Latourette reached out sharply and touched the sleeve of his smock. “Are you going to shut the program down?”

Hawks looked at him.

Latourette was clutching his arm. “Cobey. Isn’t he ordering you to cancel it?”

“Cobey can only make requests,” Hawks said gently. “He can’t order me.”

“He’s company president, Ed! He can make your life miserable. He’s dying to get Continental Electronics off this hook.”

Hawks took Latourette’s hand away from his arm and moved it to the transmitter’s casing. He put the flats of his own palms into his back pockets, nicking up his white laboratory smock. “The Navy originally financed the transmitter’s development only because it was my idea. They wouldn’t have vouchered that kind of money for anyone else in the world. Not for a crazy idea like this.” He stared into the machine. “Even now, even though that place we found is the way it is, they still won’t let Cobey back out on his own initiative. Not as long as they think I can keep going. I don’t have to worry about Cobey.” He smiled softly and a little incredulously. “Cobey has to worry about me.”

“Well, how about you? How much longer can you keep this up?”

Hawks stepped back. He looked at Latourette thoughtfully. “Are we worrying about the project now, or are we worrying about me?”

Latourette sighed. “All right, Ed, I’m sorry,” he said. “But what’re you going to do?”

Hawks looked up and down at the matter transmitter’s towering height. In the laboratory space behind them, the technicians were now shutting off the lights in the various subsections of the control array. Darkness fell in horizontal chunks along the galleries of instruments and formed black diagonals like jackstraws being laid upon the catwalks overhead. It advanced in a proliferating body toward the solitary green bulb shining over the “NOT Powered” half of the “Powered/NOT Powered” red-and-green legend painted on the transmitter’s lintel.