He, too, was pale and wide-eyed. But he had not gotten to his position by refusing to attack.
She ordered Cramer to run the beam again over the previous areas. He was to speed up the process and slow down only when she so directed.
The result was a stream of unintelligibilities. Occasionally, when Cramer slowed Cervus at a gesture from Jane, it broke into a rate of speech they could understand. And, when it did, they trembled. They could not deny that they were speeding over the life thoughts of a growing male named James Carroad, Junior. Even at the velocity at which they traveled and the great jumps in time that the machine had to make in order to cover the track quickly, they could tell that.
After an hour, Jane had Cramer cut off the voice. In the silence, looking at the white and sweating men, she said, "We are getting close to the end? Should we go on?"
Hoarsely, the Secretary shouted, "This is a hoax! I can prove it must be! It's impossible! If we carry the seeds of predeterminism within us, and yet, as now, we discover how to foresee what we shall do, why can't we change the future?"
"I don't know, Mr. Secretary," said Jane. "We'll find out—in time. I can tell you this. If anyone is preset to foretell the future, he'll do so. If no one is, then the problem will go begging. It all depends on Whoever wound us up."
"That's blasphemy!" howled the Secretary, a man noted for his belligerent atheism. But he did not order the voice to stop after Jane told Cramer to start the machine up again.
Cramer ran Cervus at full speed. The words became a staccato of incomprehensibility; the oscilloscope, an almost solid blur. Flickers of blackness told of broad jumps forward, and then the wild intertwined lightning resumed.
Suddenly, the oscilloscope went blank, and the voice was silent.