his purposes and methods would be incomprehensible to us. "Of course!" the young man said, with a smile that was half a sneer. "But that is just fantasy. One might just as well suppose him inferior to us, or that he created merely for the fun of destroying, and tormenting."

Saying this, my cynical friend shattered his last universe, then grimly stubbed out his cigarette.