Free His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem

undertaking—times that mix, perhaps as no other, the seamy and the sublime. The zigzag of coincidences, before it threw into our hands that colossal opportunity, crushed like a flea a man who, albeit in blindness, was still the first to approach the threshold of the discovery.
    If I am not mistaken, Rush's emissaries had thought Laserowitz crazy at the point when he refused to accept a considerable sum of money in exchange for giving up his claims. But in that case he and I were of the same faith, with this one difference, that we practiced it in different monasteries. Had it not been for that great wave in which he became caught, Laserowitz would undoubtedly have prospered, a low-grade maniac devoting himself, undisturbed, to his flying saucers and all the rest of it, for there is surely no shortage of such people. But the knowledge that he was being relieved of his most sacred possession, a discovery that divided the history of mankind into two parts, tore his hardiness like an explosion and drove him to his death. In my opinion we owe more than a sneer to the man's memory. Every great matter has, among its circumstances, some that are ludicrous or pitifully banal, which does not mean that they do not play an integral role. Ludicrousness, anyway, is a relative thing. I, too, cut a ludicrous figure every time I spoke of Laserowitz in this vein.
    Of all the dramatis personae of this prologue, Swanson probably came out the best, because he was satisfied with money. His fine was paid (whether by the CIA or the Project administration, I do not know), and, with a generous sum as compensation for the mental anguish he had suffered in being falsely accused of fraud, he was dissuaded from filing an appeal. All this so that the Project could begin its work in peace and quiet, in the complete isolation finally allotted it.

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    NOT ONLY THESE events, whose description here in general—though not in every respect—agrees with the official version, but the whole first year of the Project as well, passed without my participation. As to why I was approached only after the Science Council had become convinced of the necessity of acquiring academic reinforcements, I was told so many different things so often, and given such weighty reasons, that probably none of it was the truth. My exclusion, however, I did not hold against my colleagues, particularly not against Yvor Baloyne. Though they were for quite some time unaware of it, their organizational activity was not entirely free. Not that there was any open interference then, any obvious pressure. But the whole thing was of course managed by specialists in stagecraft. In my exclusion, I believe, High Places had a hand. The Project, practically from the beginning, was classified—an operation, that is, whose secrecy was a sine qua non of government policy, vital to the national security. The scientific directors of the Project, it should be emphasized, learned of this gradually, and as a rule separately, one by one, at special meetings during which discreet appeal was made to their political wisdom and patriotic feelings.
    How it was exactly, what means of persuasion, what compliments, promises, and arguments were enlisted, I do not know, because that side of things the official record passes over with absolute silence; nor were the people of the Science Council quick to come forward later on, now as my fellow workers, with admissions touching that preliminary phase of research in His Master's Voice. If one or another turned out to be a bit uncooperative, if appeals to patriotism and the national interest were insufficient, resort was made to conversations "at the highest level." At the same time—and this perhaps was the most important factor contributing to the psychological accommodation—the hermetic nature of the Project, its severance from the world, was seen purely as a stopgap, a temporary, transitional arrangement that would be changed. Psychologically effective: for despite