press the status quo, or with equal truth, at his desire, he can
change the status quo, the shape of things, to fit the equation he
desires.

Let him wander, puzzled, worrying on this. Let him work it out himself,
for experience from long ago had taught them that if man was not ready
to accept an alien thought he could not, would not, accept but in his
own interpreting.

Now, at last, at his readiness to make things fit the equation he
conceives, instead of making the equation fit the things as they are,
bring him closer in the range of the amplifier, the crystal tool, that
communication might be direct.

He holds the key.

He knows the lock.

He finds the door.

Show him the one small step remaining--the diagram, the design, the
movement of the forces of his mind.

To turn the key.

Unlock the lock.

Throw wide the door.

26

As one awakened from a deep sleep, a hypnotic trance, Cal opened his
eyes.

Man's ancient thought filled his being, the subject of man's dreams, of
yearnings, of philosophies. In ancient eidetic memory, the unbroken
thread persisted: If I could only grasp this elusive thing, always just
barely beyond my reach, I would not need the ox, the wagon, the train,
the plane, the spaceship to transport me from here to there.

And now, at last, the thought was in Cal's grasp. Express the things and
forces balanced in equation to describe them as they are; or, equally,
to alter the things and forces instead to fit the equation balance one
had in mind; purely a matter of choice. Each was the use of natural law.
No chaos here, no magic, one as much true science as the other.

How long had he slept, and dreamed? A few minutes? An hour? Or by chance
was he another Rip Van Winkle, doomed to find the colonists aged or
dead?

But why wonder?

A short distance first, just outside the amphitheater, just a small
test. He first rearranged the relative position of himself to the
amphitheater, to be outside instead of in it. He diagrammed the forces
in his mind that would alter the relationship, connected them.

He was standing outside the entrance arch.

With a hoarse cry, Louie, who had been watching all the while through
the open arch, shrank back away from Cal, wavered in uncertainty, then
fell to his knees, then groveled in the dust.

"Forgive me!" he cried. "In my blind, senseless vanity, I did not know
you were a Holy One. I was going to kill you, I confess. Woe! Woe! I saw
you