Maculay did not hear him. He was looking down at Ava. "Doc," he said
slowly, "you'd better come along. Snooky, here, needs to be slowed down
to my level and you're the guy to do it."
Hanson did not tell Maculay that Ava's reconversion would take
no longer than his own; the doctor wanted to be in at the end of
this, good or bad. He merely nodded, then waited while Maculay made
arrangements to fly to the laboratory site. His name worked wonders;
an official plane was being warmed up by the time they left Larimore's
office and headed towards the airport.
* * * * *
Redmond greeted them with a hearty smile. Only Hanson, who had every
reason to doubt Redmond's happiness at Maculay's return, saw the
falsity of the greeting. Redmond, of course, was on a spot; yet, the
man was convinced of his own correct reasoning, and this justified
his acts. Redmond's greeting was less hearty to Hanson; obviously
Redmond would have preferred to deal with Maculay alone. Having the
doctor there might be awkward, for Maculay might be talked into belief,
whereas Hanson was more than likely to ignore the words and their
import, and deal entirely upon whether the sayer of the words was lying
or telling the truth.
Redmond believed in a swift attack.
Once the original greeting was over, he plunged in: "We spent some
time trying to locate you as soon as it became evident that the
energetic streak that went through the solar system produced the sort
of radiation that we had been theorizing over," said Redmond. "Lacking
Maculay, I was asked to open your secret file and see what could be
made of it."
"You discovered the trouble, then?"
"Yes."
Cliff relaxed. He had been under a strain visible only to Hanson; the
doctor nodded. When a man is in a mental tizzy because he's hit upon
an insoluble dilemma, it makes no difference who solves it. The weight
of strain went out of Maculay; the mental run-around that had kept him
fighting to the exclusion of everything else was gone. The couple of
months of rest had done wonders; now the final true release from strain
added to it. Give Maculay another few months of absolute freedom from
strain, and Cliff would be ready to take on the world with a hand tied
behind him.
But Hanson knew there was trouble ahead, for, unless he were very
incorrect, Redmond was bulling it through and--
"You've discovered the error?"
Redmond laughed. "Your equations showed that negative space cancelled
real space."
"Yes. And I could figure no other way."
"This is true in limited cases," said Redmond. "The consensus of
opinion is that the streak of energy was nothing more than the mutual
destruction of a cylinder of space being cancelled by the passage of
a spacecraft enveloped in a spherical field of negative space. Upon
working with that theory in mind and applying other bits of true
evidence gained from the readings and measurements of the streak, we
have solved your dilemma."
"Let's see our equations," suggested Maculay.
"Rather," said Redmond, "let's visit the spacecraft."
"All right."