ScienceDirect - Technol Rep Tohoku Univ ... - Garryck Osborne

Chapter 25
George Hathaway, a science and engineering Ph.D. who ran a consulting
firm on "nonconventional propulsion technology" in Ontario, Canada,
offered a suitable staging post between the reality of sorts that exists in
London and the world inhabited by the man in the photostat that
Bushman had shown me: self-trained scientist and inventor, John
Hutchison.
I met Hathaway in the coffee shop of my Toronto hotel and was
gratified to note that there was nothing remotely flaky about him.
Hathaway, whom I guessed to be in his early 50s, looked like most
people's idea of a slightly unconventional nine-to-five scientist: a tall man,
dressed in jeans and a tartan shirt, with wire-framed glasses, Bill Hickok
mustache and hair over the collar. The briefcase gave him a suitably
businesslike air as well; he was someone you could talk turkey with.
Hearing him talk, I began to feel a lot better.
I was booked on a flight that afternoon to Vancouver, but had been
filled with doubts about the whole trip ever since my arrival in Canada.
It was three weeks after my visit to Fort Worth and I had flown halfway
around the world on my own ticket to meet a man who claimed to be able
to levitate objects with equipment he'd salvaged from electrical shops and
thrift stores.
I had managed to grab myself two days off work. Two days to get to
Vancouver and back via Toronto. The ticket had cost me a small fortune.
Faced with a sizable hole in my finances, the whole thing suddenly
seemed to stretch credulity, even if it had come with an endorsement
from Bushman.
Worse, I'd been unable to make any kind of contact with Marckus.
As was his wont, he had vanished off the face of the planet. I'd called,
left messages, sent emails, but he wasn't answering. In the end, I had
been unable to put off the opportunity to travel any longer.
Hathaway's ability, therefore, to converse in hard-and-fast science and
engineering terms about Hutchison came as an enormous relief. The key
point was that he and a colleague, a South African called Alexis Pezarro,
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