"You say you could even put the cosmics to work?” asked Chambers. Craven nodded. “If I can do anything at all with the field, I can."
"How?” demanded Stutsman.
"By breaking them up, you fool. Smash the short, high-powered waves into a lot of longer, lower-powered waves.” Craven swung back to face Chambers. “But don't count on it,” he warned. “I haven't done it yet."
"You have to do it,” Chambers insisted.
Craven rose from his chair, his blue eyes blazing angrily behind the heavy lenses. “How often must I tell you that you cannot hurry scientific investigation? You have to try and try… follow one tiny clue to another tiny clue. You have to be patient. You have to hope. But you cannot force the work."
He strode from the room, slammed the door behind him.
Chambers turned slowly in his chair to face Stutsman. His gray eyes bored into the wolfish face.
"And now,” he suggested, “suppose you tell me just why you did it."
Stutsman's lips curled. “I suppose you would rather I had allowed those troublemakers to go ahead, consolidate their plans. There was only one thing to do-root them out, liquidate them. I did it."
"You chose a poor time,” said Chambers softly. “You would have to do something like this, just at the time when Manning is lurking around the Solar System somewhere, carrying enough power to wipe us off the face of the Earth if he wanted to."