times it seemed the printed card of an electronic wiring
was necessary only because the human mind could not visualize the whole
without that aid, that music did not come through because in incomplete
visualization some little part was left dangling, unconnected. And the
long history of non-science belief in the magic properties of cabalistic
signs and designs rose up to taunt him, to goad him with the possibility
that perhaps man had once come close to the answer of how to control
physical properties without the use of tools; that the development of a
physical science had taken man down a sidetrack instead of farther along
the direct route toward his goal.

Or that man had once been shown, and never understood, or forgot. Yet
kept alive the memory that physical shifts could be changed if he could
only draw the right design.

Through his wanderings, one fact gradually intruded upon his mind. It
seemed the farther inland he roamed, the closer he came to grasping the
problem; the nearer the seashore, the more it eluded him.

One morning he looked up at the glittering heights of Crystal Palace
Mountain, and suddenly he resolved to climb it. Perhaps the winds of
the mountain being stronger, the fuzziness of his thought would be blown
away? Perhaps the arrangement of the crystalline structures, the arches
and spires, might catch his brain waves, modulate them, transform them,
strengthen them, feed them back, himself a part of the design instead of
outside it?

In the framework of physical science a nonsense notion. But what harm to
try?

He sought out Tom and Jed, the two who would miss him, the two who would
care.

"There ain't no water up there, far as I know," Jed said. "And you can't
carry none, now. Me and a party scouted the mountain once. It's mighty
purty, but useless. The quartz ain't valuable enough to cover its
shipping costs back to Earth. The ground is too rocky to farm. Not much
in the way of food growing there. So we never went back."

"The scientists surveyed it when the planet was first discovered," Cal
said. "One of the first places they went because it was so outstanding.
But they found nothing interesting and useful either. Still, I think
I'll go."

"Well," Jed said with a shrug. "You can't get lost. If you should lose
your bearings, just walk downhill and you'll come to food and water.
Follow the shore line until you get back, either direction. And, I
reckon, the way things go now, you ain't g