Denison said, “That’s exactly my reas—” And silence fell again.

Denison heaved himself into a sitting position and looked down on the suit-encased girl. He said, “I think we had better go back to town.”

She said, “I was just guessing.”

He said, “No, you weren’t. Whatever it was, it wasn’t just guessing.”

11

Barron Neville stared at her, quite speechless for a while. She looked calmly back at him. Her window panorama had been changed again. One of them now showed the Earth, a little more than half full.

Finally, he said, “Why?”

She said, “It was an accident, really, I saw the point and I was too enthusiastic not to speak. I should have told you days ago but I was afraid your reaction would be exactly what it is.”

“So he knows. You fool!”

She frowned. “What does he know? Only what he would have guessed sooner or later—that I’m not really a tourist guide—that I’m your Intuitionist. An Intuitionist who knows no mathematics, for heaven’s sake. So what if he knows that? What does it matter if I have intuition? How many times have you told me that my intuition has no value till it is backed by mathematical rigor and experimental observation? How many times have you told me that the most compelling intuition could be wrong? Well, then, what value will he place on mere Intuitionism?”

Neville grew white, but Selene couldn’t tell whether that was out of anger or apprehension. He said, “You’re different. Hasn’t your intuition always proved right? When you were sure of it?”

“Ah, but he doesn’t know that, does he?”

“He’ll guess it. He’ll see Gottstein.”

“What will he tell Gottstein? He still has no idea of what we’re really after.”

“Doesn’t he?”

“No.” She had stood up, walked away. Now she turned to him and shouted, “No! It’s cheap of you to imply that I would betray you and the rest. If you don’t accept my integrity then accept my common sense. There’s no point in telling them. What’s the use of it to them, or to us, if we’re all going to be destroyed?”

“Oh, please, Selene!” Neville waved his hand in disgust. “Not that.”

“No. You listen. He talked to me and described his work. You hide me like a secret weapon. You tell me that I’m more valuable than any instrument or any ordinary scientist. You play your games of conspiracy, insisting that everyone must continue to think me a tourist guide and nothing more so that my great talents will always be available to the Lunarites. To you. And what do you accomplish?”

“We have you, haven’t we? How long do you suppose you would have remained free, if they—”

“You keep saying things like that. But who’s been imprisoned? Who’s been stopped? Where is the evidence of the great conspiracy you see all around you? The Earth-men keep you and your team from their large instruments much more because you goad them into it than out of any malice on their part. And that’s done us good, rather than harm, since it’s forced us to invent other instruments that are more subtle.”

“Based on your theoretical insight, Selene.”

Selene smiled. “I know. Ben was very complimentary about them.”

“You and your Ben. What the hell do you want with that miserable Earthie?”

“He’s an Immigrant. And what I want is information. Do you give me any? You’re so damned afraid I’ll be caught, you don’t dare let me be seen talking to any physicist; only you, and you’re my— For that reason only, probably.”

“Now, Selene.” He tried to manage a soothing tone, but there was far too much impatience to it.

“No, I don’t care about that really. You’ve told me I have this one task and I’ve tried to concentrate on it and sometimes I think I have it, mathematics or not. I can visualize it; the kind of thing that must be done—and then it slips away. But what’s the use of it, when the Pump will destroy us all anyway.... Haven’t I told you I distrusted the exchange of field intensities?”

Neville said, “I’ll ask you again. Are you ready to tell me that the Pump will destroy us? Never mind might, never mind ‘could’; never mind anything but ‘will.’ ”

Selene shook her head angrily. “I can’t. It’s so marginal. I can’t say it will. But isn’t a simple ‘might’ sufficient in such a case?”

“Oh, Lord.”

“Don’t turn up your eyes. Don’t sneer! You’ve never tested the matter. I told you how it might be tested.”

“You were never this worried about it till you started listening to this Earthie of yours.”

“He’s an Immigrant. Aren’t you going to test it?”

“No! I told you your suggestions were impractical. You’re not an experimentalist, and what looks good in your mind doesn’t necessarily work in the real world of instruments, of randomness, and of uncertainty.”

“The so-called real world of your laboratory.” Her face was flushed and angry and she held her clenched fists at chin-level. “You waste so much time trying to get a vacuum good enough—There’s a vacuum up there, up there on the surface where I’m pointing, with temperatures that, at times, are halfway down toward absolute zero. Why don’t you try experiments on the surface?”

“It would have been useless.”

“How do you know? You just won’t try. Ben Denison tried. He took the trouble to devise a system he could use on the surface and he set it up when he went to inspect the Solar batteries. He wanted you to come and you wouldn’t. Do you remember? It was a very simple thing, something even I could describe to you now that it’s been described to me. He ran it at day-temperatures and again at night-temperatures and that was enough to guide him to a new line of research with the Pionizer.”

“How simple you make it sound.”

“How simple it is. Once he found out I was an Intuitionist, he talked to me as you never did. He explained his reasons for thinking that the strengthening of the strong nuclear interaction is indeed accumulating catastrophically in the neighborhood of Earth. It will only be a few years before the Sun explodes and sends the strengthening, in ripples—”

“No, no, no, no,” shouted Neville. “I’ve seen his results and I’m not impressed.”

“You’ve seen them?”

“Yes, of course. Do you suppose I let him work in our laboratories without making sure I know what he’s doing? I’ve seen his results and they’re worth nothing. He deals with tiny deviations that are well within the experimental error. If he wants to believe that those deviations have significance and if you want to believe them, go ahead. But no amount of belief will make them have that significance if, in fact, they don’t.”

“What do you want to believe, Barron?”

“I want the truth.”

“But haven’t you decided in advance what the truth must be by your own gospel? You want the Pump Station of the Moon, don’t you, so that you need have nothing to do with the surface; and anything that might prevent that is not the truth—by definition.”

“I won’t argue with you. I want the Pump Station, and even more—I want the other. One’s no good without the other. Are you sure you haven’t—”

“I haven’t.”

“Will you?”

Selene whirled on him again, her feet tapping rapidly on the ground in such a way as to keep her bobbing in the air to the tune of an angry clatter.

“I won’t tell him anything,” she said, “but I must have more information. You have no information for me, but he may have; or he may get it with the experiments you won’t do. I’ve got to talk to him and find out what he is going to find out. If you get between him and me, you’ll never have what you want. And you needn’t fear his getting it before I do. He’s too used to Earth thinking; he won’t make that last step. I will.”

“All right. And don’t forget the difference between Earth and Moon, either. This is your world; you have no other. This man, Denison, this Ben, this Immigrant, having come from Earth to the Moon, can, if he chooses, return from Moon to Earth. You can never go to the Earth; never. You are a Lunarite forever.”