CHAPTER THREERUSS HUNCHED OVER THE keyboard set in the control room of the Comet and stared down at the keys. The equation was set and ready. All he had to do was tap that key and they would know, beyond all argument, whether or not they had dipped into the awful heart of material energy; whether, finally, they held in their grasp the key to the release of energy that would give the System power to spare.
His glance lifted from the keyboard, looked out the observation port. Through the inkiness of space ran a faint blue thread, a tiny line that stretched from the ship and away until it was lost in the darkness of the void.
One hundred thousand miles away, that thread touched the surface of a steel ball bearing ... a speck in the immensity of space.
He thought about that little beam of b
