Pollard smiled. "Obvious, isn't it?"
"Not too obvious to one who is not completely informed as to the workings of the mind."
Pollard smiled again. "Sorry," he said. "I thought it was simple. It may be me, but I will try to show you that the mechanics of the mind are as logical in madness as in sanity—or in plain cause-and-effect mechanical systems.
"Somehow during his researches in the Lawson Radiation he stumbled upon the truth. He studied it, not daring to believe at first the possibility of a negative mass. Yet the facts were there and in some manner Carroll managed to develop a system of physical mathematics that tended to prove his point.
"I have no doubt, Rita, that if we find any tampering with the Lawson Laboratory records, they will have been tampered with by Carroll himself, who refused to let this bizarre affair be known until he was certain.
"You see, Carroll knew the storm of protest that would arise if any physicist tried to promulgate such a theory without almost certain proof. So he concealed it. But he studied it thoroughly. And in his studies he discovered that this negative mass was heading for Terra."
Majors cleared his throat. "Tell me, Doctor Pollard, how you make these vast assumptions? Aren't you like the classical definition of a physicist? You know, a man of limited reason who can leap from an unfounded theory to a foregone conclusion?"
Pollard laughed. "Rita was not there. But you were. Did you note how quickly Carroll picked out the point? One look at the photographs, one look at the Lawson Record and one statement of fact—all tied in to absolute perfection. Carroll knew that his theory was terribly thin—also he knew the futility of trying to stop a cosmic body approaching Terra. The combination drove him into hallucination."
"Amnesia?"
"Yes. It all ties in. Every bit."