Majors smiled and took out a roll of thirty-five millimeter film. He handed it to Carroll.
"I took the liberty of making smaller prints," he said. "Those are the other thirty-five pix made near that area. You'll see the initiation of the smudge on the second, and the completion of it on the twenty-eighth. The others are just spares."
Carroll looked at the smudges, one after the other.
"You'll note that the thirteenth, the twentieth, and the twenty-fifth have rather larger areas," said Majors. "Also, on the thirty-first—after the body presumably has passed out of line—there is one more faint flare-point. That was minutes after the thing passed out of line."
Carroll read the pictures carefully and then without a word he turned to the desk. He picked up the tape of Lawson Radiation recordings and handed it to Majors.
"Here," he said, "is correlation between astronomical fact and the Lawson Radiation."
There were four definite pips on the line. Four spikes that reached up, with each spike labelled as to the time of reception. Though the intrinsic time did not match by hours the spacing between the pips and the flared photographs was perfect.
"Then what?" asked Majors, and Pollard held his breath.
"A mass of negative matter passing through space," said Carroll, "would naturally be struck occasionally by meteors or small celestial bodies."
"But if negative matter is repulsive instead of attractive?" objected Majors.