Astronomers had speculated that, even now, matter grew, forming in the blackness.

Dr. Hamilton studied the smoke. It drifted upward toward the fluorescent tubes, lit from the compound’s generator.

If it could come into being, there seemed little reason to suppose it might not be doing so still.

But it did not seem likely.

The quantity of matter-energy in the universe remains constant.

This was an article of faith, of a transient science in a provisional epoch.

But it might be true.

But if it were true then matter, or its forms, or energy, or its forms, of which particles and smoke might be illustrations, and music and worlds, then the substance-whatever it might be-was eternal, coeval with space. There was nowhere for it to come from, nowhere for it to go.

Dr. Hamilton crushed the cigarette out.

Who was to say what was, ultimately, rational or irrational, for these are anthropomorphic predicates, indexed to the brain of an evolving primate, only within the last few thousand years discovering itself in the midst of mysteries.

The lights in the bleak room dimmed and then again waxed bright and soft.

Gunther, with William, Herjellsen supervising, was busy in the hut.

There was not a great deal of power needed for the apparatus. The compound generator produced ample power.

Hamilton speculated, smiling. Electric power, from a gasoline-driven engine, no more than five hundred volts, was ample to the needs of the crazed Herjellsen.

Hamilton did not care for Hegel. Yet the thought, that of Hegel, was difficult to dismiss. We are where the world has opened its eyes.

We were the first animal, to our knowledge, to wonder, to seek to learn, the first to seek not only love and food, but truth.

Men had found truths, in their millions, in its pebbles and grains, but he had not yet found its mountains.