"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 

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