I dropped some congealed acid on to a coral-tinted pearl. Smoke. The blood turned grey and a dirty foam rose to the surface. Disintegration, decomposition, faster and faster! I turned my back to get another test-tube; when I looked again at the experiment, I nearly dropped the slim glass phial.

Beneath the skin of dirty foam, a dark coral was rising. The blood, destroyed by the acid, was re-creating itself. It was crazy, impossible!

“Kris.” I heard my name called, as though from a great distance. “Kris, the videophone!”

“What? Oh, thanks.”

The instrument had been buzzing for some time, but I had only just noticed it. I picked up the receiver: “Kelvin.”

“Snow. We are now all three plugged into the same circuit.”

The high-pitched voice of Sartorius came over the receiver:

“Greetings, Dr. Kelvin!” It was the wary tone of voice, full of false assurance, of the lecturer who knows he is on tenuous ground.

“Good-day to you, Dr. Sartorius!” I wanted to laugh; but in the circumstances I hardly felt I could yield to a mood of hilarity. After all, which of us was the laughing stock? In my hand I held a test-tube containing some blood. I shook it. The blood coagulated. Had I been the victim of an illusion a moment ago? Had I, perhaps, been mistaken?

“I should like to set forth, gentlemen, certain questions concerning the… the phantoms.”

I listened to Sartorius, but my mind refused to take in his words. I was pondering the coagulated blood and shutting out this distracting voice.

“Let’s call them Phi-creatures,” Snow interjected.

“Very well, agreed.”

A vertical line, bisecting the screen and barely perceptible, showed that I was linked by two channels: on either side of this line, I should have seen two images — Snow and Sartorius. But the light-rimmed screen remained dark. Both my interlocutors had covered the lenses of their sets.

“Each of us has made various experiments.” The nasal voice still held the same wariness. There was a pause.

“I suggest first of all that we pool such knowledge as we have acquired so far,” Sartorius went on. “Afterwards, I shall venture to communicate to you the conclusion that I, personally, have reached. If you would be so good as to begin, Dr. Kelvin…”

“Me?”

All of a sudden, I sensed Rheya watching me. I put my hand on the table and rolled the test-tube under the instrument racks. Then I perched myself on a stool which I dragged up with my foot. I was about to decline to give an opinion when, to my surprise, I heard myself answer:

“Right. A little talk? I haven’t done much, but I can tell you about it. A histological sample… certain reactions. Micro-reactions. I have the impression that…” I did not know how to go on. Suddenly I found my tongue and continued: “Everything looks normal, but it’s a camouflage. A cover. In a way, it’s a super-copy, a reproduction which is superior to the original. I’ll explain what I mean: there exists, in man, an absolute limit — a term to structural divisibility — whereas here, the frontiers have been pushed back. We are dealing with a sub-atomic structure.”

“Just a minute, just a minute! Kindly be more precise!” Sartorius interrupted.

Snow said nothing. Did I catch an echo of his rapid breathing? Rheya was looking at me again. I realized that, in my excitement, I had almost shouted the last words. Calmer, I settled myself on my uncomfortable perch and closed my eyes. How could I be more precise?

“The atom is the ultimate constituent element of our bodies. My guess is that the Phi-beings are constituted of units smaller than ordinary atoms, much smaller.”

“Mesons,” put in Sartorius. He did not sound in the least surprised.

“No, not mesons… I would have seen them. The power of this instrument here is between a 10th to a 20th of an angstrom, isn’t it? But nothing is visible, nothing whatsoever. So it can’t be mesons. More likely neutrinos.”

“How do you account for that theory? Conglomerations of neutrinos are unstable…”

“I don’t know. I’m not a physicist. Perhaps a magnetic field could stabilize them. It’s not my province. In any event, if my observations are correct, the structure is made up of particles at least ten thousand times smaller than atoms. Wait a minute, I haven’t finished! If the albuminous molecules and the cells were directly constructed from micro-atoms, they would be proportionally even smaller. This applies to the corpuscles, the micro-organisms, everything. Now, the dimensions are those of atomic structures. Consequently, the albumen, the cell and the nucleus of the cell are nothing but camouflage. The real structure, which determines the functions of the visitor, remains concealed.”

“Kelvin!”

Snow had uttered a stifled cry. I stopped, horrified. I had said “visitor.”

Rheya had not overheard. At any rate, she had not understood. Her head in her hand, she was staring out of the window, her delicate profile etched against the purple dawn.

My distant interlocutors were silent; I could hear their breathing.

“There’s something in what he says,” Snow muttered.

“Yes,” remarked Sartorius, “but for one fact: Kelvin’s hypothetical particles have nothing to do with the structure of the ocean. The ocean is composed of atoms.”

“Perhaps it’s capable of producing neutrinos,” I replied.

Suddenly I was bored with all their talk. The conversation was pointless, and not even amusing.

“Kelvin’s hypothesis explains this extraordinary resistance and the speed of regeneration,” Snow growled. “They probably carry their own energy source as well; they don’t need food…”

“I believe I have the chair,” Sartorius interrupted. The self-designated chairman of the debate was clinging exasperatingly to his role. “I should like to raise the question of the motivation behind the appearance of the Phi-creatures. I put it to you as follows: what are the Phi-creatures? They are not autonomous individuals, nor copies of actual persons. They are merely projections materializing from our brains, based on a given individual.”

I was struck by the soundness of this description; Sartorius might not be very sympathetic, but he was certainly no fool.

I rejoined the conversation:

“I think you’re right. Your definition explains why a particular per… creation appears rather than another. The origin of the materialization lies in the most durable imprints of memory, those which are especially well-defined, but no single imprint can be completely isolated, and in the course of the reproduction, fragments of related imprints are absorbed. Thus the new arrival sometimes reveals a more extensive knowledge than that of the individual of whom it is a copy…”

“Kelvin!” shouted Snow once more.

It was only Snow who reacted to my lapses; Sartorius did not seem to be affected by them. Did this mean that Sartorius’s visitor was less perspicacious than Snow’s? For a moment, I imagined the scholarly Sartorius cohabiting with a cretinous dwarf.

“Indeed, that corresponds with our observations,” Sartorius said. “Now, let us consider the motivation behind the apparition! It is natural enough to assume, in the first instance, that we are the object of an experiment. When I examine this proposition, the experiment seems to me badly designed. When we carry out an experiment, we profit by the results and, above all, we carefully note the defects of our methods. As a result, we introduce modifications in our future procedure. But, in the case with which we are concerned, not a single modification has occurred. The Phi-creatures reappear exactly as they were, down to the last detail… as vulnerable as before, each time we attempt to… to rid ourselves of them…”

“Exactly,” I broke in, “a recoil, with no compensating mechanism, as Dr. Snow would say. Conclusions?”

“Simply that the thesis of experimentation is inconsistent with this… this unbelievable bungling. The ocean is… precise. The dual-level structure of the Phi-creatures testifies to this precision. Within the prescribed limits, the Phi-creatures behave in the same way as the real… the… er…”