"I get it. 'Twill be done."
Hanson sat back, relieved; this was the answer he was hoping for. It had come and now all he had to do was to husband his strength until Maculay could get home. Because when Maculay arrived, there would be a big job to do.
He spent his time working slowly, resting often. He went to Larimore's office and fitted it with his equipment, on the off-chance that Maculay might be hard to handle. Hanson did not think Maculay would be difficult to re-convert since the true personality was submerged by the false character by mere hypnotic suggestion. It should be remarkably easy. But the doctor wanted to take no chances.
He read Maculay's sorry attempt at fiction. It was not good fiction but it interested Hanson because there was so much fact concealed in its descriptive passages. Maculay, unable to think too deeply about the negative space concept, or real and unreal space, and variable-matrix wave mechanics, had treated the whole scientific formulation with a touch of the ridiculous. Just as Cliff, upon hearing of the streak of energy, had laughingly included it in a 'story' because he was hypnotically unfitted to treat his opinion as anything but fiction-fantasy, he was again concealing the truth behind a thin disguise. It was all there.
All there, Hanson saw with a sour finality, but the solution. Maculay had pulled the old gag of having the fabulous machine totally destroyed, complete with its secret. A poor gag, and unfitted for modern writing, especially unfitted for application to fact. For, in fact, this was not a story; it was the truth, told by a man who must tell it as fiction since the truth literally hurt him. But there was no true solution, and once the negative-gravitic generators were started, the unreal root of negative space would spread to engulf the universe.
This 'story' of Maculay's convinced—or rather pinned the last doubt down—Hanson that his guess-work was right. But handing such a story to any official as true data would get the doctor nothing but a horselaugh—at the least—and possibly a trip to the looney-bin for observation.
However, he would have the truth at hand soon enough. Maculay would know what steps to take.
Even if Maculay ordered everything to stop, while the answer was found.