The Geos and the others left the room, escorting the Aradna, who was too exhausted for further experiences.  There remained with the doctor, Chick, Harry, and the Nervina.

“I will reduce that lecture to synopsis form,” began the professor.  “I shall tell you all that I know, up to this moment.  First, however, let me show you something.”

He indicated the table from which he had risen.  Chief among the objects on its top were fragments of minerals, some familiar, some strange.  Above and on all sides were the crystal globes or, at least, what Chick named as such—­erected upon as many tripods.  One of these the professor moved toward the table.

Simultaneously a tiny dot appeared on a small metal plate in the centre of the table.  At first almost invisible, it grew, after a minute or so, to a definite bit of matter.

The professor moved the tripod away.  Nearby crystals, inside of which some dull lights had leaped into momentary being, subsided into quiescence.  And the three observers looked again and again at the solid fragment of material that had grown before their eyes on that table.

Something had been made out of nothing!

The doctor picked it up and held it unconcernedly in his fingers.

“Can anybody tell me,” asked he, “what this is?”

There was no answer.  The professor tossed the thing back on the table.  It gave forth a sharp, metallic sound.

“You are looking at ether,” spoke he.  “It is the ether itself—­ nothing else.  You call it matter; others would call it iron; but those are merely names.  I call it ether in motion—­materialised force-coherent vibration.

“Like everything else in the universe it answers to a law.  It has its reason—­there is no such thing as chance.  Do you follow?  That fragment is simply a principle, allowed to manifest itself through a natural law!

“Try to follow me.  All is out of the ether—­all!  Variety in matter is simply a question of varying degrees of electronic activity, depending upon a number of ratios.  Life itself, as well as materiality and force, comes out of the all-pervading ether.

“This object here,” touching the crystal, “is merely a conductor.  It picks up the ether and sends it through a set degree of vibrational activity.  Result?  It makes iron!

“If you wish you may go back to our twentieth century for a parallel—­by which I mean, electricity.  It is gathered crudely; but the time will come when it will be picked up out of the air in precisely the same manner that men pick hydrocarbons out of petroleum, or as I sift the desired quality of ether through that globe.

“This, I am convinced, is one of the fundamental secrets of the Blind Spot.  Is there any question?”

Wendel managed to put one.

“You said, ‘back in the twentieth century.’  Is it a question of time displacement, sir?”

“Suppose we forgo that point at present.  You will note, however, that the Thomahlian world is certainly far in advance of our own.”