_The unfamiliar, you say, is the unseen, the completely new and
strange? Not so. The epitome of the unfamiliar is the familiar
inverted, the familiar turned on its head. View a familiar place
under new conditions--a deserted and darkened theater, an empty
night club by day--and you will find yourself more influenced by
the emotion of strangeness than by any number of unseen places.
Go back to your old neighborhood and find everything changed.
Come into your own home when everyone is gone, when the lights
are out and the furniture rearranged--there I will show you the
strange and frightening ghosts that are the shapes left over
when reality superimposes itself upon the images of memory. The
goblins lurk in the shadows of your own room...._
Owen Miller
Essays on Night and the Unfamiliar
For one heart-stopping moment the darkness had seemed to swoop in upon
them like the clutching hand of death. Instinctively they had huddled
together in the center of the room. But when the second look, and the
third, gave them reassurance that the effect was really there, though
the cause was still a mystery, then half the mystery was gone, and they
began to drift apart. Each felt on trial, and held tight to himself and
the picture of himself he empathized in the others' eyes.
The Captain said quietly, "It's just ... there. It doesn't seem to be
spreading."
Hoskins gazed at it critically. "About half a meter deep," he murmured.
"What do you suppose it's made of?"
"Not a gas," said Paresi. "It has a--a sort of surface."
Ives, who had frozen to the spot when first he saw the blackness on his
way to the port, took another two steps. The hand which had been half
lifted to touch the control continued upward relievedly, as if glad to
have a continuous function even though its purpose had changed.
"Don't touch it!" rapped the Captain.
Ives turned his head to look at the Captain, then faltered and let the
hand drop. "Why not?"
"Certainly not a liquid," Paresi mused, as if there had been no
interruption. "And if it's a solid, where did that much matter come
from? Through the hull?"
Hoskins, who knew the hull, how it was made, how fitted, how treated
once it was in place, snorted at the idea.
"If it was a gas," said Paresi, "there'd be diffusion. _And_ convection.
If it were poisonous, we'd all be dead. If not, the chances are we'd
smell it. And the counter's not saying a thing--so it's not
radioactive."
"You trust the counter?" asked Ives bitterly.
"I trust it," said Paresi. His near-whisper shook with what sounded like
passion. "A man must have faith in something. I hold that faith in every
single function of every part of this ship until each and every part is
separately and distinctly proved unworthy of faith!"
"Then, by God, you'll understand my faith in my own two hands and what
they feel," snarled Ives. He stepped to the bulkhead and brought his
meaty hand hard against it.
"_Touché_," murmured Hoskins, and meant either Ives' remark or the flat,
solid smack of the hand against the blackness.
In his sleep, Johnny uttered a high, soft, careless tinkle of youthful,
happy laughter.
"Somebody's happy," said Ives.
"Paresi," said the Captain, "what happens when he wakes up?"
Paresi's eyebrows shrugged for him. "Practically anything. He's reached
down inside himself, somewhere, and found a way out. For him--not for
any of the rest of us. Maybe he'll ignore what we see. Maybe he'll think
he's somewhere else, or in some other time. Maybe he'll _be_ someone
else. Maybe he won't wake up at all."
"Maybe he has the right idea," said Ives.
"That's the second time you've made a crack like that," said Paresi
levelly. "Don't do it again. You can't afford it."
"We can't afford it," the Captain put in.
"All right," said Ives, with such docility that Paresi shot him a
startled, suspicious glance. The big communications man went to his
station and sat, half-turned away from the rest.
"What are they after?" complained the Captain suddenly. "What do they
want?"
"Who?" asked Paresi, still watching Ives.