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again.”
    “The alternative?”
    “Immediate death. These last days, Professor, the beauty and pathos of these last days. That is what I bargain for.”
    “And the offer?”
    “The paper, the three sheets which you have just read. You will copy them and seal them in an envelope addressed to the Institute of Physics. You may trust me to see it reaches its destination. I am no defaulter on a bargain.”
    “Will you answer me a question before I decide?”
    “You may ask it.”
    “What possible advantage do you get out of this arrangement? I’m going to die anyway, so why not wait? It must come to the same thing from your point of view.”
    The stranger smiled. “I am pleased with the question, Professor. I will gladly answer it. If you accept the bargain, I shall get nothing at all from it. You will be the gainer. These papers will come as a thoroughly worthwhile final achievement to your life. You will go out with a bang, not a whimper. Understand, I make no claim that what I am giving is great physics. It is not a major new theory, nor need it be for your purpose. It is a thoroughly sound piece of craftsmanship, exactly the kind of thing you have always had the ambition to achieve.”
    In a considerable measure, Pym had now recovered his wits. He was puzzled. “So either way you get nothing out of it. If I refuse you get nothing, if I accept you get nothing.” The stranger considered the matter for a while. Then he said, “It hardly behooves me to explain my motives. Yet I will say this: I am gambling you will not yield a single day, a single hour, in exchange for the paper. You will cling to life until the ultimate moment.”
    “Surely it’s my own affair if I decide to refuse?”
    The stranger was reluctant to answer, so Pym plunged on. “Considering the advantages on your side, I don’t think you’re showing up very well.”
    At this, Pym’s tormentor bared his white teeth and snapped, “Professor Pym, as a physicist you know events are not lost. They exist, always. They remain for those with the power to recover them, just as a film of past events can remain after those events have taken place. I want a film of you, Professor, clinging to life, clinging to the last, tedious moment, in a negation of everything you claim to be.”
    Pym felt a sudden tautness. He was in a trap with his retreat cut off. The only possibility was to attack. “If it’s so important to you, I think you must be prepared to stake a lot more than these three sheets.”
    Pym‘s effrontery took the stranger by surprise. He indicated the papers, his eyes flashing. “These are all you will get from me, unless you are prepared to gamble very much more than the last days of your life.”
    The waters were rapidly deepening.
    “What have you in mind?” asked Pym.
    “You, Professor Pym, you must be the stake. If you want to play games with me.”
    “What do I stand to win?”
    “Anything you please, anything, my friend!”
    “And the wager itself?”
    “I wager that, even with a completely free wish, you are incapable of specifying anything that will make a
permanent
mark on the world. These sheets here, which made our previous game, will not serve you. Nor must you be vague—you are not permitted to ask for the solution to a problem you cannot define. You must not say ‘invent me a particle,’ or ‘give me a theory as good as Einstein’s.’ It is not to be as easy as that. My wager, Professor, is that in the deepest possible sense you are a failure. You can think of nothing of importance.”
    Pym felt as if strange, unknown muscles were tightening within him. His every instinct was to accept the challenge. He was angry now, with an inner, white-hot anger. Yet he saw clearly that if you could conceive of a problem you were already halfway to its solution. Which was the trouble with this wager. Unless you had the right concept, you just couldn’t come out with any significant idea. Then a curious notion flashed through his