“I’m not implying anything, Doctor.  I’m telling you he was right.  And you were wrong.”

Townsend stared at her, confounded.  “I don’t—”

“Don’t what?  Believe you can be wrong?”

He stopped to rethink.  To compose himself.  “What do you mean exactly when you say he was right?”

“She means,” said Rickards, “that it’s real.”

“It’s real,” Townsend echoed.

“Yes,” nodded Rickards.

“It’s real,” repeated Townsend.

“Yes.”

“Real.”

“You can say it a hundred times, but it won’t change anything.”

“I’m not, I’m not trying–” he said, pausing again.  “By real you mean… what?”

“We saw it.”

Townsend peered at Angela with a look of apprehension.  “You saw it?”

“Correct.”

“YOU SAW IT?”

“Yep.”

“What exactly did you see?  Or think you saw?”

“Mike Morton said his instrumentation on the CERES satellite was designed to detect various forms of energy in and around the atmosphere, which it did.  But he also said it detected a point of concentration where these different energies appeared to have coalesced and reached the planet’s surface.”  She was now staring intently at Townsend.  “Sound familiar?”

“And you’re saying the three of you have found this supposed location?”

“No.  Not the three of us.  Just Joe and me, after Mike passed away.”

Townsend blinked and folded his arms.  “I see.”

Rickards turned to Angela.  “I don’t think he sees.”

Townsend then clasped his hands together in front of him and leaned forward onto the desk.  “Okay.  I believe you think you saw something—whatever that might be.  And I also accept that Mike believed he’d found something.  Or nearly did.  But you have to understand,” he said, once again glancing down at the papers, “what Mike was proposing flies in the face of almost a hundred years of known, accepted physics.”

Angela’s tone softened.  “Well, we’re not in a position to argue that.  We’re not physicists.  Or engineers.  All we can tell you is that we found the place Mike had been looking for.  Believe me, there was absolutely no question.  And now, in his letter to me, Mike claims there is another.”

Townsend stared at them.  “And you’ve come to me for—what?  Validation?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“We want you to help us find it.”

Townsend fell silent, continuing to blink as he peered at the two across his large desk.

“You want my help to find it.”

“That’s right.”

“By going through this fifty-year-old data?”

“Yes.”

Townsend shook his head in exasperation.  “Why?”

“Because it’s important.”

This time it was the older man who became sarcastic.  “Try again.”

“Fine.  We want to find it for Mike.”

He shook his head a second time.  “Your answers are getting worse.”