* * * *

He smoothed out the crumpled sheet of paper and glanced at it.

"What do you hope to find, Fred," his mother asked.

"I don't know," he said. "Anything, I--maybe this is something. Look."

Together they read, "Either: the universe is not constructed according
to logical necessity, Or: the observable universe is not the universe."
There were doodlings along the right margin that meant nothing.

"What does it mean?" Mrs. Grant asked.

"Probably just something connected with his classes," Fred shrugged. He
went on searching the waste basket, giving his mother no hint that he
had already found what he was searching for.

From the position of the paper in the waste basket he felt reasonably
sure it had been recently written. It was probably a voicing of thoughts
gained from the disappearance of Horace and John, because up to that
time his father had assumed his theory was just an intellectual
curiosity.

His father couldn't have asked himself if the observable universe might
not be the universe unless something had happened to raise a doubt, or
suggest an alternative as a possibility.

Mrs. Grant's interest lessened. She wandered about the room, perhaps
reliving memories. It gave Fred a chance to put the piece of paper in
his pocket so that when he put everything back in the waste basket his
mother would dismiss the whole search.

There was, of course, the file with the entire theory in it. He knew the
theory by heart, however, and had no need of that file.

"I think I'll go out for a while, Mom," he said.

"All right, Fred," she said disinterestedly.

Outside he climbed behind the wheel of his hot rod and sat there, making
no motion to start the motor. He was thinking.

Mark Smythe had said that he overheard two of his fellow class-men
discussing the theory, one of them remarking that, "It would be funny if
we were here just because we were descended from a long line of people
who believed this was the only place."

Could that be the key?

Take gravitation, for instance. If it were something that some vital
part of you had to believe, and that vital part didn't believe, would
the entire person go flying off into space?

What about inanimate matter? Did it have to believe too? And what about
other forms of life?

Or was everything except human beings just part of the props?

He shook his head. That didn't seem like quite the right track. He took
another.

The human mind