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Title: Dark recess

Author: George O. Smith

Illustrator: Peter Poulton

Release date: April 18, 2023 [eBook #70590]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Columbia Publications, Inc

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DARK RECESS ***





                              DARK RECESS

                          By George O. Smith

                     (author of "The World-Mover")

                    FEATURE NOVEL OF COSMIC SECRETS

          Clifford Maculay was the one man who could explain
         the curious shift in the universe, which was far more
         than the academic matter it seemed to be. But Maculay
          had been "cured", and was no longer interested....

      There are two basic ways to treat personality difficulties.
      One: change the personality. Two: remove the psychic blocks
      which are at the root of the trouble. The first method may
      be simpler, in some cases, and may be accomplished without
          apparent harm. But what if an individual's worth to
      society is so entangled with his personality troubles that
        when you change the latter, the former disappears, too?

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
        Future combined with Science Fiction Stories July 1951.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




                                   1


Clifford Maculay reacted instantly to the doctor's question; he became
half-angry, completely indignant.

Doctor Hanson smiled. "You're not angry at the question," he said
quietly; "you're not even surprised that a man of seventy should ask
such a question. What you are indignant about is that your mind denies
such a need. Cliff, you're trying to run your body with your brain."

"Naturally. So what has my love life--?"

"You've got glands too," remarked Hanson. "And some of them are damned
important to mental balance."

Maculay sat forward on the chair, tense and alert. He was not
accustomed to being browbeaten; Maculay gave the orders and other
people jumped. Now that he was on the receiving end of the deal, he was
preparing for the battle of wits. But Hanson had seen many such men in
forty-odd years of medicine. Hanson did not see Maculay the Mind; he
saw a man of thirty-eight, soft from lack of exercise, underweight from
the constant burning away of nervous energy. He saw a fine physical
machine being run into an early grave or a sanatorium, because the mind
behind those sharp blue eyes was too damned ignorant to understand
that it could not trade the worn-out body for a new model with white
sidewall tires, automatic defroster, and long-playing record attachment.

"Relax," said Hanson; "I'm not going to argue with you."

"Good. Now let's get down to business."

"Exactly what do you want?"

Maculay pondered for a moment. "Do you understand variable-matrix
radiation mechanics?"

"Probably as little as you know synaptic pressure theory."

"That's the trouble. I can't explain in detail what I want. I can only
explain by analogy. Look, Doc, for eight years I've been experimenting
with some mathematics along an entirely new field of theory.
Indications are that gross matter can exceed the velocity of light
under certain conditions; but in attempting to define these conditions
by mathematical formulation I've hit a snag."

"What manner of snag?"

Cliff leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. He was
physically relaxed, now, but only Doctor Hanson could hazard a guess as
to how much of this man's metabolism went into the job of keeping that
big brain in high gear.

"Physical matter cannot, of course, exceed the speed of light in
universal space. However, normal space is no longer normal when it is
warped by electrostatic fields, electromagnetic flux, or gravitational
lines. These universal effects produce a warping of physical space
to such an extent that the warped area is no longer a part of, or
connected in any way with the universal space we know. It becomes a
small island of separate space which may be accelerated or retarded.
That's the snag, Doctor."

"I don't see it."

"I always end up with one equation that has two answers. Theoretically,
one must be real and one must be imaginary, somewhat like the solution
to a simple quadratic; in that case you can disregard the answer that
tells you that you are confronted with a minus quantity of mass, for
instance, and you can select the positive quantity as being correct
with neither difficulty nor ambiguity. In this case, being more complex
by far, I find two roots indicating a positive and negative space,
mutually inimical. And, what causes the trouble is the fact that the
determinant depends upon the development of a negative-gravitic field."

"Well--?"

Maculay laughed bitterly. "This is sheer nonsense; like dividing by
zero."

Hanson shrugged. "So?"

"Obviously I have made an error."

       *       *       *       *       *

Doctor Hanson again shrugged, wondering what the man was getting
at. Electrical engineers confronted with a tough problem in vector
analysis consulted other electrical engineers; they did not bring their
unruly vectors to a psychiatrist or physician and hope to have them
solved. They came to medicine and psychiatry when they began trying
to integrate and plot the rhythmic sway of their secretary's hips,
or began to see the outline of a woman's lips in the catenary of a
suspension bridge.

"Obviously," nodded Hanson.

"So here it is again, Doctor. I've been back and forth across my
equations for the past eleven months and always come back to the same
errata."

"But what can I do?"

"Someone must check my equations--someone who is viewing them as a
competent, but unbiased, observer."

"An excellent idea."

Maculay spread helpless hands wide. "I sound like an egomaniac," he
said, "but there is no other man on earth who can follow my mathematics
but I."

"Not even the thirteen fellows who understand Einstein?"

Maculay snorted. "Understood," he said emphasizing the last syllable.
"Einstein was difficult when first made public; nowadays there are
plenty of men who know more about Einstein's theories than the man
himself. In my own case it is similar. No other man has had a chance
to study my theories; I have a few adherents who try to follow them,
but they have not the full time to put to the job and so they are far
behind. Besides, I'd trust none of them."

"I see."

"Ergo, Doc, what I say is this: You are to hypnotize me. You are to
give me a post-hypnotic suggestion that I am to forget the error in
my calculations, that I am to recheck them carefully and completely,
without knowing that some factor in them is in error. Then and only
then can I locate it; as soon as I locate this error, I am to remember
everything."

"Supposing your mathematics is not in error but is entirely
correct--suppose no error truly exists?"

"There is that possibility; but if the paradox is true, I will have at
least been forced to forget that I once believed an error existed. But
I must check this math as a competent and unbiassed observer."

"That can be done."

"Good; now let's get going and let's have no more nonsense about my
glands."

"This I can do; I will help you."

Maculay relaxed while the doctor produced his hypnoscope and set it up
on the table. With Maculay's cooperation, he was in the hypnotic trance
in a matter of seconds.

       *       *       *       *       *

Doctor Hanson looked at the man. This was probably the first time that
the entire man had relaxed, mind and body, in years. But Hanson did not
see the point: Maculay may have run into a mathematical paradox, but
it was not of honest mathematics. Figures do not lie, but liars can
figure; it is more than possible that a brain will introduce an error
in order that the facts of the case be unrecognized. Hanson nodded
quietly. Man was mind and glands and body and appetite, bones, hide,
and ulcers. If a sick mind can produce a sickness of the body, the
reverse is true. Cliff's error was not in his mathematics; it was in
his life.

Of all the things Maculay needed, more work along the same line with
no relaxation was not among the list. What Maculay needed--or would
eventually get in a sanatorium--was a long period of relaxation. Fun
and games; a bit of competition; a hangover, and the sheer physical
delight of wrapping an arm about the slender waist of a female and
swaying to and fro to the rhythmic beat of tomtoms and the howl of a
well beaten clarinet.

At seventy, Jay Hanson had learned the impatience of youth. Maculay had
a lot of time to finish his equations. Scissor a year of Maculay's life
and he could then finish this; let him go on as he was and he would
burn himself out at a mere fifty.

He looked at Maculay seriously. "You have been working too hard," he
said.

The reply came instantly, like the echo of an automaton.

Hanson nodded to himself. It was obvious; when the burning drive of
that demanding brain was stilled, the subconscious recognized the fact
that Maculay was working too hard.

"Maculay's Equations are in error," said the doctor.

Cliff Maculay stirred, shook his head, and began to disagree violently.
Then he relaxed, since he had come there to solve an error; but he had
become tense again.

Hanson shook his head unhappily; this was going to take time and
effort. He must take this conversion slowly, since it was apparent that
the slightest touch upon dangerous ground would trigger the big brain
into reaction and perhaps undo in the space of a second the work of
several hours.

Gradually, prying and working, Hanson began to elicit information from
Maculay. Bits of character traits, an impulse suppressed, an attitude
formed in youth, an impediment created to shut out the demands of
normal living, desires for this and wants for that. Hanson looked at
them clinically, then either reversed them or let them stand, depending
upon their possible affect. Each phase took time; it is not simple to
take a man who has never held a billiard cue and make him believe that
excellence at the pool table is an evidence of a sharp eye and fine
coordination instead of the result of a misspent youth. And Cliff's
attitude towards women was troublesome. His mother, the youthful
reading of too much of King Arthur, or Lord knew what, had given
Maculay the odd idea that a woman was a sort of goddess, not to be
touched by the hand of clod-like man. To reverse this attitude towards
a more practical attitude was difficult, since the reversion must not
be complete. Hanson did not want Cliff to reverse completely, to the
other extreme, where the man would go out and start treating women like
galley slaves, punching bags, or chattels--which, in fact, was about
the way Maculay had expected to be treated.

Hanson took a brief rest from the hard job, by recalling and telling
Maculay every risque story he could remember.

Then he was at it again, prying and probing, and reversing Maculay's
attitude on gambling, liquor, tobacco, and politics. He made a slight
revision on Cliff's idea of proper dress; the physicist had a horror
of appearing dirty, even when engaged in the dirtiest of jobs. With
some effort the doctor convinced Maculay that a mechanic emerging
from beneath a car with a face full of grime was not automatically an
undesirable character, either to men or women. The crux of the matter
was whether he liked that condition of dirt or not.

       *       *       *       *       *

With a number of factors accomplished, Hanson took a deep breath, felt
his pulse, counted his heartbeat and respiration, and fished for a pill
from his desk and swallowed it quickly before he went on. The hardest
part was to come.

Cliff took himself seriously, far too seriously. With delicate verbal
barbs, Hanson began to poke fun at some of the imbecilities of pedantic
reasoning. Maculay offered resistance at first, but Hanson worked him
over the ground carefully, pointing out that Maculay, the only man in
the world capable of understanding the variable-matrix wave mechanics,
was in no position to snort at his fellow man. After all, Gertrude
Stein had once gained great popularity on the theory that no one could
understand her and therefore she must be sheer genius. Eventually he
had Cliff laughing over an old limerick:

    _The wonderful family Stein,
    There's Gert, and there's Ep, and there's Ein.
    Gert's poems are bunk;
    Ep's statues are junk,
    And nobody understands Ein._

Hanson worked over Maculay's Equations with a bit of acid humor. In
third person, he had Maculay chuckling over the physicist who worked
for years on some mathematics that did not come out even. Gradually,
the doctor convinced his patient that he was not Clifford Maculay, the
renowned abstract mathematician, but Maculay's nephew--the black sheep
of the family--who viewed the brainy members with as much distaste as
they viewed him. Young Cliff had often been mistaken for his brilliant
uncle, and found this funny, since he felt himself smarter than his
namesake; he, young Cliff, had fun whereas his uncle had only hard work
to show for his life. Actually, any pondering of his uncle's work made
young Cliff sick to his stomach, and he was glad to ignore such things;
the whole theory was so much stupidity.

And for one year, Clifford Maculay, physicist, would be as different
from his former self as was possible without breaking the law to bits.

"At the end of this year, you will return to your apartment in
Washington, take a good night's sleep, and awaken as Doctor Clifford
Maculay. Then, and only then will you remember; and you will realize
furthermore that this job of relaxation has been forced upon you
for your own good. You will then be able to solve the error in your
calculations."

Hanson paused for a moment, pondering as to the advisability of
giving the hypnotized physicist a key-word to bring him out of the
post-hypnotic suggestion. But Doctor Hanson was seventy years old; he
knew all too well that a year from this moment he might be dead and
gone. He viewed it calmly, but not disinterestedly, and decided against
a key-word; it only introduced a conflicting factor.

Let the man awaken of his own accord.

Then he awakened Maculay, who sat back in his chair with a chuckle,
reached for a cigarette from the box on Hanson's desk, and puffed at it
with relish.

"How do you feel?" asked the doctor.

"Like a million," said Maculay.

"Good. Come back in one year. I'll have my girl make an appointment.
For now, we're all finished."

       *       *       *       *       *

Doctor Hanson stood and watched Maculay head for the door; the
physicist's step had a certain bounce, curtailed by the fact that the
unused muscles of his body were not used to the catlike stride of the
completely balanced, healthy man. A few days of that sort of bounce and
Maculay would have it. The door closed exuberantly and Cliff was on his
way to a one-year binge.

He paused once outside of the doctor's office. Ava Longacre was bent
over some notes, and Cliff viewed her contemplatively. She stood up and
smiled at him. It was a sort of professional smile, the kind she gave
all of the doctor's visitors; it made no difference to Ava whether the
visitor were seventy or seventeen. She gave each of them the same dry
smile.

Cliff crossed the office in a quick stride and put both hands on her
shoulders. He drew her forward, felt her instant stiffening relax; with
a cheerful upsurge of spirit he put an arm around her, tilted her face
upward with his free hand and kissed her. He felt her yield to him,
press against him softly, then respond.

Cliff knew he could have her, but in that moment he also knew that he
really did not want her. Ava was a bit over thirty; she had a quiet,
mature quality--good-looking, but far past the radiant flush of youth.
A hard-working woman, efficient, intelligent, Hanson's nurse, medical
aide, and receptionist, did not offer the fun and frivolity that Cliff
Maculay sought.

He stepped back and smiled down at her. "Nice," he said with a chuckle.
Then he kissed her again, lightly on the mouth, turned, and left the
office.

Her cheeks burning, Ava Longacre stamped into Hanson's office.

"What goes on?" she demanded. "What on earth did you do to that man?"

"Why?"

"He came in here like the proverbial absent-minded professor, his eyes
blank and sort of muttering to himself about radiation mechanics or the
like. He didn't even look at me."

"Then?"

"On his way out he sort of grabbed me and kissed me."

Hanson nodded appreciatively. "You liked it?" he chuckled.

Ava sat down, landing in the chair with a thud. "When a man puts a hand
on me and my knees turn to jelly," she said quietly, "I oscillate madly
between hating his guts and wanting him to try it again. That sort of
thing would play hell with a girl's morals."

"Shucks," chuckled Hanson. "I've just violated all of the rules of
medicine. I've just treated a man against his will--and turned an
introvert inside out."

"You sure did," nodded Ava.

"He'll be back again in a year--and normal, then."

"But how do you turn an introvert inside out?"

"Reverse his sense of values."

"But--"

"His memory pattern? That's difficult. To make him more or less stable
for that year, I sort of tampered with his memory on a temporary basis,
also. He thinks he is all sorts of things that he has never been--but
has probably wanted to be from time to time."

"Is that why he kissed me?"

"Partly. But you're the woman he should have when normal, not as he is
now. That's--"

"So you gave him a false memory, complete with a lot of details to
explain just about every possible question, hey?"

"Yep."

"And just how was this background furnished?" she demanded.

"Remember it is only temporary and need not be complete. Just
sufficient to justify its being."

"Don't quibble."

Hanson laughed. "Well, when a man of seventy starts to furnish a bit
of background for a youth of thirty-odd, what better than a few true
experiences from the old man's past."

Ava Longacre snorted. "I'll bet you were a hellion in your youth," she
snapped. "And in your old age you're a nasty old lecher."

Hanson squinted at her. "I wish I were forty again," he leered. "But
worry not, m'lady. Maybe the basic idea was mine, but Maculay kissed
you on his own account. And I commend his taste."

Ava uttered a single, explosive "Oh!" and stalked out angrily, slamming
the door behind her. She leaned against the hardwood panels and
listened to the roar of Hanson's laughter die in a slow gurgle. She
pegged it properly as part hysteria; the hours of hard mental effort
spent on Maculay would have taken a lot of pep out of the Old Boy,
and he would then clutch at anything remotely amusing and make an
uproariously funny incident out of it. But this was not funny.

She remembered Maculay's hand on her, and her body went supple against
the door. Then by sheer mental effort she snapped her head erect and
walked from the door, determined to forget it.

Ava did not recognize the fact that for hours, days, or months--and
perhaps forever--she might be telling herself that it was a good thing
to forget about.




                                   2


The _Island Princess_ took off on schedule, arrowed into the blackness
of space, and set her nose-sight on Venus. She was forty hours a-space
when it happened. And the _Island Princess_ was one of the four
spacecraft close enough to the thing to have its presence recorded in
the celestial globe.

It came with a roar of sound from the radio, which eliminated all
communications instantly, and continued on a diminishing power for an
hour until it fell below the cosmic noise level. It appeared in the
celestial globe as an ebon shaft; measurements made it a half mile
in diameter but extending from beyond the range of the globe in both
directions. It was as straight as it could be. On the other ships, the
same facts were noted.

Upon the several planets of the solar system, cosmic-ray counters
went crazy. Showers of unprecedented violence bathed the solar system
in a raging torrent of high-energy particles. The showers continued,
diminishing in intensity as time went on; the slower particles arriving
last, of course.

But the one thing that caused consternation throughout the entire solar
system was a sickening _shift_. Spacecraft and planet gave a tiny,
queasy slip, sort of like a heavy man who has just trod upon a grape.
Things move according to their mass and according to their distance
from the black shaft of energy. On planets, it was just enough to
cause fear; the most infinitesimal waver in the constant course of the
planets awakens racial fear. In spacecraft, the shift was more violent,
but here people were prepared for a bit of wobble.

[Illustration: On planets, the shift was just enough to cause fear;
auroras flamed for an hour....]

The auroras flamed bright for an hour; as soon as the shift had
shaken the wits out of every human in the solar system, the big
observatories set their big glasses on the fixed stars and consulted
quadrant-protractors to ascertain what the shift had done. On
photographic plates of operating telescopes, the shift was barely
noticeable upon the images of brighter stars. The dimmer ones had
danced aside and back too swiftly for the emulsion to register. But it
had been a swift jiggle up and back; now things were as they had been
once more save for the big mystery that caused the radio lanes to buzz,
and made men ask their neighbors what it could have been.

       *       *       *       *       *

Captain Bardell of the _Island Princess_ went to the salon after the
radio had told him what little could be told about the incident. He
told the passengers what he knew as a matter of interest, and because
they had been as close to the phenomenon as any other human being.

Cliff Maculay, bent back across the bar with his elbows hooked over the
edge and a glass in his right hand, chuckled amusedly.

"But this isn't funny," complained a comely woman in a strapless gown
at his left.

"Dorothy, darling, you're wrong," he laughed.

"I suppose you know what it is?" came the cynical reply from the
red-head on Cliff's right.

"Helen, that 'thing' was a manifestation of the application of
variable-matrix wave mechanics to intrinsic space by the real and/or
unreal roots of negative space."

"That's utter gibberish."

Maculay laughed. "Verily," he chuckled. "But my revered Uncle Clifford
will--about now--be telling the world the same thing in about the same
incomprehensible collection of dictionary fodder."

Captain Bardell heard, and came to stand before Maculay. "Clifford?" he
said uncertainly. "Clifford Maculay?"

"Right name but the wrong character," said Maculay, sipping from his
glass. "Doctor Clifford is the genius in the family; Cliff, the nephew,
has only genius for getting into mischief without getting into trouble
about it. To each his own," he chanted, lifting his glass in a toast.

Bardell was openly disappointed. "I'd hoped you might give us an idea
of what was going on."

Maculay turned, rapped the bar with the heel of his glass to get
attention, and then turned back to the captain. "I can," he said
cheerfully. "But do you have the faintest idea of why nephew was
relegated to the Outer Darkness?"

Everybody, listening to Cliff, shook their collective heads.

Maculay laughed. "They had me studying under him for years. Doctor
Maculay is a slave driver and a martinet. Cigarettes, liquor, and wild
women are annoying things that detract from the single-purposedness of
life. Doctor Maculay is the kind of duck who would rather work overtime
than make frolic with a dame--and he expects everybody who works with
him to do the same. He also pays them accordingly, since a small room,
a sterile diet, and a minimum of clothing are all that is necessary for
any man dedicated to science."

"So?" asked Bardell, a bit angry at this man for belittling one of the
solar system's greatest minds.

"So Cliff, the ne'er-do-well, used to take a few of Uncle Clifford's
well-flanged ideas, add a character, stir well with a villain and a
dame, and emerge regularly with a bit of science fiction. I was Ed
Lomax, one of Larimore's cover names until John used the right name
instead of the pseudonym, and people started to write fan letters to
Clifford Maculay, MM, PhD, et al. Shortly afterwards I was out of a
job."

"Then you do understand some of this?"

Maculay grinned and nodded.

"But Doctor Maculay will be able to figure this thing out?"

Cliff nodded again, and smiled. "Good thing, too," he chuckled. "He
is the only man in the system that can handle it without going off
half-cocked. Maculay may be a stuffed shirt but he is no imbecile.
Tinkering with inverted space--or pouring a quart of nitric acid over
a half-gallon of glycerine--might be deadly unless you understand
what you're doing. Maculay is super-cautious about anything that
he does not understand completely. I cannot say the same for his
underlings, who casually point out that mankind had been using
electricity for years and years before they knew anything about it.
But," he said with a laugh, "enough of the manifestation of the unreal
roots of variable-matrix wave mechanics. Maculay's wastrel--but
interesting--nephew is about to enjoy life."

Cliff winked at Dorothy, patted Helen on a bare shoulder, and then led
Alice towards the dance floor.

"Doesn't this mean anything to you?" she asked him.

"Uh-huh," he said with a smile. "At about three cents per word; that
black shaft of energy is an idea coming to life."

"What kind of idea?"

"Um--let's see. That black shaft of energy was really a spacecraft,
passing through the solar system at a velocity higher than the speed of
light. Some extra-solar race, colonizing the galaxy. What we detected
was the space-wake of such a craft. You have no idea of the energy
kicked up when a body passes through space at a velocity higher than
that of light. Then Our Hero, bullied by his superiors, shows that he
has measured the energy-curve and solved the secret of interstellar
travel."

A slight frown came to Maculay's face. "The trouble is that this
super-galactic race has learned how to create negative space before
the ship and re-create positive space behind it to keep from having
the--the--" A bead of sweat came upon Maculay's face and he became
nervous. He looked around, almost wildly, before continuing,
"the--entire universe," he concluded lamely. "Negative space is
self-propagating, you know." Maculay finished this last with a wince of
pain.

Then Maculay straightened up with a laugh. "That's lousy," he said.
"Larimore wouldn't buy it. We'll have him go out and meet some
four-armed monsters who think that human meat is superb. That's crummy
too, but it's an idea. C'mon, m'lady, let's dance!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The telephone rang on Doctor Hanson's desk. It was Ava, from the outer
office. "Man by the name of Redmond to see you, doctor," she reported.

"Has he an appointment?"

"No, that's why I'm calling. He claims it is a matter of impor--No,
Mister Redmond, you cannot go--"

The doctor's door opened abruptly and the man called Redmond strode in.
"Where is Maculay?" he demanded sharply.

Doctor Hanson looked up at Redmond calmly. With insulting deliberation,
Hanson eyed the man, while Redmond began to fume. Redmond was tall and
thin, a bit too tall and a bit too thin in the doctor's estimation.
He was thirty to Maculay's thirty-eight, but did not smoothe his
impatience and ambition behind a cloak of politeness.

"Sit down, Mister Redmond. I'm interested in you."

"Where is Maculay?" came the repeated demand.

Hanson smiled slowly. "I'm interested in trying to discover just what
it is about abstract mathematicians that makes them think that they
can stamp their way through life, disregarding not only the rights of
others, but their own as well."

"Enough of this damned foolishness--"

"Shut up, you young whippersnapper!" roared the doctor in a voice that
rattled the windows. Redmond shut up. "I'll have respect from you,
Redmond. And if I don't get it, you'll leave. Understand?"

Redmond bristled.

"Relax," said Hanson. "I'm no longer able to punch your face as you
request by your actions, but I know several men who would be most happy
to help me in this matter. Now, what is it that you want?"

"I want to know where Maculay is."

"I don't know."

"Damn it, you do know."

"Redmond, I'm not a liar."

Redmond leaned forward over the doctor's desk. "Maculay came here," he
said, "and I know why. Maculay did not return from here, and I want to
know why."

Hanson leaned back in his chair. "Doctor Maculay came here and
discussed his difficulties with me," he said. "During the course of
the discussion, it became quite evident that Maculay was on the verge
of a nervous breakdown because of too much hard work and too little
relaxation. I convinced him that a long vacation would enable him to
live and be productive longer than he might enjoy if he went back and
killed himself on his job."

"So where did he go on this vacation?"

"Maculay admitted that if a single soul knew his address, they'd be
sending him problems within a week. He took off, destination unknown."

"Did he say when he would be back?"

"In one year."

"A year! My God! We can't wait!"

"Can't is an impossible word," remarked Hanson.

"But we must find him."

"You might start combing the solar system," suggested the doctor.

"Impossible. Yet--"

"Redmond, there have been many indispensable men in history who were
not so indispensable that their leaving caused affairs to stop short.
I admit that their plans often flopped, or that history took a little
longer to get itself made when their driving force died. But not a man
on record has ever been truly indispensable."

"But you don't understand," complained Redmond. "It's about that blast
of energy that shocked space."

"I guessed as much. What is--or was it?"

"We don't know; Maculay does, or can deduce its meaning."

       *       *       *       *       *

Redmond started to stride up and down the office at this point, talking
half to himself and half to the world in general. Through the still
open door. Ava could hear him, and since the danger of attack had been
averted, she decided to close the door. But Hanson waved her inside
where she sat in one of the inconspicuous chairs along the far wall.
Both Ava and the doctor watched Redmond quietly.

"From what little we know of it by direct observation it came all at
once--a shaft of energy as instantaneous as birth. Where once was empty
space, this bolt of energy was created. The energies it created showed
no directional qualities, and it extends as far in either direction
from here as we care to imagine. The distant energies are still
coming in from both directions, diminishing because of the tremendous
distances, but still showing nothing directional."

"But this shaft of energy must have come from somewhere?"

"Did it?" exploded Redmond. "Did it come from somewhere--or did
it burst into being instantly from one end of the universe to the
other like the creation of a rope from nothing all along its length?
Actually, we know this: Its duration was as close to instantaneous as
anything might be. The rest of the phenomenon was merely persistence of
the energies it created."

"Those are questions that I cannot answer."

"Maculay could."

"You assume that this thing might be in Maculay's field?"

Redmond nodded. "We charted the energy-curve," he said. "Then one of
the boys integrated the curve and came up with a formula for the curve
which I saw and without any trouble at all reduced to one of Maculay's
Equations. Do you know what this means?"

"No. Of course not."

"This means that the validity of Maculay's Equations is proven
fact. Just as Maxwell's Equations were proved by the existence of
electromagnetic waves in nature, so are Maculay's Equations proved by
the existence of this manifestation of the real and unreal roots of
space, occurring in nature." Redmond resumed pacing again. "What is
maddening," he said, "is the fact that we do not know where it came
from."

Hanson shrugged. "You said it sort of leaped into being."

       *       *       *       *       *

Redmond paused and beat one fist down on the doctor's desk for
emphasis. "So it seems to our blind, deaf, stupid senses who plod along
the universe limited to the speed of light or sound. Man--the fleet
bullet snaps past your ear at a speed faster than sound. Can your
limited senses tell me whence it came?"

"Yes."

Redmond shook his head. "Not from the sound of the _Snap_!" he
snapped. "You tell from the sound of the gun--which comes later! With
a silencer, you would be unable to line the flight up. So," said
Redmond, staring at the wall again, "something fired a bolt of energy
that propagated faster than light, creating its own negative space as
it passed. What it was we shall never know. But--" and he bored at
Hanson with sharp eyes,--"get me Maculay and we shall follow it into
interstellar space!"

"And if Maculay were to die tomorrow?"

"Then we would follow it sooner or later anyway. A bit more fumbling,
a bit more walking an unfamiliar way in the dark, but we would get
there." Redmond looked at the doctor solemnly for a moment. "A year?"

"A year."

"Hell," snapped Redmond, "in a year we can do it ourselves! A year!
Hanson, Cliff Maculay has always kept a volume of data from me. I am
going to open his desk and get that volume, and go to work on this
thing myself. Were he here he would forbid me, but he is not here. I--"

"Why are you telling me this?" asked Hanson.

"Someone must be told, and I--" Redmond trailed off uncertainly. Then
he nodded and left the office as abruptly as he had come in.

Ava blinked. "What do you make of him?" she asked uncertainly.

"Very simple. His is the case of not-quite-genius working at the
feet of true genius. His pattern is poorly aped after Maculay's
forcefulness, but obviously lacks Maculay's weight. He wants to give
the impression that he is cut of the same cloth as Maculay. He is
uncertain of himself, or he would not bluster and threaten; nor would
he be so completely at sea without Maculay. He has a frustration;
Maculay's secret data has been withheld from him. He is jealous of
Maculay and also fears Maculay or he would not make a confession to me
that he was about to break orders. Furthermore, he is convinced that he
can solve this thing without Maculay's help, but wants other people to
believe it also."

"But could he get into trouble?"

Hanson laughed tolerantly. "Any man who has lived beyond the age of
eighteen months can get into trouble," he said. "And it's good for
a man to get into a bit of trouble occasionally. Security is a fine
goal, but it is danger that sharpens the wits and eventually sets the
character into such self-confidence that his security comes from within
rather than without."

He leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. He was not quite
correct in telling Redmond that he understood nothing of Maculay's
work. During the hours Hanson had hypnotic rapport with Cliff, he had
absorbed quite a bit of Maculay's theories. Not that Hanson could stand
in Maculay's shoes--or even his baby slippers for that matter--but he
had a fair idea of what Maculay was driving at. He took this on faith
rather than a real understanding--as any man might nod his head and
accept the formulation of the three degrees of infinity because some
bright man told him that such existed, one still might not understand
why the number of spots on a line and the number of spots on a
plane--when a plane has an infinite number of lines and each line an
infinite number of spots--were both of the same degree of infinity.

Something niggled at Hanson's mind--something important in just plain
horse-logic that had come to him fouled up in a barrage of words and
formulations that were so much triple-talk to the man untutored in
abstract theory on variable-matrix wave mechanics. In the maze of
completely confusing theories, it was like the sighting of a shaped
stone arrowhead in the rubble of a landslide, or finding an empty
tomato can lying on the absolutely barren and completely useless fifth
satellite of Saturn.

Someone had shouted "Two plus two equals four" amid the babble of an
insane asylum, and it made sense.

Hanson ordered his whirling thoughts, marshalled them as only a man who
has pursued the mysteries of the human mind for fifty years could do,
and made his recollections come out consecutively.

And then he hit the desk with his hand. "Negative space depends upon
the generation of a negative-gravitic field," he muttered. "Which
produces the unreal root, and positive and negative space are mutually
inimical."

"What was all that?" asked Ava.

Hanson shook his head. "Damn it, Redmond is right. We _need_ Maculay!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Ava stared at the doctor. "But...."

"Ava, from what I gather, Redmond is about to get into the production
of a negative-gravitic field, which will generate negative space, which
will destroy this space. Doubtless that shaft of energy, so called, was
nothing but a shaft of negative space that met with and cancelled real
space with the resulting outburst of energy."

"But--"

"We need Maculay," said Hanson solemnly. "No one will believe me, for
I obviously know far too little of the facts. I admit that I am just
guessing, but I have the feeling that the error in Cliff's Equations
was no error at all. What drove Maculay into a mental whirly-gig was
the fact that he had discovered at the end of his fingertips the
ability to destroy the solar system--or destroy something equally as
big. His was the shock of the child who has been playing with matches
in a powder-house and discovers long afterwards just what fate he had
escaped by sheer luck."

"But what are we going to do?"

Hanson smiled confidently. "We're going to get Maculay back here long
enough to tell us the truth."

"But you don't know where he's gone."

"Since Cliff now has all of the instincts of a tomcat," chuckled
Hanson, "all we need do is to imagine where a tomcat would go--and go
there. Ava, if you were a brazen hussy, where would you go to huss?"

Ava froze. "I'm not!" she snapped, "and I wouldn't know."

"Maculay went to Venus," said the doctor, "where reformers,
theologians, and politicians have not taken all of the fun, chance, and
sting out of life."

"But how are you going to get him back?"

Hanson shook his head. "I'm not," he said; "no spaceline would take
me. I'm seventy, a little creaky in the arthritis, a bit leaky in the
pump, and a trifle sclerosic in the arterios. I admit that I am the
healthiest doddering old man on earth--but it is on earth that I shall
stay."

"Then--" said Ava uncertainly. Her eyes began to widen with growing
understanding and she backed away slightly.

Hanson nodded. "You're going to go get him."

"I'm not."

Hanson shook his head. "You'll be safe," he said. "At the present
moment you have too many inhibitions to rouse a stir in Cliff Maculay."

Ava snorted angrily. She was still forgetting Maculay; in fact she
forgot him four or five times each day. Each time she reminded herself
that it was a good thing that she did not 'go' for his type of man
since the two of them would never get along.

Defensively, Ava said, "I'm to go to Venus and comb the entire planet
for a man on a binge?"

Doctor Hanson chuckled. "For he who knows the answer, Cliff Maculay
would leave a trail a mile wide," he said. "But you'd never make the
grade, Ava."

"You're quite right," she said.

Hanson grunted unintelligibly. It sounded like agreement to Ava, but
was actually a grunt of disgust. The doctor was old enough to be beyond
the sparring age, and he was disgusted at the sidelong mental attitude
of a race that admitted that love, marriage, and a family were at
the bottom of all effort--and then invented croquet, television, and
chaperones to make it difficult.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hanson looked at his nurse, and shook his head slowly. He was willing
to bet his hat that Ava remembered every line in Maculay's face. And
that her dislike of Maculay was as genuine as a seven dollar bill,
Hanson would also bet money on. He had not been untying mental knots
for fifty years without being able to listen to one statement and
hear the truth unspoken between the words. He watched her stand there
uncomfortably, and knew that she was uncomfortable because she knew
that he knew what she was trying to hide to herself. Deliberately
letting her squirm, Hanson began to fiddle with his watch chain.

He was thinking with the back part of his brain, now. He needed
Maculay; he had here before him a girl that could, if she were willing
to admit it, go forth and get Cliff. But not the way she was, with her
defensive armor all set up to fight against the Clifford Maculay that
had kissed her and then patted her on the head and left to go in search
of beer and beauty.

Hanson fiddled with his watch chain, then began to swing the Phi Beta
Kappa key around his forefinger, winding it up and then reversing it to
unwind and rewind in the opposite direction.

Ava stood there uncertainly, watching him whirl the chain. She could
not leave without some explanation regarding her reticence about going
to Venus for Maculay. Obviously Hanson was not finished with this
conversation, yet he sat there deep in thought. Ava anticipated that he
would come out of it with a more practical idea than sending her for
Maculay, since that would not work.

"Relax," said Hanson quietly, after some time. "I wouldn't send you
after Cliff Maculay; I wouldn't hurt you for the world, Ava."

"I know," she said. "I--"

"You've been dwelling on that subject too long," he told her.

She nodded.

"Probably losing sleep, too."

"I wouldn't say that."

"But you look as though you needed sleep."

"I don't really."

"Then why are you yawning?"

"Am I?"

"You yawn frequently. You should get more sleep. Why not rest? Sit down
and relax. Sleep is the great restorer; you should take a short nap.
Sleep, Ava. Go to sleep. I'll see that no one harms you. Sleep."

Her eyes fixed on the whirling watch charm, Ava slowly let herself down
into the doctor's consultation chair and leaned her head against the
back.

He passed a hand before her open eyes and she did not blink. With a
quiet chuckle, Hanson dropped the watch chain into his vest pocket and
sat back. "I'm going to help you."

"I know," she replied.

"You resent Maculay."

"I do."

"But it is true that your resentment of Maculay is because he is
attractive to you--but wants a more vivacious and interesting type of
woman."

"Yes."

"You also resent the fact that this desire of his is false, that any
alliance he may make will also be false while a true love awaits in
you, unwanted so long as he is under my post-hypnotic suggestion."

"Yes."

"Then since you and he are quite alike in so many ways when normal, if
you are reversed in personality as he is, you will then match his mood
and desire."

       *       *       *       *       *

With Ava, Hanson had much less difficulty; he had known the woman
for ten years, known her moods, her likes and dislikes, and her
personality. He had, lightly, worked her over from time to time until
his control over her was quite complete. It took him about two hours
to turn Ava's personality inside out and to suggest that she remain
extroverted until Maculay was returned to earth. For travelling
expenses he filled her wallet and gave her hypnotic reason for
possessing that sum of money. Then he snapped her awake and watched her
leave the office with a cheerful stride.

"A hell of a note when the fate of the universe depends on libido and
post-hypnosis," he grunted.

       *       *       *       *       *

Seven hours later the _Evening Star_ took off for Venus, and even
Doctor Hanson might have had trouble in recognizing his nurse. Gone
were the glasses, the mousy clothing, and the flat heels. From pedicure
to hair-do and from hide to handbag. Ava Longacre was as changed as her
personality.

And where Maculay had leaned against the bar, regaling a couple of
women with idle chatter, Ava sat and watched four dazzled males vie
against one another for the privilege of a dance, a smile, the purchase
of a corsage or a drink--or the spacecraft itself.

She enjoyed it, but she remained a bit aloof; she had a job on her
hands. She knew where she was going, and exactly how to find Cliff
Maculay.




                                   3


Alone in his office at night, while the _Evening Star_ was starting the
hike to Venus, Doctor Hanson sat thinking. He was piecing it together;
and it was like playing with a jigsaw puzzle that had three-quarters
of the pieces missing. He never would get the completed picture; it
just took too many years of a man's life in study and application to
finish the job. All he could do was to fit the meager pieces in where
he thought they might fit, and then try to ignore the blank spaces that
he could not possibly reconstruct.

At midnight, Hanson took to the telephone and called California.

He heard the operator say: "Chicago is calling Doctor Rober."

The switchboard girl at the far end asked: "Who is calling, please?"

"Doctor Jay Hanson."

"Doctor Rober is busy at the moment; may I have him call you back?"

Hanson roared: "I know he's busy. Tell him it's Jay Hanson and see what
happens."

A moment later there came a grumpy voice: "Hullo. What's so infernal
important?"

"Steve? This is Jay."

"That's what the gal said; it better be important."

"To hell with your precious telescope, Steve; I want some information."

"You'd think we had nothing to do but cast horoscopes," growled the
astronomer. "Or answer damned fool questions about the end of the
world."

"Answer me one more."

"The world has been here for two times ten to the ninth years at least;
you'll not live to see the end of it."

"Look, Steve, this may be important. Tell me, have any of your
instruments shown any difference in setting since that streak of energy
went through the solar system a few days ago?"

"Not that we can measure."

"But--"

"Jay, the best information we can collect is that the original streak
was a long cylinder about a half mile in diameter. Dammitall, you could
take a chunk a half mile in diameter and stretching from one end of the
universe to the other, remove it from the universe and let the rest of
space curl in to fill up what was missing; and when you were done, no
one could measure it. A half mile is a small peanut compared to the
immensity of space. Now can I go back to work?"

"In a minute, Steve. What do you know about Maculay's Equations?"

"Maculay's Equations? What do _you_ know about them? I mean, what do
you _want_ to know about them?"

"I'm no abstract mathematician, Steve, but I'm forced to fumble in
the dark with some very cockeyed theories that make no sense. Maculay
has the idea that the generation of some sort of negative space would
permit gross matter to exceed the velocity of light, but that this
negative space would destroy by mutual cancellation this present, or
positive space. Does that make sense to you?"

"Y'know what I think?"

"No."

"I think that old saw about the shoemaker sticking to his last is
applicable. Stay with your neurones and your pills, witch-doctor, and
leave the juggling of space to people who can sight nothing, falling
from a vacuum into a void, and explain it."

"Fine," rasped Hanson. "Now that I've been properly roasted for
meddling, what gives you to think that no one but an astronomer can
think?"

"Steve--if I started to outline medicine to you, it would sound no
better than your outline of Maculay's Theories did to me."

       *       *       *       *       *

Hanson chuckled. "So we're both stupid, according to the other. Now
admitting that I'm stupid and get my income tax fouled up, cannot
understand the degrees of infinity, and am completely baffled by the
predominance of the value Pi in electricity, do I have a layman's grasp
of Maculay's Equation?"

"Barely."

"Then suppose I postulate. Suppose that streak of energy had been a
spacecraft passing by at a speed faster than light. And as it passed,
its own field of negative space cancelled out a wake of real space as
it went."

"That's a fine idea," said Rober. "You might as well postulate that
as anything else. Furthermore, the cancellation energy derived might
be used to drive the ship; and as far as the loss is concerned, a
half mile of space is like bailing Lake Michigan with a teaspoon. The
expanding universe is expanding much faster than mankind's puny efforts
to trim it down at a half mile per trim."

"Why didn't you tell me this before instead of giving me a lot of
guff?" roared Hanson.

"Because the shoe is on the other foot," snapped Rober. "This time you
need help. And like the rest of us idiots who show our ignorance when
we ask medical questions, you show your ignorance of physics by the
damfool questions you ask. But I've done some piddling with Maculay's
Equations and the guy has something real and something far above my
head, too. Why not ask Maculay?"

"He's not available right now."

"Tough. Probably working on the streak itself, huh? Good thing. He'll
get it ironed out. But if you can't get Maculay, get his assistant
Redmond. Redmond is a young squirt, but he'll talk if he's urged."

"I've met Redmond."

"Um," grunted Rober. "So that's why you're calling me? Say! Redmond
didn't scare you, did he?"

"Sure did."

"Don't let him; Maculay will keep him down."

Hanson decided that this was the time to let the story out. "Redmond
came here seeking Maculay. Maculay is on Venus having himself a
vacation at my orders, and Redmond wanted him back."

"Wanted him back my foot! Redmond--if anything--wanted to be certain
that Maculay was out of the way so that he could plunge into the secret
files, using the emergency as reason. What are you doing about it?"

Hanson smiled to himself. "I've done it," he said. "I was just
confirming some of my fears by calling you. I've just sent Miss
Longacre to get him."

"Pray that she hurries," said Rober. "Redmond is the guy made from the
same mold as the Sorcerer's Apprentice."

"You mean the kind of student we used to explain the process of making
nitroglycerine to carefully because we knew they'd make it anyway, and
blow hell out of themselves if they didn't violate the rules correctly?"

"More'n that," said Rober. "I said Sorcerer's Apprentice and I meant
just that. Redmond is the kind of dope who would start manufacturing
negative space and not be able to stop the process."

"Someone--or something--has done it."

"Yeah. But they--and Maculay alone on earth--knows what they're doing.
And Maculay when I last saw him knew enough to leave it alone."

"Well, it's up to Ava Longacre."

"Hope she's successful."

Hanson remembered the girl's new attitude. "She'll get him," he said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Doctor Hanson would not have been able to locate Maculay at all. But he
had equipped Ava with the same set of ideas, plus the desire to catch
up with the physicist wherever he might have gone; because she was thus
equipped, Ava went where Maculay would--and had--gone.

Melaxis, Venus, was a mad mixture of culture and frontier. It boiled
with the same sort of teeming millions as New York City; it was a
modern city, with white granite buildings, subways, and broad streets
filled with racing traffic. But along these broad streets went the
rough-shod colonists. They were, for the most part, cut of the same
cloth as the colonists of Early America. Men who went to Venus to
escape whatever particular hell they felt on earth. Men who objected
to taxes, laws, responsibilities, oppressions, regimentations,
legalities, religions, and the rest. They were a hardy lot, a bit quick
on the trigger and quite inclined to stand upon their own personal
integrity. They were just, but their justice was hard-boiled. A man was
innocent--or he was guilty enough to get the works.

And it was among this churning metropolis that Ava Longacre landed to
seek out Maculay.

Her progress from the spaceport to Maculay was not too arduous, since
she knew about where to find him. Ava found a lavish hotel, dragged
the bar, picked up a likely-looking character who wanted to visit a
gambling hell. Enjoying a chance to show off before this interesting
female, the character took her to a mid-town casino where, he told her,
"Mac" was likely to be this night.

"Mac?" she asked.

"Mac is a gambler from way back," he told her. "Luckier than hell."

"Let's go," said Ava.

"That's Mac," he said. It was. Cliff Maculay was sitting before a large
card table playing Red Dog. Before him he had a large pile of blue
chips, and standing at his elbow watching the pile was a dark-eyed
Venusian girl, who swayed langorously to the strains of the music
coming from the dance floor next door.

"Would you like to make a hundred?" asked Ava.

"Who do you want killed?"

"Pick up that woman from Mac."

"What's the pitch?" he demanded; "a hundred ain't enough to get me
killed."

Ava looked him in the eye. "This is the end of your line," she told
him. "If you expect any fun tonight, you'll be better off trying for
her, because you're out of a girl friend and Maculay is going to be
swapping women shortly."

He looked at Ava, compared her against the Venusian girl in a brazen
mental listing of their charms, and repeated a statement made earlier:
"Luckier than hell, Mac."

Ava went over to the Red Dog table and stood so that her hip brushed
Maculay's arm. Cliff looked up in annoyance, but the frown ceased as he
saw her. "Hello," he said cheerfully.

It was obvious that he did not know her, and it was equally obvious
that the Venusian girl did not care for the competition. "How are we
doing?" she asked.

"Fine," he said.

"Yes, we are," said the Venusian girl, emphasizing her use of the 'we'.

"Cliff will do better now," said Ava.

"The lady knows me," chuckled Maculay.

"Every sharpshooter in Melaxis knows you," snapped the Venusian. "But
do you know her?"

Ava laughed. Her voice was a pleasant contralto, throaty, suggestive
as she said, "No, he doesn't know me. Yet. Which, darling, gives me an
advantage, doesn't it?"

"Don't darling me--"

       *       *       *       *       *

Ava's previous escort was a man of experience, possessor of a fresh
hundred, and willing to play the game. His was the simple logic of the
wolf; far better to have a woman you might be able to get than one who
wanted someone else. Furthermore, he knew enough about human nature to
toss a few cupfuls of oil on an already interesting fire. "See here,"
he said to Maculay, "what's the idea of making passes at my girl?"

Maculay laughed uproariously. He pushed his chair back and stood up,
alert. "If she were your girl she'd not be asking me how 'we're'
doing," he told the man.

Housemen started to move, slowly, towards the scene of imminent battle.

Ava's escort was willing to start a fire, but he was in no way
interested in getting his face pushed in to keep it burning. Yet he
could not back out without some show of determination. "I suppose she's
_your_ girl?" he asked superciliously.

The housemen relaxed. Badinage and billingsgate made noise but it
ruined no furniture. The contestants were talking; the kind of fight
the housemen were prepared to stop was the kind that took the:
"Who--Me?" "Yes, You," Whack! formula which left one of the contenders
ready to avenge the lump on his jaw, and willing to use the furniture
to do the job.

Cliff relaxed against the card table. "Maybe she is."

"Maybe she isn't!"

"Maybe she'd like to be."

"No accounting for taste."

Ava turned upon her escort coldly. "You haven't any taste. How would
you recognize it?"

The Venusian girl knew the situation all too well; she had been looking
out for herself for a number of years, and this project included making
the best of an opportunity. Her hand strayed behind Maculay.

Then the peacemakers saw something that they were entirely unprepared
to stop. Ava Longacre took Maculay by one hand and half-hurled him
away from the table, unbalancing him across one hip. Cliff staggered
forward--to be caught and supported by his possible assailant. But in
the meantime Ava had gone to the edge of the table and had taken the
Venusian girl by one wrist. She turned, ducked under the arm, and came
up behind in a hammer-lock.

Chips from Maculay's stack dribbled out of the tortured fingers of the
Venusian. Ava turned with the girl and hurled her forward into the
still-unbalanced men.

The Venusian screamed in anger.

Ava's former escort caught her and kept her from falling, and in doing
so he let Maculay slip to one knee.

Someone yelled: "Fight!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Hell broke loose. A man clipped his neighbor because the other was
luckier than he; a Venusian latched onto a handful of chips from one
of the tables and had his wrist broken by the owner of the chips who
came down on the arm with a heavy fist. Chips flew through the air and
rained down, and many, not caught in the fight, dropped to the floor
to pick them up. They got into fights with other gleaners, and the
melee spread like a crown fire in a piney woods. Critical mass had
been reached, and the fission from civilized human beings to outraged
primates spread throughout the room.

Cliff found an ornate chair and separated it to get the back-stringer
for a club. The other side was clutched by Ava's escort, who plied
it well. Ava came up between them clutching a small, wicked-looking
stilletto and waving it viciously. Maculay slapped it out of her hand.

"Don't start _that_!" he snarled, caving in a likely-looking head with
the hunk of chair. He up-ended a table and used it as a protective
wall, shoving it forward towards the door. He lost his club over
another head and tossed the stub into the face of a third. He
splattered the nose of a fourth all over his face, and trampled one
fighting pair down to the floor. They paid no attention to him; they
had their own private grievance.

Someone yelled: "Police!" and then the lights went out. Maculay steered
another course from the door, back through the room full of flailing
men and women who were trying now to extricate themselves and make the
appearance of innocent bystanders.

Ava opened a door, and the light from inside spilled out over one of
the finest barroom shambles ever committed in a high-class gambling
hell, where he who wore no evening clothes was not permitted.

Then they were inside.

"Damn," chuckled Maculay. "This is the first time I've ever been inside
of a powder room."

"Like it?"

He looked at her. They had lost her former escort in the melee. They
had lost some composure, too, and also whatever formality might have
been expected.

"Not as well as I thought," he told her. "Where's the hell out?"

Ava pointed to a window.

They left via the window as the door opened. They landed in the gangway
between the two buildings, raced for the alley, and ran into a burly
man in uniform that stood there stolidly.

Maculay clipped him in a rolling block; the policeman had expected
practically anything but a football rush. The pair went down, rolling.

The officer fired one shot at them as they headed into a side-gangway
and through to the street beyond. Cliff whistled for a convenient
taxicab; they piled into it and were off before the alarm sounded from
their rear.

They repaired what damage they could in the taxicab, and carried the
rest with them boldly through the finest hotel in Melaxis.

       *       *       *       *       *

Once in Maculay's suite, Ava opened her handbag and rolled a horde of
chips on the table.

Maculay roared with laughter. "Souvenirs," he chortled.

"Can't you cash 'em?"

"M'lady, you are an angel. You turned up just in time to create a
diversion. I got out with a whole skin, anyway."

Maculay looked at her curiously. Her eyes were glowing with excitement;
her face was flushed, and she bore that slight dishevelment that brings
a beautiful woman down from the pedestal of showcase perfection and
makes a warm human of her.

She smiled cheerfully. "What do you mean?"

Cliff stepped to the small bar at the end of the room and mixed two
very Herculean drinks before answering. Then he said--after Ava had
tasted and approved: "They thought I had the cards marked. I didn't; I
was playing a formula."

"But aren't formula players usually losers?"

Maculay laughed. "Baby doll," he laughed, "when you've been trained
by the best mathematician in the solar system, you remember the
sequence of the cards, evolve a formula of probabilities regarding the
shuffling, and then play them according to absolute mathematics. In Red
Dog, if there's a Heart Six to beat, each and every card played changes
the formula as it lands; if you know your mathematics, you can compute
your chances about as well as the Interplanetary Life Insurance Company
can compute your expectancy."

"But I spoiled your game."

"That game was ruined anyway."

"It was fun," said Ava, taking a fine pull at the drink.

"A nice shindy, m'lady. And far more better than the game they'd have
played once they grabbed me."

"But where will we play tomorrow night?"

"Venus is full of places," chuckled Maculay. "Fact is, the evening is
young. Wait'll I collect me a fresh shirt; and I'll have to forget the
white jacket since it's a mess. But we can see a bit more Venusian
Night Life."

"Done!"

Maculay emerged from the dressing room a few moments later. "By the
way, m'lady, what's your name?"

"Ava Longacre."

"I'm--"

"I know. Cliff Maculay."

"Such is fame," sighed Cliff. "You know me?"

Ava nodded. "I've met you before," she said. A faint, subdued
recollection of her previous meeting with Clifford Maculay stirred her.
She recalled, very dimly, the upsurge of emotion, the pounding of her
heart, the complete relaxation of defensive mechanism. Something had
been started but never finished, before. Now it was all past, gone, and
a new day was yet to be born. "Someone gave me a message for you, but
I've forgotten it."

"Maybe we can bring it back," chuckled Maculay. He took her by the arm
and led her from the room.




                                   4


Hanson had committed one pardonable error; pardonable because Hanson,
for all of his years and his experience, was no worker of miracles, to
whom nothing is hidden, and who can be called omniscient.

For all of his experience in wending his way through the hidden
recesses of the labyrinth we call the human mind, Hanson did not know
everything and would have been the first to admit this honestly. But
he did know that the trouble with both Maculay and Ava Longacre laid
in the subsurfaces of the conscious mind. Blocks, inhibitions, and
fears instilled as a youth had driven Maculay to seek his excellence
in mathematics as a goal rather than as the means to the normal goal
of a happy, balanced life. In the filing-cabinet of the mind, however;
in the subconscious mind of Clifford Maculay was all of the data of
the life he should have led, held there subdued by the blocks of the
conscious mind. Hanson had opened the doorway by removing these blocks,
and he had done a fine job.

In much the same fashion he had removed the blocks and impediments from
Ava Longacre's mind.

Both had suffered from too puritanical an upbringing. In the long
distance that lies between white saint and black evil, there is a long
dimension lying just below center that is the despair of reformers and
do-gooders. This region contains many people and many ideals that are
_mal in dictu_. Some impractical reformer had decided, for instance,
that liquor is to be abhorred; ergo it is against the desires of
society for a man to take a drink. Just one. The idea is, of course,
to create a race of saints and Little Lord Fauntleroy sweetness--which
probably wouldn't last out the century since the desire to poke someone
in the nose for stepping on your rights--or your toe--is the same
belligerency that has made mankind fight its way up from the swamps to
seek the stars.

Below this region of morals or ethics lies the _mal in facto_
behaviour. It is bad in fact and practice to murder, steal, and lie.

Hanson had opened the minds of his pair to the enjoyment of the middle
region after a short life of the stilted upper bracket. Like the swing
of the pendulum, both Ava and Clifford had dropped about as far as they
could go without getting into the truly evil region.

But the doctor's error was in not realizing that the human mind,
once released of its inhibitions, can make a shrewd calculation. In
the case of Ava Longacre, whose mental blocks would have rendered
her undesirable to Cliff Maculay; when once released, the woman's
mind reversed its tactics. Where the conscious mind had the balanced
life distorted into undesirability, now her mind distorted into
undesirability--the more responsible way of living--because she was
beginning to enjoy excitement.

All of her quiet life she had been suppressing the love of excitement;
now released, Ava Longacre's mind refused to consider the task she had
been sent to do; once it was finished, she would be returned to the
quiet, unexciting life that she no longer wanted.

So instead of employing her woman's wiles to involve Maculay and bring
him back to earth where Hanson could get him to go back to work on his
negative space, Ava was helping Cliff cut a wide, rosy-hued swathe
through the not-too-holy city of Melaxis.

They consumed a bit more alcohol than was necessary; they danced a bit
more close together than would have been called proper at a Boston
cotillion, and hazarded sums of money on the roll of a pair of dice or
the turn of a card just for the thrill of high blood pressure.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was near dawn when Ava lifted her head from Cliff's shoulder in
the taxicab and wiped the lipstick from his cheek with a caressing
forefinger. Cliff smiled down at her.

"Baby doll," he said, "let's get married or something."

Ava laughed lightly. "We'll get married--or nothing!"

The sun was above the horizon when Maculay carried his bride--now
asleep--over the threshold of his hotel suite. It was late afternoon
when the Maculays, man and wife, checked out of their hotel to take a
honeymoon in the jungle cities of Venus.

And Hanson fumed and fretted because he had no word from Ava, and
worried because he knew that Redmond was poring through Maculay's
secret file of computations and beginning to unravel the data that
would permit Redmond to create and establish negative space.

On the third day of such worrying, Hanson knew then he had
mis-calculated or over-stepped his reasoning. It was at that moment
that Hanson did something that he had stoutly insisted that not even
a man should do to his wife, or the reverse. Like reading another's
mail, one did not paw through desk drawers nor inspect the corners of
another's soul to see whether they concealed something. But Hanson went
through the desk drawers of his nurse, attempting to learn how he had
erred.

He came up with a small package, neatly tied in a very ornamental
manner under the plain store-bag. The name on the fancy ribbon was
that of a highly gilded women's shoppe where the salesgirls were very
beautiful, the silk very sheer, and the prices very high.

Hanson opened the package. It disgorged a petticoat and bra, through
either of which the doctor could have read the telephone directory
without his glasses. A scant concession to the custom that a woman
should wear lingerie--for the sake of the custom but not necessarily
for warmth, protection, fire or famine.

It might have been a gift.

It might have been her own.

It made no difference whether Ava had selected this daring set of
scanties for herself or for a gift, wedding or Christmas. It displayed
her taste, showed her subconscious desires.

"Damn!" exploded Hanson. "I've been working with a courtesan concealed
behind an armor of white starch. Oh, brother!"

The doctor knew. Like two small streams, turned here and there by the
minor hills and rocks of fate, they had been joined by Hanson into a
flowing river, complete unto itself--themselves--which would go its
way as it damn well pleased and overflow its banks to the ruination of
anything in its path if it were constrained.

They would not be back until Maculay came back in one year--at which
point Ava would subtly change, too, to conform with Maculay's desire.

This left Hanson helpless for one year, during which time Redmond
would be working towards destruction with no barriers to his course.
Hanson could express no more than an unfounded opinion of the fear
of danger; he had neither prestige nor formal education in the field
of high-geared physics. The first objection he voiced would be taken
with a nod by whomever official heard it, accepted for what it was: an
opinion by a medical savant of seventy years regarding a problem in
spacial physics. Then this opinion would be referred to Redmond for
official regard. Hanson knew the answer without asking the question.
Redmond would laugh in scorn. Redmond would--

Hanson shook his head unhappily. Redmond would be a tough nut to crack.
Belligerent, automatically biassed against the doctor, any attempt at
hypnosis would be fought against most vigorously. Yet--

Jay Hanson had been in his business for a long time, but he had had
no challenge such as this for years. And though old in body, he was
young enough in mind to contemplate the mental challenge with a certain
amount of interest.

He bought tickets and flew to the laboratory site where Maculay and his
gang worked on spatial physics; he used his medical prestige as key to
admittance, and found Redmond sitting at Maculay's desk checking a huge
blueprint of a spacecraft.

       *       *       *       *       *

Redmond looked up. It was obvious that this little scene was one
prepared by Redmond. Men who have visitors announced by secretaries,
after having signed passes to let the visitor into the inner sanctum,
after learning as he must have learned that the famous doctor had come
to the huge laboratory site, should not look up from their desks in
surprise.

Hanson understood; Redmond was morally right and ethically wrong. He
had every moral right to take over Maculay's position during Maculay's
absence; that was his appointed job. But ethically, he had no right
to paw through Maculay's desk, and take from Maculay's secret files
the information that Maculay had forbidden him to see. Now he was
play-acting the part of a busy man who had all of the power he needed.

Redmond said: "Yes, Doctor Hanson?"

Hanson paid no attention to the blueprint. "I thought you'd like to
know," he said softly, "that I've been unable to locate Maculay."

"Damn!" objected Redmond. Only one who understood what was in Redmond's
ambitious mind would know that the disappointment was very false.

"So I came to tell you and also to be curious."

"Curiosity killed a cat," said Redmond.

The doctor laughed. "It's created more kittens than the cats it's
killed. Is this still super-top secret or can you let an old man in on
it?"

Redmond glowed inwardly at the chance to show off before the doctor.
"According to the latest calculations," he said, "the generation of
negative space by the force-fields of diagravitic force takes the form
of a sphere. Obviously the proper shape for a spacecraft employing one
of these generators would be spherical. But we are using a converted
spacecraft of the torpedo shape, and I feel that--well, to generate a
sphere large enough to enclose the spacecraft in one gulp would produce
far too much power. So we are using two of them placed so that their
spherical fields produce a pattern something like two equal-sized soap
bubbles stuck together. The ship lies longwise through the centers of
the circles, since the generators are in the ship, of course."

Hanson nodded. His head bobbed gently, in a measured motion. He was
sitting with his back to the room, the window in front of him. He knew
that the reflection of the window was in his glasses and that Redmond
was watching this spot of light instead of watching the doctor's eyes.
Redmond continued to watch as he spoke.

"Within a week we shall have it finished," said Redmond. "Then the
stars shall be ours!"

Hanson continued to nod.

"Of course we have not tested the generators as yet. There is no known
way of dissipating the energy they develop. Since the realized energy
in this real space is sufficient to propel matter faster than the
velocity of light, the outpouring of energy must be paradoxically many
times the value of infinity."

Hanson continued to nod.

"This statement, of course, makes no sense," said Redmond, "because
of one of the definitions of infinity--which is that number which is
larger than the number of all numbers. Here we treat infinity as a
definite instead of an abstract, and by our equations we are permitted
to multiply infinity by integer numbers and come up with a real
answer--in a sort of abstract sense," said Redmond with a slight laugh.
It was 'Our Equations' now instead of 'Maculay's Equations'.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hanson continued to nod and Redmond kept watching the spot on the
Doctor's glasses.

"However," said Redmond, "the fact is that the power output does not
exceed infinity at any time in this space. Not really, and therefore
the paradox is answered. It is merely apparent, if you follow me.
Actually, the spacecraft is not in real space and therefore it need not
have an infinite amount of energy to reach the speed of light. However,
there is no way of anchoring the generator on the planet while testing,
nor of dissipating the energy. So the only way to test the set-up is
to build a spacecraft and take off. If it does not work, we have the
standard drivers to get us back."

Hanson kept on nodding. His neck was getting a bit stiff, but he could
not stop.

"I've heard the argument that the generators may set up a
self-propagating field," said Redmond. "This is so much bosh. The
theory that the streak of energy that went through the solar system
some weeks ago was the wake of a supervelocity spacecraft seems to be
universal among the people who have studied the Equations. Ergo it
stands to reason that no destruction of the universe will obtain. We
are safe."

Hanson continued to nod.

Redmond smiled quietly.

The doctor said, "You've been working quite hard on this; you must be
tired."

Redmond laughed sarcastically. "You've been working harder, Doc. If
you've been expecting me to fall under your hypnotic spell with that
head-bobbing business, you're getting a stiff neck and no results.
You're an old fool with an unfounded horror of anything new. You should
view this sensibly; if another race can employ the spacedrive without
ruining the universe, so can we. Now why not let busy men alone to
work, while you go back to your mental cripples? Good day!"

Hanson fumed but it did no good. He was licked by animosity, disdain,
and complete lack of sympathy. There was nothing to do but leave. And
the doctor left, half-convinced that Redmond was right in assuming that
if one galactic race could use the negative-space drive, another could
do the same without fear. But he was only half-convinced; he wanted an
opinion from Maculay. There was more here than met the eye.

Some other race knew the secret and were using it. The human race knew
the secret and were about to try it. But the man who knew the real
answers had gone into a tizzy because of some errata, or factor that
was absolutely incompatible with life, liberty, and/or pursuit of
happiness.

Hanson grunted. All too often in the case of violent disagreement, all
parties were absolutely correct in their own mind, their own honest
belief. Maybe this was similar.

One theoretical man feared the results from an abstract analysis of
the computations. One mechanically-minded man could not appreciate the
possible dangers, but was happy to follow the plans since completion
meant fame and fortune for him. Both might be right. But....

       *       *       *       *       *

Hanson shrugged unhappily; it was a bad spot to be in. Yet in the
course of his seventy years many problems had seemed insoluble until
some factor entered that changed the whole picture. And life itself
must have seen many crises, in which the motion of a hand in the wrong
direction would have caused the utter downfall of Humanity--_or_, he
thought bitterly, _perhaps we are the result of an ill-moved hand of
fate and might truly be great in mind as in work if some prehistoric
egomaniac hadn't kicked some unknown prop out from beneath us_.

Perhaps, too, his mind told him, it could have been some half-baked
do-gooder trying to help. As he, Jay Hanson, had attempted to help
Maculay. The fault was as much his as it was Redmond's. More--Redmond
could not help being what he was. Yet, neither could Hanson stand by
and see a man go to pieces.

In any case it was not a proposition of fixing the blame; to hell with
the blame and the responsibility. Fix it. Fix it. Fix it and forget the
fumbling finger that fouled it.

Hanson swore. He was helpless.

Yet for all of his efforts, he believed that something would happen to
avert this disaster. It hardly seemed possible that one man's act could
destroy the universe. Man's total effort was so puny. Inconsequential.
The ignorant savage could not destroy civilization.

But in the back of his mind, Hanson knew that a couple of lumps of
plutonium in the hands of an ignorant savage could destroy life beyond
the scope of the savage's experience; and mankind's scope was reaching
to the stars.

Still fretting, and still hoping for the answer, he headed home.




                                   5


He was sitting in his office when the telephone rang on the following
morning. Hanson answered it slowly, prepared to stall any patient off
until he could regain some of his composure and his self-confidence.

"Hanson? Doc, this is Larimore."

"Larimore? Hi. What's up?"

"Doc, this job ain't good."

"What job?"

"_The Black Slash._"

"The what?"

Larimore chuckled. "If that yarn had turned up in the slush-pile, it
would have been bounced with a rejection slip. It's not good, Doc.
You've got no reason to write that bad, even though you've not written
me anything for a couple of years; you don't forget how. But this job
sounds like the half-baked efforts of a man convinced that he could
write but who lacks the basic fundamentals of story construction. Now--"

"What in the devil are you talking about?" demanded Hanson.

"Didn't you send me a yarn called _The Black Slash_?"

"I--" Hanson paused. Cautiously, he said: "By Edward Lomax?"

"Naturally. That's your pen name. It--"

"Wasn't the job timely?"

"Doc, you ought to know by now that every time something new and
frightening comes up, my desk is bombarded with a million stories about
it. The best get taken up. That streak of energy a couple of weeks ago
has brought fourteen stories so far, and some of them were damned good.
But yours--Say, Doc, how come you went to Venus? I thought that you
weren't allowed space-flight?"

Hanson paused and shook his head. Edward Lomax was his pen name. It was
the pen name supplied to Maculay in the explanation as to why Cliff
was in disfavor in the eyes of his fictitious uncle. And it was sort
of natural, too, that Maculay would try to write about this thing.
But Maculay, either as the renowned Clifford Maculay, or young Cliff
Maculay the black sheep, had never written a single line of fiction.
Maculay's pedantic papers were full of equations, qualifications,
cumbersome sentences, and inverted phrases--complete with the
everlasting 'However' enclosed between commas.

Hanson laughed shortly.

People do not expect a man to step up to his first piano, sit himself
down, and run through a faultless repertoire from Bach to Bebop. But
these same people nod their heads at a new author's writing and think
it is the first time he ever sat down to a typewriter--and then swear
that they will do likewise as soon as they get a couple of free hours.
Maculay was no exception, plus the fact that Hanson had given his mind
the false experience of writing to cover up many irregularities in
Maculay's past. Maculay believed he could write and had been writing;
actually he knew nothing of the techniques involved. It takes more than
a burning desire to see your words in print; it takes at the very least
some judgment as to which of your words you select for print plus the
ability to produce them in logical sequence. Maculay had tried.

But above all, Maculay had offered a lead--provided unwittingly by
Hanson himself. The doctor glowed inwardly, happily. He would now--

"You still there, Doc?"

"You bet. Where did that story come from, Larry?"

Larimore paused a moment. "A small town in the midlands of Venus a
couple of hundred miles from Melaxis." Then he exploded. "Hey. Weren't
you there? Why didn't you bring it back with you? What the hell goes
on--?"

Hanson said, "Larimore, this is a long story and probably a better one
than Maculay wrote. But it's important."

"I'm listening. Take off."

The doctor outlined the entire business over the telephone.

"My God," said Larimore. "Now what?"

"Now? It's easy. Send Maculay a special radiogram, addressed to Lomax,
stating that Modern Pictures wants the script for a full-length moving
picture at some fabulous price providing they can hire the author to
rewrite the thing into novel length. You have an option check for five
thousand dollars which will expire within ten days if the author is not
present in person at your office before that time."

"I get it. 'Twill be done."

Hanson sat back, relieved; this was the answer he was hoping for. It
had come and now all he had to do was to husband his strength until
Maculay could get home. Because when Maculay arrived, there would be a
big job to do.

       *       *       *       *       *

He spent his time working slowly, resting often. He went to Larimore's
office and fitted it with his equipment, on the off-chance that
Maculay might be hard to handle. Hanson did not think Maculay would be
difficult to re-convert since the true personality was submerged by the
false character by mere hypnotic suggestion. It should be remarkably
easy. But the doctor wanted to take no chances.

He read Maculay's sorry attempt at fiction. It was not good fiction
but it interested Hanson because there was so much fact concealed
in its descriptive passages. Maculay, unable to think too deeply
about the negative space concept, or real and unreal space, and
variable-matrix wave mechanics, had treated the whole scientific
formulation with a touch of the ridiculous. Just as Cliff, upon hearing
of the streak of energy, had laughingly included it in a 'story'
because he was hypnotically unfitted to treat his opinion as anything
but fiction-fantasy, he was again concealing the truth behind a thin
disguise. It was all there.

All there, Hanson saw with a sour finality, but the solution. Maculay
had pulled the old gag of having the fabulous machine totally
destroyed, complete with its secret. A poor gag, and unfitted for
modern writing, especially unfitted for application to fact. For, in
fact, this was not a story; it was the truth, told by a man who must
tell it as fiction since the truth literally hurt him. But there was no
true solution, and once the negative-gravitic generators were started,
the unreal root of negative space would spread to engulf the universe.

This 'story' of Maculay's convinced--or rather pinned the last doubt
down--Hanson that his guess-work was right. But handing such a story
to any official as true data would get the doctor nothing but a
horselaugh--at the least--and possibly a trip to the looney-bin for
observation.

However, he would have the truth at hand soon enough. Maculay would
know what steps to take.

Even if Maculay ordered everything to stop, while the answer was found.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hanson was working in Larimore's office when Maculay came in with his
bride.

The doctor looked at them both; he nodded affably.

"Doc!" roared Maculay cheerfully. "What in hell are you doing here?"

"Came to kiss the bride," said Hanson. "And she looks lovely enough to
kiss."

"Go ahead," said Maculay; "I'll permit you eight seconds."

Hanson smiled at Ava, but shook his head. "I've got one more thing
on my mind," he said quietly. "Cliff, what do you know of Maculay's
Equations?"

"He's an uncle of mine," started Maculay. "He came up against a tough
one. He found a way to exceed the speed of light--but doing it would
destroy universal space by a sustained and spreading cancellation. It--"

"Maculay, what would you do if you were _The_ Clifford Maculay?"

"Go fishing."

Hanson touched a button at his elbow. There was a soundless flash of
brilliant light as the photoflash bulb planted in the desk lamp flared.
Then as Maculay stood, tense with shock, Hanson said, in a forceful
tone: "Clifford Maculay, the hypnotic suggestion that I gave you before
must cease. I order it to stop; I order you released. You are once more
Doctor Clifford Maculay, who must--"

The jovial smile faded from Maculay's face. The twinkle in his eye
changed to a calculating glitter, and the lines of Maculay's face
hardened. "Hanson," he snapped, "what has been going on?"

"You've been on vacation," said the doctor. "And while you were
traipsing all over Venus, Redmond has opened your secret file and is
starting to build a supervelocity spacecraft. You must put a stop to
it."

Maculay looked startled for a moment. Then he said: "Redmond is a
pompous sort of juvenile jackass, I admit, but he isn't that stupid."

"I've seen his installation."

Maculay shrugged. "I'm not a jealous man, Doc. I've had my day; I've
done my work; I've laid my cornerstone. I've even been stumped. Now if
Redmond can solve the problem that had me licked, I'll be the last man
on earth to deny him his triumph."

"Clifford, from all I've heard about this, total destruction will
result if any man energizes a volume of negative space."

"Quite right," said Maculay. And as he said it, his eyes clouded and he
winced gently.

"Redmond has added nothing to your calculations."

Maculay stood up with a dry smile. "As a physician you are Number One
on earth. As a psychiatrist you are tops. I know what you've done and
it's been good. I hope," he added slyly, "that she likes me as well
this way as she did the other way--or can you change her too? Or," he
continued with growing comprehension, "is it 'change her back, too'?"

"Back."

"Good. So as a witch-doctor you're tops in any jungle. But as a
physicist, you don't know a gravitino from a vocal fricative."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that before any judgment is cast, I shall have to see the
evidence."

Hanson stood up. "So it's back to the laboratory site."

Maculay nodded, held out an arm which Ava took happily, and then he
said: "And from the lab site to the stars, Doc."

Hanson grumbled: "Or total extinction."

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."

Hanson said: "Are you certain that you're not assuming too much?"

"Meaning?" asked Redmond coldly.

"You are basing everything on the fact that an alien spacecraft passed
through here. How do you know?"

Redmond laughed in a superior manner. "Since matter cannot exceed
the velocity of light without being encased in a volume of unreal
space--and since a volume of unreal space would kick up the same
sort of wake as we measured--we can assume that some intelligence
has developed negative space and is using it. Negative space, Doctor
Hanson, is not to be found free in nature."

"But you've really added nothing to Maculay's Equations."

"We've proven by observation that the sustained destruction of the
universe will not obtain; we'll prove it, too."

Hanson snorted. "This isn't a game of bridge," he said; "you're not
bidding a grand slam just to see if you can make it without the ace of
trump."

"But we know that it has been done. Nothing more need hold us up; we
know!"

Hanson added another page to his mental notes regarding Redmond.
Frustrated genius, second rater really, Redmond was the type of man who
had always been protected against danger. In the course of his life,
he had never faced the consequences of one of his own acts; therefore
he fully believed that every time he was about to step off of the deep
end, some Divine Providence would save him. If Redmond were permitted
to do as he wanted to do, it was "Sign to Redmond" that he was on the
right track. Some people call it superstition; some call it intuition;
some call it foolishness. To Redmond, it was a sort of Fate.

       *       *       *       *       *

Maculay stood up and led the way to the doorway. "Let's look at this,"
he said.

"Cliff," said Hanson, "nothing has changed since you went away. Real
and unreal space are still mutually destructive. And if you couldn't
figure it out, no other man on earth could."

Redmond said, "True, at that time. But we've had extra evidence to work
on."

"But--"

"Forget it," said Redmond; "we know what we're talking about."

Maculay entered the control room of the ship first. He looked it over
with interest, then nodded. "Everything is in ship-shape fashion," he
said.

"We could start tomorrow if we had to."

Maculay looked at the controls that projected side by side on the
polished black panel labelled _Upper_ and _Lower_.

"Dunno," said Maculay thickly.

Hanson watched him carefully. "Cliff," he said quietly, "you knew about
the streak of energy, too. If that were the answer, you'd have come out
of your mental tizzy."

Maculay turned to Redmond. "What means have you to prevent the
sustained reaction?"

Redmond shook his head. "We don't need any. If another race can do it--"

"Don't be an idiot! Just because one race makes iron steamships it is
no sign that iron floats on water."

"But it stands to reason--"

"You'd bank your life on it?"

"Yes."

Cliff Maculay took the two handles, one in each hand. His eyes glazed
a bit, and he laughed uncertainly. "Maybe the creation of the universe
was started by some fool who created negative space," he said thickly.
"You simple idiot, this is exactly the danger that almost drove me
nuts; you haven't solved a thing!"

Maculay stood there, watching Redmond. Then the frown left his face,
and his body tightened. His eyes lost the hard glitter and took on
a luminous air, which became half-humorous and half cynical as the
corners of his mouth quirked up.

Hanson took a deep breath. Maculay the physicist had become Cliff
Maculay the hell-raiser in just that short a time, because he was once
more faced with the insoluble.

"No!" yelled Hanson.

But Maculay laughed. "Might as well wreck it," he jeered. "Better to
wreck this fool's work than destroy the universe. Damn idiot, Clifford
Maculay. Better--"

Maculay slammed the _Upper_ switch to the right.

"--let the ne'er-do-well foul it right!"

Maculay slammed the _Lower_ switch to the left.

There was a perceptible shift in the frame of reference, a hiatus in
the solidity of things, like the rug slipping on the polished floor,
like the fancy movable steps in the Fun House, like the bottom of the
quicksand lake, like space itself being warped.

Then Arcturus passed the nearby viewport in a single flash of
blue-white, and seconds afterwards a second star flashed, then a third.

"The backward sort," chortled Maculay. He was neither Maculay the
Physicist now, nor was he Maculay the hell-raiser; he was a glad
mixture of both. "It came to me," he told Hanson, "just like _That_!"

"But--?"

"Easy. Easy. The output from the upper generator creates negative
space. But before it can establish an expanding field, the output of
the lower generator nullifies it. For the lower generator is making a
field of positive space equal to the force from above. Take unity. Add
unity and you have two. Cancel one unity and you have unity--plus a
spacedriver!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Thirty thousand light years away, a recorder wiggled, a bell rang, and
a sentient creature came out of a quiet complacence with a roar. Then
came the clangor of a huge alarm and other creatures came tumbling into
the huge room. They watched the recorder anxiously; then as it levelled
off they left, slowly. Six remained; the others got into a small
spacecraft and took off. There would be no nova for the suppression
squad to extinguish; all that was needed was for the safety squad to go
there and teach newcomers how not to play with fire.



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