"Are you all right, Norcriss?" Jerry blinked slowly, then focused on
the face of Dr. Alan Burgess. He found himself lying on a narrow,
white-sheeted cart, in the corridor outside the room where all the
trouble had begun. "Mawson," he said groggily. "Is he--?"
Burgess nodded wearily. "Still in there, in full control of his one-man
universe. What happened, Norcriss? You came tumbling out that door like
a wild man, clawing the air and yelling. Then you went into shock.
You've been unconscious for two hours."
"I--I thought I was falling," Jerry admitted. "The last thing I
remember is stepping through the open space between a spaceship's
supporting girders."
"What open space?" said Burgess, frowning curiously.
Jerry shook his head. "There isn't any such thing. But something
happens to logic in that room. It's like having a dream, Doctor. Things
that would startle you in everyday life seem correct. Even familiar.
But there's a kind of pattern to events. At first, I'm in my universe,
and mostly in control. Then little fragments of my pseudo-reality start
slipping, changing into other things. The changes seem perfectly normal
to me. Then, all at once, the guy with the brass buttons turns up--and
I've managed in the nick of time, twice, to realize that I was about to
be sent or led between the disrupting plates of your atomic duplicator."
"The man with the brass buttons," Burgess said slowly. "Do you think
it's Mawson?"
"Either him or a robot he's made to keep his machine fed." When Burgess
scowled, Jerry shrugged and appended, "It is his machine, for all
practical purposes. He's the boss of that hungry electronic monster,
Doctor, however the hospital feels about it."
"This Carol. Is she a real woman, or a figment of your imagination,
wishful thinking?"
"She's real enough," Jerry sighed. "She's the personal secretary of the
entire Space zoology program. I take her out sometimes. There's nothing
special between us."
"But you wish there were," said Burgess.