Read The Link for Free Online

red. “Ever hear about the woman at the intersection?” she inquires.
    We see the woman driving. As she nears an intersection, the light in her favor, she hears a deep male voice saying, “Stop!” She brakes hard, gasping, the car skidding to a halt.
    The instant it does, a car shoots by in front of her, speeding through the red light.
    “It would have broadsided her if she hadn’t heard that voice,” Cathy says; we are back with them.
    “Must have been the spirit of her late husband,” Robert says, straight-faced.
    “Or her late insurance man,” she counters.

    They come in on PETER CLARKE’S lecture. Peter Eustice Clarke is 57, large of girth and disposition, with a warm smile and a ready twinkle in his eyes. Robert and Cathy slip into seats in the last row of the lecture hall as he proceeds.
    “The sires of psi, as we might call them, believed, with majestic naiveté, that the scientific community would embrace them as soon as enough experiments had been carefully performed.
    “Yet here we are, a century later, still adjudged to be the loonies of the technological world. Why? Because the things we study contradict the known laws of the universe.
    “I quote a well-known critic. ‘In view of the a priori evidence against it, we know,
in advance
, that telepathy cannot occur.’ I quote further from the same source. ‘If the results’—of any experiment—’could have arisen through a trick, the experiment must be considered unsatisfactory proof of ESP
whether or not it is finally decided that such a trick was, in fact, used.’”
    Laughter ripples through the auditorium. Robert smiles, exchanging a look with Cathy.
    “It is the province of science to investigate nature without prejudice,” Peter Clarke goes on. “Nowhere has this dictum met with less observation than in psi.”
    He smiles. “But be of good cheer, we are not alone. On January 7, 1610, Galileo announced that, through his telescope, he’d seen four moons revolving round the planet Jupiter. Immediately a pamphlet was distributed.
Nonsense
, said the pamphlet. Optical illusion. Self delusion. The Inquisition had its say and Galileo recanted. To this very day, they have only
partially
absolved him.
    “In 1807, Thomas Jefferson, of all people, dismissed as utterly preposterous the idea that meteors could fall to earth. Those peasants whose cottage rooves had been demolished by same no doubt took a different view but they were not accredited. As were the scientists who, in July of 1790, when a shower of meteors fell in France, declared it—quote—’a physically impossible phenomenon.’ Unquote.
    “In 1935, F.R. Moulton, one of the world’s foremost authorities on celestial mechanics did not hesitate to claim that ‘in all fairness to those who, by training, are not prepared to evaluate the fundamental difficulties of going from the earth to the moon, it must be stated that there is not the
slightest
possibility of such a journey.”
    More laughter. Peter’s smile is somewhat sad now. “We laugh,” he tells the students, “but do we feel uneasy at the same time? How many truths of tomorrow are being attacked as the heresies of today? How many Galileos will recant new observations? How many meteoric concepts will be condemned as utterly preposterous?
    “The answer is self-evident. I have only to quote the scientist who declared, of ESP, ‘This is the kind of thing that I would not believe in even if it
existed!’”
    Laughter. Peter shakes his head. “The Lord protect us from such as these and give us, instead, a few more Thomas Edisons who, when asked about electricity, answered, honestly, ‘Don’t know what it is. But it
works.”‘

    At the conclusion of the lecture, Cathy introduces Robert to her friend and associate and former professor at Cambridge University. Peter shakes his hand warmly and invites them to his house for supper, re-states Cathy’s invitation for Robert to visit them at ESPA.
    As they stroll to