He said, panting, "And where will this capillary take us?"

Konev said, "Directly to one of the centers which you believe to be a crossroad for the processes of abstract thought. - Let's cut down the scale of the cerebrograph again. Right here."

Morrison nodded. "Please remember that I've located them in human beings only indirectly, judging from my findings in animal brains. Still, if I'm correct, that should be the superior external skeptic node."

Konev said, "According to you, there should be eight such nodes, four on each side. This one, however, is the largest and most intricate on the left side and therefore stands the best chance of giving us the data we need. Am I right?"

"I think so," said Morrison cautiously, "but please remember that my reasoning has not been accepted by the scientific community."

"And do you begin to doubt it now, too, Albert?"

"Caution is a reasonable scientific attitude, Yuri. My concept of the skeptic node makes sense in the light of my observations, but I have never been able to test the matter directly - that's all - and I do not wish it said later that I misled you."

Dezhnev snickered. "Skeptic node! No wonder your countrymen are skeptical of the whole notion, Albert. My father used to say: 'People are ready enough to laugh at you. Don't make funny faces in order to encourage them.' - Why didn't you call it 'thought node' in simple Russian? It would have sounded much better."

"Or 'thought node' in simple English," said Morrison patiently. "But science is international and one uses Greek or Latin when possible. The Greek word for 'thought' is 'skeptis.' It has given us 'skeptical' both in English and in Russian to indicate a habitual doubting attitude. That's because the very act of doubt implies thought. Surely you all know that the most efficient way of accepting the foolish dogmas foisted on us by social orthodoxy is to refrain from thinking."

There was an uncomfortable silence at that, whereupon Morrison (having left it there for just long enough, out of a faint malice - he owed them that much) said, "As human beings in all nations know."

The atmosphere lightened perceptibly at once and Dezhnev said, "In that case, we will see how skeptical we need be of the skeptic node, when we reach it."

"I hope," said Konev with a scowl, "that you don't think this is something to joke about, you clown. That node is where we can hope to detect Pyotr Shapirov's thoughts. Without that, this venture will come to nothing."

Dezhnev said, "To each his own job. I will take you there, with my expert handling of the ship. Once there, you will get the thoughts - or Albert will, if you cannot. And if you do as well with the thoughts as I do with the ship, you will have nothing to be unhappy about. My father used to say -"

"Your father is better off where he is," said Konev. "Don't dig him up again."

"Yuri," said Boranova sharply, "that was an unbearably rude remark to make. You must apologize."

"That's all right," said Dezhnev. "My father used to say: 'The time for offense is when a man, once he has cooled down, repeats an insult he has offered in his rage.' I am not sure that I can always follow that advice, but in honor of my father, I will pass over Yuri's stupid remark this time." He bent over his controls, his face grim.

Morrison had listened to the altercation (just Konev being nasty - obviously because he was under a great strain) with only half an ear. His mind slipped back to something else, to Dezhnev's carefree chatter and Boranova's warning hand.

He lowered himself into his seat, clasping himself in for stability, and turned his head toward Boranova. "Natalya! A question!"

"Yes, Albert?"

"Those miniaturized particles released into the normal, unminiaturized Universe -"

"Yes, Albert?"

"Eventually, they deminiaturize."

Boranova hesitated. "As Arkady told you, they do."

"When?"

She shrugged. "Unpredictably. Like the radioactive breakdown of a single atom."

"How do you know?"

"Because it's so."

"I mean, what experiments have been conducted? Nothing has ever been miniaturized to the extent that we are now miniaturized, so surely you can't know what happens to such miniaturized particles by direct observation."

Boranova said, "We've observed events at miniaturizations we have reached and in that way determined what seem to be the laws of behavior of miniaturized objects. We extrapolate -"

"Extrapolations aren't always trustworthy when they go well outside the realm of direct study."

"Granted."

"You compared spontaneous deminiaturization to radioactive breakdown. Is there a half-life of deminiaturization? Even if you can't tell when a particular miniaturized particle will deminiaturize, can you tell when half of a particular large quantity of them will?"

"We have half-life figures and we think they are expressions of first-order kinetics, as radioactive half-lives are."

Morrison said, "Can you generalize from one type of particle to another?"

Boranova pursed her lips and, for a moment, seemed lost in thought. Then she said, "It would seem that the half-life of a miniaturized object varies inversely with the intensity of miniaturization and also with the normal mass of the object."

"So that as we are miniaturized to smaller and smaller sizes, the less time we are likely to remain miniaturized, and the smaller we are to begin with, the less time we are likely to remain miniaturized."

"That's right," replied Boranova stiffly.

Morrison looked at her gravely. "I admire your integrity, Natalya. You're not anxious to tell me things. You don't volunteer information. Still, you draw the line at misinforming me."

Boranova said, "I am a human being and I tell lies on occasion out of necessity or out of defects in my emotions or personality. But I am also a scientist and I would not twist scientific fact for any but the most compelling reasons."

"Then what it amounts to is this. Even this ship, although it is much more massive than a helium nucleus, has a half-life."

"A very long one," put in Boranova quickly.

"But the fact that we are so intensely miniaturized has curtailed this very long half-life."

"Still leaving it long."

"And what about the individual components of the ship? The molecules of water that we drink, the molecules of air we breathe, the individual atoms that make up our body? They could have - must have - very short -"

"No!" said Boranova forcefully, seeming to find relief in being able to deny something. "The miniaturization field overlaps where it deals with particles sufficiently close together, and that are at rest, or nearly at rest, relative to each other. An extended body - such as the ship and everything it contains - is treated as a large but single particle and has a half-life of deminiaturization to match. There miniaturization differs from radioactivity."

"Ah," said Morrison, "but when I was out of the ship and out of contact with it, could it be that I was then a separate particle with a much smaller mass than the ship and its contents and that I had a miniaturization half-life much smaller than we have now?"

"I'm not sure," said Boranova, "whether the distance between yourself and the ship was great enough to make you a separate body. Possibly it did, for the time you were not in contact."

"And I then had a shorter half-life - much shorter."

"Possibly - but then you were out of contact only a matter of minutes."

"Well, then, what is the half-life of this ship at the present level of miniaturization?"

"We can't really speak of the half-life of a single object."

"Yes, because half-lives are statistical. For any particle, deminiaturization can come, spontaneously, at any time, even after a very short time and even though the half-life of a large number of similar particles would be quite long."