ep
below his consciousness.

In the front of the raft, Retch sat with his back to Parker. From
Retch's motions, Parker knew the man was cleaning his gun. Parker made
no comment. When Retch had finished and had turned back to him, Parker
spoke. "I want to know a little more about that island. How does it
happen we can't see it?"

"I'm not certain," Retch answered. "I think it's a lot like the mirages
you see on the desert. This island is something like that, only in
reverse. In a mirage, you see something that doesn't exist. In the case
of this island, you _don't_ see something that _does_ exist."

"Um," Parker said, then was silent. The explanation sounded reasonable
enough, as far as it went. The trouble was it didn't go far enough, not
nearly far enough to quiet the thought lurking deep in the big pilot's
mind. He worked with the paddle. "When you hired me to fly you down
here, you told me that you knew where this island was located but you
didn't tell me it had a bad habit of vanishing."

"I didn't believe it myself," Retch answered. "So far as I was
concerned, it was just a wild rumor."

"Um," Parker said again. As he spoke, part of the thought that he had
been keeping buried in his mind came blasting to the surface. "She said
it was a mirage too!" he blurted out the words. "And that goddamned Dr.
Yammer--" He caught himself. Into his mind had come a vision of a woman
he had once known, and a psychiatrist called Dr. Yammer. Pain crossed
his face.

"What?" Retch asked. "Who are you talking about?"

"Nobody," Parker answered. "Just a woman I once knew."

Her name had been Effra. Effra of the Green Eyes, he had called her.
Rigidly he forced the thought of her from his mind, forced himself to
think of what Retch had said. But it was no good. His mind kept going
back to Effra and Yammer.

"She is caught, trapped in a net of delusion and hallucination that is
as solid as a block of steel," Dr. Yammer had once said, his voice
precise with authoritarian certainty. "I cannot get her out of this
steel block unless I hospitalize her, perhaps operate. There is no other
choice, no other decision that can be made. Putting it bluntly--she is
insane. A delicate thing, insanity. We still work in the dark with
things of the mind."

* * * * *

At the memory of Yammer's words, Parker twisted uncomfortably. He used
the paddle much more vigorously than was necessary. It was as if
Yammer's fac