"I can't understand it," commented one of the others in a stage whisper.
"Why this absurd insistence on blowing us to powder?"
"Do I pretend to understand the processes of a lump of decaying meat?"
declared the first. "I do not."
"No more than I. What makes them go?"
"Something they call 'progress.' I think it means blowing everything else to powder."
"What unpleasantness!"
"So I should say. What do you propose doing to them?"
"We might blow them to powder."
"Let's find out first what makes them run." The first turned on Yancey Mears. "Why are you built differently from the E.O.? We can allow for individual variations, but even to this untrained eye there's a staggering discrepancy."
Yancey Mears explained that she was a woman and calmly went into details, interrupted occasionally by gurgling noises from the boarders.
Finally it was too much; the three visitors broke into cries for mercy between bellows of laughter.
"And you thought they were humorless!" accused the third.
"This one's probably a comic genius. Though why they'd send a comic genius on an expedition of this kind I don't know. You—you don't suppose that it's all true—do you?
Suddenly sobered they inspected Yancey and the Psychologist, exchanging significant nods.
"Well …though you things are the most ludicrous sights of an abnormally long lifetime we're prepared to be more than equitable with you. Our motivation is probably far beyond your system of ethics—
being, as it is, a matter of blowing things to powder—but we can give you a hint of it by saying that it will help as a sort of self-discipline.
Beyond that, you will have to discover for yourself.
"What we propose for you is a thing much more gentle than being blown into powder. With courage, ability, common sense and inspiration you will emerge unharmed."
"Go on," said the Psychologist.
"Go on? It's begun already. We'll take our leaves now."
As his two companions slipped through the hull of the sphere, the last of the boarders turned to Yancey Mears.
"Er—what you were saying—it was a comic monologue, wasn't it?"
"No. It was strict biological truth."
The boarder wistfully asked: "I don't suppose I could see it done?
Thought not. Good day." The three departed abruptly as they had come.
"What's begun already?" Star Macduff asked the Executive.
"I don't know. What do you suppose we've come into contact with now?"
"They're hard to size up," said Mamie Tung. "The humor—it's very disturbing. Apparently it didn't take them more than a few minutes to pick up our entire language and system of thought. It wasn't a simple job of mind-reading; they obviously grasped symbology, as well. They said so themselves."
"And what do you suppose they really look like?" asked Star in a thin, hysterical tone.
"Shut it," ordered Will Archer. "That's panic-mongering, pure and simple. Normally, I'd order you back with the ratings for a comment like that. Since we're up against extraordinary circumstances, I'll stay execution for the duration of the emergency."
The Calculator did not reply; he seemed scarcely to have heard the rebuke. He was staring abstractedly at nothing. The notion overcame the three other Officers slowly—very slowly—that something was amiss.
Yancey Mears first felt physically sick; then a peculiar numbness between the eyes, then a dull, sawing pain that ran over her whole skull.
She blinked her eyes convulsively; felt vertiginous yet did not fall; felt a curious duplicate sensation, as though she were beside herself and watching her body from outside—as though all lights she saw were doubled, as though the mass of her body was twice what it had been.
Alarmed, she reached out for Will Archer's arm. It was not till she had tried the simple gesture that she realized how appallingly askew everything was. She reached, she thought, but her hands could not coordinate; she thought that she had extended both hands instead of one. But she had not. Dizzily she looked down, saw that her left hand lay against her body; that her right hand was extended, reaching for Archer; that her left hand was extended and that her right hand lay against her body …
"Will, what's wrong?" The dizziness, the fear, the panic, doubled and tripled, threatened to engulf her. For her voice was not her own but a double voice, coming from two throats, one a little later than the other.
"Will …" No, she couldn't outrace the phenomenon; her voice was doubled in some insane fashion. She felt cold, tried to focus her eyes on Archer. Somehow the blackness of space seemed to come between them.
She heard a scream—two screams—from Star. She saw him, blending with the space-black cloud in her vision, staggering in the officers'
quarters, yawing wildly from side to side, trying to clutch at a stanchion or a chair. She saw two Stars, sometimes superimposed, sometimes both blurred, staggering wildly.