Author's Note: This chapter may contain a slight AU in that within my own mind, I always imagined the Professor to have been about 30 when the S.S. Minnow was shipwrecked. I realize that Russell Johnson was about ten years older than his character, but then so was Bob Denver.

A Man of Conscience

The community table had been spread with a feast of the Professor's favourite dishes. But what was to have been a joyous celebration—the return of Dr. Hinkley to his own universe, and the potential ability to send a carrier wave over the low frequency AM band—had little more enthusiasm than a funeral dirge.

It had taken hours for both the Skipper and Mr. Howell to recover their composure: the burly seaman and the kind-hearted millionaire had both witnessed something that their minds could barely comprehend. That iridescent kaleidoscope had beckoned them into an unholy abyss, and it was only because of Gilligan's quick action—with the help of the three women—that the pair had been spared.

"Professor, what exactly did we see?" The Skipper's voice was hoarse.

The Professor had been pushing the food around on his plate. He, too, had not been immune from that almost irresistible pull from the chasm between universes. "I believe what we were witnessing was a suspension of time between our world and Hinkley's." He averted his eyes from his companions, hoping to avoid explaining to the others what Gilligan surprisingly already understood.

"But that light, Professor," began Mr. Howell, his voice shaky, even as his wife gently squeezed his forearm, "it was indescribably beautiful. It felt almost…alive."

"In a way," said Gilligan, seeing how difficult it was for the Professor to talk about what happened, "it was."

The Professor looked at the first mate, thanking him with a nod for coming to his aid. But he knew things couldn't end there. He recalled the aphorism, the truth will out. Maybe it's time for the truth to come out about a lot of things.

"Gilligan, thank you," he said, "but the fact is that light wasn't life." He closed his eyes, thinking of that isolated moment suspended in time. "It was death."

The others looked at him with dread.

"It was the flash from an atomic explosion in that universe. Isolated in one unending moment between our two worlds."

"But the radiation? The devastation?" spluttered the Skipper. "Those things are only supposed to last a split second."

"Whatever deviations existed between Hinkley's world and ours, time on both sides would have appeared stopped from whichever side you were viewing it. So, the atomic flash and subsequent detonation, from our perspective, was suspended within time."

"And that sound from the radio?" asked Mr. Howell.

The Professor shook his head. "I don't know. It could have been anything from the background noise from the space-time continuum to the plaintive sound the universe makes when one of its planets ceases to exist."

"He had to know what you knew, Professor," said Ginger.

Mary Ann finished her friend's thought, "Why would he go back to a world about to destroy itself?"

"For the same reason I would have," he began, "to atone for what he did."

"But, Professor," said Mrs. Howell, "you're nothing at all like that vile man."

"Thank you for that, Mrs. Howell." He smiled slightly in her direction, grateful for her confidence in him, but then his face became sombre again. "But I'm more like him than any of you realise."

A chorus of defence from his six friends denied what he was saying about himself. He let them talk things out amongst themselves, knowing that at the moment, he wouldn't have been able to get a word in anyway.

Finally, when the others had quieted, and the pall of silence had reclaimed the table, he began. "I was eleven when it happened. Funny, I still remember it like it was yesterday…"

*.*.*.*.*

"Mom, do you know where Dad keeps his books on microbes?" He was only half-listening to Red Skelton on the radio, as he turned the last page of the book he was reading.

"What do you want those for?" While his mother had come to indulge all his interests, his innate intelligence had pushed him so far ahead of his peers that she worried he was missing out on his childhood. Already, the University of Chicago was sending tutors to his elementary school, hoping that their interest would spur his family to decide on enrolling one of the youngest academics they'd ever had. He put his empty glass of milk beside him on the floor, as he, and his younger brother, Russ, laughed together at something Clem Kadiddlehopper said.

"I want to look up something." He was trying to sound serious, but he couldn't hide his laughter.

"It's probably in his study," she smiled along with him at the joke on the radio, while his three-year-old sister, Rebecca, squirmed in his mother's lap. "Do you want to get down, honey?" The young girl nodded, and jumped off the sofa to be next to her older brothers.

"Okay," he nodded at his mother's answer, turning back to listen to the radio.

Red Skelton gave his familiar sign off, "Good night and may God bless."

"This is Rod O'Connor for The Raleigh Cigarette's Program featuring Red Skelton. Stay tuned for Lum & Abner on most of these NBC stations. This has been an NBC presentation." The familiar NBC ding-dong-ding chime went off, and the show was over. With another commercial following about buying war bonds, and rationing.

"When will the war be over, Momma?" asked Russ. At seven years old, he was more familiar with a world at war than one at peace.

"Soon, honey," she said. "Soon."

Roy stood up, picking up his empty glass and book. "Mom, can I go look for the book now?" he asked.

"You'll have to ask your father when he comes up from the basement. You know how he feels about that study of his."

"Boy, do I." While neither of his parents had ever hit him or his siblings, his dad had made it very clear that certain areas of the house were off limits. He'd lost his radio privileges for a week because of entering the study without permission, to look for a book on geology. He wasn't about to repeat the same mistake twice.

His dad was a US Army Major stationed in Chicago, and he'd accidentally overheard part of a conversation between him and another officer about some project for New York they'd been working on. Roy never told anyone, because he remembered what they taught him in school about loose lips, sinking ships. Besides, except for his brother and sister there really wasn't anyone to tell. With all the tutoring and special attention he'd been receiving at school the last couple of years, what few friends he still had considered him weird that he liked studying as much as he did.

He heard his dad walking up the basement stairs; that third step always creaked like a scalded cat. Lately, his father looked tired, even when he wasn't in uniform, but Roy really wanted to find that book on microbes. He placed his empty glass in the kitchen sink, while he waited for his father to come upstairs.

"Dad," he ran to his father, who despite how tired he might have been always had a smile on his face for his children. "Dad, can I read your book about microbes?" he asked.

"Are they teaching you something about that in school already?"

"Nah, but the book I was reading talked a lot about them, and I wanted to look something up."

His father nodded his head. "Go to it, champ. In a few years, who knows you might be teaching me about them."

"You're the smartest person in the world, Dad. There's nothing I could teach you."

He ran back through the living room—Lum & Abner were talking to Martha Raye, who was on their show that week. It must have been pretty funny, because even Becky was laughing up a storm—but that could wait until he found the book he wanted.

The study doors were thick and heavy, and slid quietly on their tracks back into the walls when he pulled them apart. The blackout curtains were always kept drawn in there. Dad said it was because he had a lot of valuable books, and didn't want the sunlight to ruin the paper. There were books everywhere: on philosophy, science, math, literature; there were so many he'd read already, and so many more he still wanted to read.

"Microbes," he said, climbing up the study ladder to look on one of the shelves where he thought it ought to be. There was a book on the Spanish Influenza, another on polio, and still another on small pox, but nothing with the title of "microbes". He saw another one that wasn't bound like the others, and pulled it out reading the title, "The Long-Term Effects of Poison Gas on The Great War Veterans". That sounded like it might be interesting, even if it wasn't the book he'd been looking for.

He slid down the ladder (as he'd been told countless times not to do), and landed with a soft thump on the carpeted floor. Putting the book on his father's desk, he started to thumb through the pages: there were charts and graphs, and some photographs of people in hospital, when a random paper on the desk with some numerical equations caught his eye. He picked it up, looking at the calculations, when something struck him as wrong with the final equation. He worked on the numbers in his head again, and his answer still came out the same, different from what was on the paper.

His father entered the study, asking if he'd found the book he was looking for.

"I think so." He showed off his prize.

"That looks like some heavy reading, there."

"It's not that heavy." Smiling, he hefted the volume easily.

"Dad, did you know you got a mistake in your calculation?"

"What calculation?" His face turned as white as chalk. "What did you see?" He grabbed his son by his shoulders, shaking him gently.

"N-nothing. It was just sort of lying there, and it looked funny. The answer's not correct. That last fractal's wrong." His father looked at him strangely. "This paper?" He held it up. "Was that the one you were looking at?" His father's voice sounded angry.

"I'm-I'm sorry you're mad at me. I didn't mean to look at it. Honest." For the first time in his life, he was actually afraid of his father.

"No-no, Roy, I'm not angry. Which fractal did you say was wrong?"

He pointed to it, explaining the logic behind why the equation was wrong.

"Do you realize what you've done?"

"No, sir," he shook his head.

"You've saved us about three month's worth of work." He hugged his eldest son tightly. "Because of you, you may have just shortened this damned war."

*.*.*.*.*

"I shortened the war all right. I helped to complete the Manhattan Project. Of course, I didn't know it at the time."

The silence at the table was palpable, even the constant sounds from the tropical birds and insects had appeared to join the castaways solemnity.

It was Ginger who finally broke the silence. Her voice sounding far louder in that eerie quiet than it actually was, "You were eleven years old, Professor."

"You can't blame yourself for something like that," said Mary Ann. "You were just a child."

"Professor, someone would have eventually solved that same mistake, surely," added Mrs. Howell.

He shook his head, "But it wasn't someone else. It was me. Those people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are dead because of what I did."

"That's not true, Professor. There were people all over the country doing the math—from scientists to engineers to math majors," said Mr. Howell, knowingly. "You were just a cog in a humongous wheel, trying to end a terrible war."

"Don't you realise how much Hinkley and I are the same? I started down that same road that led to the obliteration of his world." He laughed harshly at the irony of it all, "I was the star pupil, courted by more universities than I can count."

He squeezed his eyes tight as much as to recall the memories of those days as to block them out.

"Even though I received my first degrees from USC and UCLA, I was spending time discussing relativity with Albert Einstein, quantum theory and particle physics with Enrico Fermi, even the neutron bomb with Samuel Cohen. I was on the fast-track to making my name in this new, unchartered field. It would have been so easy to do as Hinkley had done, except I had a chance meeting with Robert Oppenheimer."

"Gosh, you worked with all of those people, Professor?" asked Gilligan.

"I had no idea," said the Skipper, "I just thought you—"

He finished the Skipper's sentence, "worked in the Cleveland public school system. They were the only place that would hire me, after I refused to work any longer on something that could obliterate civilisation and end all life on this planet. I-I just couldn't continue on, knowing that eventually some madman might be set loose with a weapon I had helped develop."

After five years of knowing the Professor, they could understand why he felt the way he did.

"Needless to say, my decision put me at odds with my family. My father, who was a General by then, disowned me, and I couldn't put my mother, brother and sister in the middle of our quarrel. When Hinkley said he was on his own at twenty-two; so was I."

"But with all that happened, Professor, you proved you could never be like him," said Gilligan. "I was there when you tried to keep him from jumping through the hole!"

The Professor rose, "Don't you see? After we leave the island, the world is going to be such a different place than it was before we set sail from Hawaii. I know what I have to return to: Hinkley himself said it best, a life of mediocrity. And I can't continue to hide from myself anymore in that. I've had the opportunity to witness the darkest side of myself, and know that that will always be some part of me. If, you'll excuse me." He didn't wait for the others to reply, as he hurried from the table, following the trail to the lagoon; nothing they could say or do could wash the blood from his hands.

*.*.*.*.*

"Oh, the poor Professor," said Ginger, tears slowly falling down her cheeks.

"There must be something we can do for him," whispered Mary Ann, choking back her own tears.

"He's been living with this for a long time, girls," said the Skipper. "I'm not sure any of us are up to the task."

Mary Ann was livid. "You're not saying to give up on him are you? He's done so much good in his life, I'm sure of it. For us here on the island, too."

"Captain, this isn't the time to leave someone alone, even if it's something he thinks he wants."

"Lovey, you're certainly right about that."

"I know what it's like to think I'm a lone wolf," said Gilligan, "and that nobody cares what happens to me."

The others looked down at the table, ashamed at the way they had once treated the first mate.

"You're right, Gilligan," said the Skipper. "We're his family now. There may be a dark side to him, like he said, but we've seen the light side, and we can't let that ever be taken from him again."

*.*.*.*.*

The Skipper led the way with the other five following close behind; the Professor hadn't done anything to cover his tracks. He supposed that after what they had been told that they wouldn't want to follow him. For a genius, how wrong the man was. The question was what were they going to say; this was one situation where words were not going to be enough, no matter how heartfelt they were.

*.*.*.*.*

The light from the Skipper's torch illuminated the lagoon's beach enough to spot the Professor sitting with his back against a rock. It was just a silhouette, but it was enough.

"Professor," called Ginger and Mary Ann almost simultaneously.

He didn't acknowledge their presence, but threw a stone into the lagoon, watching the rings of ripples form through the tranquil water.

They all knew he was physically and emotionally exhausted from these past couple of days, which certainly didn't help matters.

It was Gilligan who first approached the Professor. "Do you mind if I sit here, Professor?"

"Do what you want, Gilligan," was his only response.

"You know you've got everyone really worried about you. Mary Ann and Ginger can't stop crying."

"There's no reason for them to cry over me. I made this bed, and I shall lie in it."

The first mate finally asked the question that he'd wanted to since earlier that day. "Hinkley wanted to jump through that hole or whatever it was? Why did you stop him?"

"As much as I hated everything he stood for, I didn't want him to die…not like that."

Ginger approached quietly, with Mary Ann by her side, "So, if you didn't want one man to die, and you did everything in your power to save him," she said.

"Then," began Mary Ann, "you never would have wanted thousands to die, either. Don't you see that Professor? You were a boy of eleven…"

"You could no more stop those attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki then, than you could have stopped the typhoon that stranded us here," said Mrs. Howell.

"Adults make decisions for war," said Thurston Howell III, "not children. Never children. Not even the brightest child in the world."

"If you've got blood on your hands, Professor, then so do I," began the Skipper, "I fought in that war, I know what I was fighting for and against."

"Please," his voice cracked, "just leave me alone."

There was a chorus of no in reply.

"We may not have been one in the beginning, but we're a family, now," said Mary Ann. "And real families don't let any member suffer alone." She kneeled alongside the Professor.

"You've suffered in silence too long, Professor," said Ginger, joining her roommate. "We've listened, and we've heard your anguish."

"No matter how much you think you could be like him," said Mary Ann gently. "We know you better than you think you know yourself."

Though his face was still shrouded in shadow, they heard his voice catch, as he tried to speak. Their Professor, a man who was never at a loss for words and who all too rarely revealed his emotions, was crying.