"Yes. The Thakura Ripples!"
Amusement vanished from the professor's eyes. "What about them?"
"Why are people so afraid of them? As far as I can see, they're just a piece of nonsense thought up by a dreamy-eyed physics professor, and he hypnotized people into believing in them. But as I was telling Captain Evans last night, they've never been seen, never been measured, and there's nothing at all to prove that they have any existence outside the mind of a madman. And yet people are afraid of them!"
"And just what are the Thakura Ripples?" said Alan Chase, drawing up a chair. "Waiter, I'll have a spacecap."
"Feeling a little better tonight, Alan?" asked his friend.
"Some, thanks. I just had a checkup from Dr. Willoughby, and he thinks I'm more than holding my own. Now go on about the Ripples. Where are they? What do they do?"
"Suit yourself," Jasperson muttered. "If you want to tell ghost stories, go ahead."
"Thank you. The Thakura Ripples, my boy, are an unexplained phenomenon of hyperspace. We do not know what they are—only that they are dangerous."
"But I thought that space was entirely uniform?"