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Dr. Philip Loeb was a theoretical mathematician. He had always said, without pretension of modesty, that he was the smartest man on the planet. At eighteen, he earned his first Ph.D. in mathematics, and three years later, a second in astrophysics. He published his first scholarly work at the age of fifteen and his first best seller, “One Galaxy” at twenty-one. His rise to fame was meteoric, and with it came myriad honors and memberships in every major scientific society in the world. The university where he was employed provided him with a spacious office, a full professorship, a token course load of one honors class a semester, free lodging, and a salary that was a king’s ransom.

But for all his intelligence and all his fame, Dr. Philip Loeb could not make the trains run on time. His was late that day and he had missed his connecting flight to Philadelphia for a scientific conference at which he was to lecture. “We Are Not Alone” — that was the title he had given it to attract more interest — but in truth it was a dry dissertation on the technical aspects of faster-than-light space travel. That was his specialty — the mathematics of the folding of space and time.

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