At first the article had aroused only amused disbelief, but among the list of the scientists involved, Decker found the name Dr. Harold Goodman. This made no sense at all. Goodman, as Decker knew from his frequent pronouncements, was an atheist. Well, not exactly an atheist. Goodman liked to talk about the uncertainty of everything. In his office at the university were two posters. The first was crudely hand-printed and stated: "Goodman's First Law of Achievement: The shortest distance between any two points is around the rules" (a philosophy which obviously had not set well with the dean). The second poster was done in a late 1960s-style psychedelic print and said: "I think, therefore, I'am. I think." Mixing the uncertainty of his own existence with his disbelief in God, Goodman had settled on referring to himself as "an atheist by inclination but an agnostic by practice." So why was a man like Goodman going off on some ridiculous expedition to study the Shroud of Turin?

Decker filed the information away in his memory and probably would have left it there had it not been for a phone call from an old friend, Tom Donafin. Tom was a reporter for the Courier in Waltham, Massachusetts, and had called about a story he was working on about corruption in banking – something which Knoxville had plenty of in 1978. After discussing the banking story Tom asked Decker if he had seen the article in Science.

"Yeah, I saw it," Decker answered. "Why?"

"I just thought you'd be interested in what old 'bushy brows' was up to," Tom laughed.

"Are you sure it's him? I didn't see him in any of the pictures."