"Teresa?" I asked.
"Yes, Mr. Lincoln?"
"Tell Harla to concentrate on the buttons."
"He is."
"There is a subtle difference between them."
"This he knows, but he does not know what it is."
"There is a delicate difference in warmth. One button will be faintly
warmer than the other."
"Harla has felt them."
I dropped the third-person address and spoke to Teresa as if she
were but one end of a telephone line. "Harla," I said, "only part of
the difference lies in the warmth to physical touch. There should be
another kind of warmth. Are you not affected by a _feeling_ that one is
better than the other?"
Harla's reply came direct through Teresa: "Why yes, I am indeed drawn
to the warmer of the two. Were this a game I would wager on it. But
that is emotion and hardly suitable as a guide."
"Ah, but it is!" I replied quickly. "This is our frame of reference.
Press the warmer of the but--"
I was violently interrupted. Wallach shook me violently and hurled me
away from Teresa. Frank Crandall was facing the girl, shouting, "No!
No! The warm one will be the red one! You must press the green--"
And then he, too, was interrupted.
Displaced air made a near-explosive _woosh!_ and the tunnel car was
there on its pad. In it was a nightmare horror holding a limp Holly
Carter across its snakelike tentacles. A free tentacle opened the door.
"Take her while I hold my breath," said Harla, still talking through
Teresa. "I'll return the tunnel car empty. I can, now that I know that
warmth is where the hearth is."
Harla dropped the unconscious girl in my arms and snapped back into
the car. It disappeared, then returned empty just as the doctor was
bending over Holly.
* * * * *
So now I have my Holly, but every now and then I lie awake beside her
in a cold sweat. Harla could have guessed wrong. Just as Wallach and
Crandall had been wrong in assuming the red button would be warmer than
the green. Their reaction was as emotional as Harla's.
I hope Harla either forgives me or never finds out that I had to sound
sure of myself, and that I had to play on his emotions simply to get
him to take the fifty-fifty chance on his--hers--_our_ lives.
And I get to sleep only after I've convinced myself that it was more
than chance ... that somehow our feelings and emotions guided Harla
where logic and definition fail.
For right and left do not exist until terrestrial man defines them.