I have been thinking, thinking, thinking; wracking my brain. And of
one thing I am sure. Some invisible intelligence is trying to help me;
trying to give me knowledge. The sparkling fog?
* * * * *
A great and wonderful thing has happened.
_And I know._ Do you realize what that means? To know in a situation
like this? And to be wonderfully and wildly happy? The knowledge was
not all given me. There was a thought process of my own developing.
The thing given me was the basic knowledge upon which to build. And
proof of this knowledge. Absolute and indisputable proof.
_The sparkling fog is mind stuff._
I will not defend that statement. I will not rationalize it. But I
will seek explanations; consider possibilities.
Known: This sparkling fog through which we drift is intelligent
matter; the stuff of thoughts; the basic material from which
consciousness springs. It is consciousness itself.
Supposed: It is probably electronuclear in composition, and appears to
be completely innocent. By that I mean it has no intention to harm,
perhaps because it does not understand the difference between good and
evil, harm and help, pain and pleasure.
It has only one urge; the basic urge of all creation. To evolve, to
develop. As the tree has but one basic urge--to grow and greaten; the
flower but one desire--to bloom, to improve; to assert itself through
evolution and become better.
Perhaps--and who can successfully deny it?--this great space cloud
could be a storage place of the Creator Himself; a storage place for
mind stuff. When an infant or an animal or a plant is touched with the
magic thing called life--where does that magic come from? Is it
created at the very moment or does it come somehow from a source-pile?
Is this cloud a source-pile of life itself? No one can say. But I
think I've hit on a limitation of this mind stuff. I'm going to try an
experiment and pray to God it works.
I'm going to find Murdo and knock him unconscious.
I have solved the mind-stuff. What just happened is the last bit of
proof I need. I went to the galley. Murdo had wandered away. I found
him in the lounge. I stepped casually in front of him, set myself, and
drove a straight right to his jaw. He went down like a log.
I closed my eyes and counted to twenty praying to God to make me right
in my belief--in the crazy theory I evolved. I opened my eyes and
turned to the storage locker. I looked inside.
The dead leopard was gone.
I went to the port and looked out. The huge ice bear had been ravening
insanely among the shreds of the water buffalo's body. As I watched
both bear and buff began fading.
Before my eyes, they disappeared, evolved back into the stuff of the
sparkling fog. I had proved my theory.
Now all the parts dropped into place. The mind stuff has only the
ability and the urge to evolve--nothing else--no imagination. It can
evolve only if given something to reproduce.
This it can get only from a human mind. It is able to see an image
pictured in the human memory and reproduce it in a state of absolute
reality.
Witness: Jane saw a tiger in the companionway. Clear in her memory was
the image of the tiger she had shot at in India. The mind-stuff saw it
and reproduced it in reality. The water buffalo came from my own mind.
I killed one exactly like it a year ago. The ice bear was out of
Murdo's memory as was the black leopard and the snake.
Witness: The three animals created inside the ship did not appear
until the mind stuff from outside penetrated the hull and entered the
ship. They were of normal size. But the animals created outside the
ship were far out of proportion, the ice bear especially. Why?
Because, I believe, the mind stuff is denser in the void. There it has
more strength.
My defense against the mind stuff was formulated almost accidentally.
I remembered the sequence of Jane's tiger. She saw it, entered my
cabin, realized its significance, and fainted. I looked into the
companionway and saw the tiger fading.
So I knocked out Murdo for final proof and got it. As soon as he
lapsed into unconsciousness the recreations from his mind turned back
into sparkling fog. Obviously, and a heaven-sent phenomenon it is--the
mind stuff immediately loses its subject-image when the mind from
which it came goes unconscious. The mind-stuff has no memory of its
own and cannot hold its recreated image in the evolved form under
conditions of unconsciousness. The answer now becomes simple.
I drugged Murdo before he regained consciousness. I drugged the other
three by means of whisky and food. They have been unconscious for
twelve hours. Nothing has happened. I shall keep them that way.
The mind-stuff is trying to complain to me. Almost petulantly; as a
child. I sense it sharply. It does not understand the wrong it has
done and feels it has been deprived of its right.
I have no time for the mind-stuff. I guard myself against it and
ignore it. There are other things on my mind. Shall I go back if we
ever escape from the sparkling fog? I don't know. I don't want to go
back. I want to go on and on forever just like this. But the others
cannot go on like this. It would be murder. I don't know.--I don't
know.