The floodgates were quite down. Laura learned that the couple were George and Eleanor Ellis, that they were on vacation, that they had three children, two girls and one boy, all grown-up. Both girls had married and one had two children of her own.

Laura listened with a pleased expression on her thin face. Walter (senior, that is) had always said that it was because she was sucha good listener that he had first grown interested in her.

Walter was getting restless. Laura freed his arms in order to let some of his feelings evaporate in muscular effort.

‘Would you warm the bottle, please?’ she asked the stewardess.

Under strict but friendly questioning, Laura explamed the number of feedings Walter was currently enjoying, the exact nature of his formula, and whether he suffered from diaper rash.

‘I hope his little stomach isn’t upset today,’ she worried. ‘I mean the plane motion, you know.’

‘Oh, Lord,’ said Mrs Ellis, ‘he’s too young to be bothered b that. Besides, these large planes are wonderful. Unless I look out the wmdow, I wouldn’t believe we were in the air. Don’t you feel that way, George?’

But Mr Ellis, a blunt, straightforward man, said, ‘I’m surprised you take a baby that age on a plane.’

Mrs Ellis turned to frown at him.

Laura held Walter over her shoulder and patted his back gently. The beginnings of a soft wail died down as his little fingers found themselves in his mother’s smooth, blond hair and began grubbmg mto the loose bun that lay at the back of her neck.

She said, ‘I’m taking him to his father. Walter’s never seen his son, yet.’

Mr Ellis looked perplexed and began a comment, but Mrs Elhs put in quickly, ‘Your husband is in the service, I suppose?’

‘Yes, he is.’

(Mr Ellis opened his mouth in a soundless ‘Oh’ and subsided..)

Laura went on, ‘He’s stationed just outside of Davao and he’s gomg to be meeting me at Nichols Field.’ .

Before the stewardess returned with the bottle, they had discovered that her husband was a master sergeant with the Quartermaster Corps, that he had been in the Army for four years, that they had been married for two that he was about to be discharged, and that they would spenda long h neymoon there before returning to San Francisco.

Then she had the bottle. She cradled Walter in the crook of her left arm and put the bottle to his face. It slid right past his lips and his gums seized upon the nipple. Little bubbles began to work upward throug? the milk, while his hands batted ineffectively at the warm glass and his blue eyes stared fixedly at her.

Laura squeezed little Walter ever so slightly and thought how, with all the petty difficulties and annoyances that were involved, it yet remained such a wonderful thing to have a little baby all one’s own.

4

Theory, thought Gan, always theory. The folk of the surface, a million or more years ago, could see the Universe, could sense it directly. Now, with eight hundred miles of rock above their heads, the Race could only make deductions from the trembling needles of their instruments.

It was only theory that brain cells, in addition to their ordinary electric potentials, radiated another sort of energy altogether. Energy that was not electromagnetic and hence not condemned to the creeping pace of light. Energy that was associated only with the highest functions of the brain and hence characteristic only of intelligent, reasoning creatures.

It was only a jogging needle that detected such an energy field leaking into their cavern, and other needles that pinpointed the origin of the field in such and such a direction ten light-years distant. At least one star must have moved quite close in the time since the surface folk had placed the nearest at five hundred light-years. Or was theory wrong?

‘Are you afraid?’ Gan burst into the conversational level of thought without warning and impinged sharply on the humming surface of Roi’s mind.

Roi said, ‘It’s a great responsibility.’

Gan thought, ‘Others speak of responsibility.’ For generations, Head-Tech after _Head-Tuch ha<d been working on the Resonizer and the Receiving Station and it was in his time that the final step had to be taken. What did others know of responsibility.

He said, ‘It is. We taJk about Racial extinction glibly enough, but we always assume it will come someday but not now, not in our time. But it will, do you understand? It will. What we are to do today will consume two thirds of our total energy supply. There will not be enough left to try again. There will not be enough for this generation to live out its life. But that will not matter if you follow orders. We have thought of everything. We have spent generations thinking of everything.’

‘I will do what I am told,’ said Roi.

‘Your thought field will be meshed against those coming from space. All thought fields are characteristic of the individual, and ordinarily the probability of any duplication is very low. But the fields from space number billions by our best estimate. Your field is very likely to be like one of theirs, and in that case, a resonance will be set up as long as our Resonizer is in operation. Do you know the principles involved?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Th:n you know that during resonance, your ind ill be on Planet X in the brain of the creature with a thought field 1dent1cal to yours. That is not the energy-consuming process. In resonance with your mind, we will also place the mass of the Receiving Station. The method· of transferring mass in that manner was the last phase of the pro lem to_ be solved, and it will take all the energy the Race would ordmanly use m a hundred years.’

Gan picked up the black cube that was the Receiving Station and looked at it somberly. Three generations before t had been _tho gl1t impossible to manufacture one with all th reqm’:’ed propei::1es m _a space less than twenty cubic yards. They had 1t now; 1t was the stze of his fist.

Gan said, ‘The thought field of intelligent brain cells can only follow certain well-defined patterns. All living creatures, on whatever plan_et they develop, must possess a protein base and an oxygen-water chemistry. If their world is livable for them, it is livable for us.’

Theory, thought Gan on a deeper level, always theory.

He went on, ‘This does not mean that the body you find yourself m, its mind and its emotions, may not be completely alien. So we have arranged for three methods of activating the Receiving Station. If you are strong-limbed, you need only exert five hundred pounds of pressure on any face of the cube. If you are delicate-limbed, you need only press a knob, which you can reach through this single openi g in the cube. If you are no-limbed, if your host body is paralyzed or m any other way helpless, you can activate the Station by mental energy alone. Once the Station is activated, we will have two points of reference, not one, , nd the Race can be transferred to Planet X by ordinary teleportat1on.

‘That,’ said Roi, ‘will mean we will use electromagnetic energy.’

‘And so?’

‘It will take us ten years to transfer.’

‘We will not be aware of duration.’

‘I realize that, sir, but it will mean the Station will remain on Planet X for ten years. What if it is destroyed in the meantime?’

‘We have thought of that, too. We have thought of everyt ing. On e the Station is activated, it will generate a paramass field. It will move m the direction of gravitational attraction, sliding through ordinary matter, until such time as a continuous medium of relatively high density exerts sufficient friction to stop it. It will take twenty feet of rock to do that. Anything of lower density won’t affect it. It will remain twenty feet underground for ten years, at which time a counterfield will bring it to the surface. Then one by one, the Race will appear.’

‘In that case, why not make the activation of the Station automatic? It has so many automatic attributes already..—’

‘You haven’t thought it through, Roi. We have. Not all spots on the surface of Planet X may be suitable. If the inhabitants are powerful and advanced, you may have to find an unobtrusive place for the Station. It won’t do for us to appear in a city square. And you will have to be certain that the immediate environment is not dangerous in other ways.’

‘What other ways, sir?’

‘I don’t know. The ancient records of the surface record many things we no longer understand. They don’t explain because they took those items for granted, but we have been away from the surface for almost a hundred thousand generations and we are puzzled. Our Techs aren’t even in agreement on the physical nature of stars, and that is something the records mention and discuss frequently. But what are ‘storms,’ ‘earthquakes,’ ‘volcanoes,’ ‘tornadoes,’ ‘sleet,’ ‘landslides,’ ‘floods,’ ‘lightning,’ and so on? These are all terms which refer to surface phenomena that are dangerous, but we don’t know what they are. We don’t know how to guard against them. Through your host’s mind, you may be able to learn what is needful and take appropriate action.’

‘How much time will I have, sir?’

‘The Resonizer cannot be kept in continuous operation for longer than twelve hours. I would prefer that you complete your job in two. You will return here automatically as soon as the Station is activated. Are you ready?’

‘I’m ready,’ said Roi.

Gan led the way to the clouded glass cabinet. Roi took his seat, arranged his limbs in the appropriate depressions. His vibrissae dipped in mercury for good contact.

Roi said, ‘What if I find myself in a body on the point of death?’

Gan said as he adjusted the controls, ‘The thought field is distorted when a person is near death. No normal thought field such as yours would be in resonance.’