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 

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