said, studying Ford keenly from hidden eyes."They're just sane in a different way."
"So is a crazy man," Ford almost sneered openly. "I think we've seenenough to make it obvious we should get away from here while we can."
There was a murmur among the men at the tables that agreed with whatFord had said.
"We may do that," Ren said, ignoring the signs of almost open defiancepatent in Ford's tone and manner, and in the men's muttered approval ofwhat he had said. "But we won't until we're sure it's suicide to go downthere and land. Don't you realize that we have something here which maybe unique in the universe? This space wanderer won't be close enough tothe solar system for exploration more than two or three years. Then itwill be gone. There may never be another opportunity to study somethinglike it."
"Which is a good thing," Ford snorted. "If you decide to drop the shipany closer to this mad planet you're going to have trouble with themen."
"Meaning you've been talking to them?" Commander Hugh Dunnam askedsoftly.
"Talking WITH them," Ford Gratrick said, matching Hugh's softness."Don't try to put me in the position of being a leader of any rebellionthat might develop. I'll confess quite frankly, though, that I want nopart of landing on this God-forsaken hunk of matter, and a good many ofthe crew agree on that. It's suicidal. Frankly, sir, I think you must beunder some kind of spell to turn your command over to a spaceman secondclass as you did."
* * * * *
Ren's scalp crawled. This had been exactly what he himself had felt! Soothers besides him had "felt" that alien contact from below! On impulsehe made up his mind.
"Before anyone says something they might regret later," he cut in, "letme say that I've made up my mind that it's too dangerous to land. Theeffects we experience up here would probably be increased beyondconception down there. Our thought processes are being affected in wayswe can't understand. It's possible that if we landed the ship wouldbehave so differently that it would be impossible to get away. So, giveme another two days of study in this orbit and then we'll go back to thesolar system."
While Ren was talking he had a curious feeling, far back in the depthsof his mind. It was as though a section of the bank of a stream hadbroken off and dropped into the stream.
_Irrational._ There had been so many such feelings that crept to theborders of consciousness and faded away without meaning anything.
Time! Ren felt that time was all he needed to get to the bottom of it.He compared himself to a newborn babe coming into the world. For thefirst few months things come and go in meaningless fashion. Slowly themind makes order out of them. The oft-repeated patterns become clearfirst, then more obscure ones. Finally the baby is able to understandthe apparently senseless sequence of events.
Ren felt that the results would be the same here if he were given half achance ... but Ford Gratrick was right, too. It concerned more than themind. It struck at the roots of reality that had been used in theprinciple of the ship's operation--and there was no way of knowing theship would operate once it landed.
* * * * *
Ren Gravenard flicked the ashes from the end of his cigarette off theedge of the table onto the floor. Martha's eyes took this in and slowlylost their faraway look.
"I'm trying to make clear, Martha," Ren said gravely, "the emergenceinto consciousness of the things going on around us. There was no wayyet for us to suspect their full activity--their inroads. Things weregoing on that we simply could not see or sense in any way because wedidn't yet have the faculty of grasping them. They made their impressionand were lost in a hodge-podge of neural channels already deeply groovedin the normal way, so that when they got close enough to the consciousmind to be sensed, they were distorted beyond any semblance of the truereality."
"I can see that," Martha said, her eyes brooding. "But DID you find aliving, intelligent creature or race on Metapor?"
Ren nodded. "I'm coming to that later," he said. "Be patient and let metake things in order. That's the only way you can understand when I tellyou about--her."
His eyes studied the glowing coal at the end of the cigarette. He liftedthe white cylinder to his lips and sucked in. Dropping the cigarette onthe floor and stepping on it, he let the grey smoke seep from his mouthand nostrils.
Traffic sounds came through the window. A murmur of voices drifted overthe two as they sat there, quietly.
"I've tried to bring you up to the point where I began to suspect," Rencontinued. "I described the feeling I had that was something likewatching a large chunk of the bank of a stream break away, startingfirst as a jagged crack in the turf, with it widening slowly at first,then faster, until the broken chunk becomes a separate THING,dissociated from the bank. It breaks away, drops into the stream--andvanishes; while the bank itself remains, enclosing and containing therushing stream.
"I didn't realize then what that feeling meant. I had felt it in variedshades before. It rose almost into consciousness, then, like the brokensection of the bank itself, it would drop away and dissolve in theswirling stream of mind.
"Sitting there at the table in the ship's dining room, suddenly Isuspected what that feeling really sprung from. I got my first inklingof what intervalness instead of numberness really meant.
"For an insane period I was two people, both the same person and yet nota person--and even not two, or even one, but a 'something' that_contained_ in the logical sense all of those, as a class contains themembers of the class.
"Remember that I said I was making a little speech, sitting there, thatassured Ford Gratrick and the members of the crew present in the roomthat we weren't going to risk landing, but get away in a couple of days.
"At the same time, while I was talking, I was experiencing this strangefeeling. It was quite clear, for a few seconds. I was two RenGravenards, saying two different things. The two of me were very close.But while I talked they separated distinctly as the bank of the streamand the chunk are suddenly not one, but two.
"It was not me alone. Every man in that room was doing the same. Theship itself was doing it--and suddenly ..."
* * * * *
"Before anyone says something they might regret," Hugh Dunnam, thecommander, said in a quiet warning voice, "get this straight, all ofyou. This is a government ship. I'm an officer of the Earth Space Fleetand my command is law. I have a right temporarily to promote any memberof my crew to complete command of the ship with power equal to mine oreven greater than mine. If Ren Gravenard says we go down, we go downeven if it seems certain we'll all be killed. You have a choice ofcertain but honorable death, and equally certain but dishonorable death.Or you have a choice between an uncertain but honorable death if deathit is, and certain but dishonorable death as a coward and a traitor.Let's not have any more thoughts of insubordination. You, Ford Gratrick,under a stricter commander, would already be on the way to the brig."
Ford looked at Hugh Dunnam through slitted eyes, his faceexpressionless. Suddenly he smiled.
"You forget, sir," he said smoothly. "Under a less human commander Iwould have kept my thoughts to myself."
* * * * *
"I was sitting there, Martha," Ren said. "Trying to grab hold of thestrange 'split' in things. It's even more mixed up than I pictured it. Ihad a feeling of BEING both Hugh Dunnam and myself, and also of beingmyself on a 'something' drifting apart from all I could see. At the sametime there was a feeling of two separate things now existing on theship. Those two things might be called a composite of each of the twoforces that began their existence at that moment--the forces obedient tothe commander, and me; and the forces that were to side in with FordGratrick."
"In a way numberness in any group depends on the independent unity ofeach member of the group. Put a thousand drops of water in a glass andyou don't have a thousand drops of water but a teaspoon or so of water.It would be impossible to take a drop of water out and definitely saythat it was one of the drops you h
ad put in. And if you changed all thewater back into drops you might have more or less than the thousand youput in.
"But water is a fluid. A human being is not. In some inexplicable way,however, I was becoming more and more like the drop of water after it isdropped into a large volume of water. I was 'spreading', while all thetime seeming to be just my normal self.
"I think I was beginning dimly to see the new metaphysical basics thatwere to make the whole thing sensible and manipulable. At least, I hadalready realized that it was different than would be, for example, thedifference in operational principle of a gas engine and an