Maculay stood there, watching Redmond. Then the frown left his face, and his body tightened. His eyes lost the hard glitter and took on a luminous air, which became half-humorous and half cynical as the corners of his mouth quirked up.
Hanson took a deep breath. Maculay the physicist had become Cliff Maculay the hell-raiser in just that short a time, because he was once more faced with the insoluble.
"No!" yelled Hanson.
But Maculay laughed. "Might as well wreck it," he jeered. "Better to wreck this fool's work than destroy the universe. Damn idiot, Clifford Maculay. Better—"
Maculay slammed the Upper switch to the right.
"—let the ne'er-do-well foul it right!"
Maculay slammed the Lower switch to the left.
There was a perceptible shift in the frame of reference, a hiatus in the solidity of things, like the rug slipping on the polished floor, like the fancy movable steps in the Fun House, like the bottom of the quicksand lake, like space itself being warped.
Then Arcturus passed the nearby viewport in a single flash of blue-white, and seconds afterwards a second star flashed, then a third.
"The backward sort," chortled Maculay. He was neither Maculay the Physicist now, nor was he Maculay the hell-raiser; he was a glad mixture of both. "It came to me," he told Hanson, "just like That!"