"Maybe I'll have something to show Greg soon," he told himself. "Maybe, after all these years...."
Forty minutes after Page put through the call to Chicago, Gregory Manning arrived. The scientist, watching for him from the tiny lawn that surrounded the combined home and laboratory, saw his plane bullet into sight, scream down toward the little field and make a perfect landing.
Hurrying toward the plane as Gregory stepped out of it, Russell noted that his friend looked the same as ever, though it had been a year or more since he had seen him. The thing that was discomfiting about Greg was his apparently enduring youthfulness.
He was clad in jodhpurs and boots and an old tweed coat, with a brilliant blue stock at his throat. He waved a hand in greeting and hurried forward. Russ heard the grating of his boots across the gravel of the walk.
Greg's face was bleak; it always was. A clean, smooth face, hard, with something stern about the eyes.
His grip almost crushed Russ's hand, but his tone was crisp. "You sounded excited, Russ."
"I have a right to be," said the scientist. "I think I have found something at last."
"Atomic power?" asked Manning. There was no flutter of excitement in his voice, just a little hardening of the lines about his eyes, a little tensing of the muscles in his cheeks.
Russ shook his head. "Not atomic energy. If it's anything, it's material energy, the secret of the energy of matter."