Dr. Wooden drew a deep breath, saying, "If I hadn't seen you materialize out of thin air—" and broke off, laughing.
"Seeing does enter it, doesn't it? But the attempts that were made to fight the shadows! Why were the attackers always destroyed? Unless—unless their weapons backfired on them—"
"That's my thought. They were shooting three-dimensional objects at an n-dimensional space. The three-dimensional objects never got anywhere. They didn't even leave their source. They expended their frightful energy right where they began."
"Well," muttered Dr. Wooden. "You could talk for hours and not prove anything."
He broke off, looking at Jonathan. He lifted a wooden mallet and held it out to him.
"Destroy it," he said simply. "If it's that much of a danger to the universe, it deserves obliteration."
Jonathan put out his hand, brushed the mallet aside.
He bent over the table, setting both hands on it, partially supporting his weight.
The calcatryte in the metal cradles began to quiver as though made of soluble, moving liquid. Their veins ran into channels of color, red and green and blue and yellow. The blocks hazed over, writhing.