ar to each group. The human race invented a concept
called the number five, and formulated a theory that all fivenesses
belong to a class, called the number five. In nature this theory acted
as though it were true. If you have five apples and five eggs you have
ten objects. A fiveness placed with another fiveness makes a tenness. So
arithmetic merely describes the behavior of a basic property of reality
in a consistent manner. Arithmetic is NOT a basic law. It's merely a
DESCRIPTION of a basic law.

"That basic doesn't seem to hold where we are now. But there are other
basic things that seem to be violated here, too, and will probably be
violated even more when and if we land on this planet.

"I've pretty well concluded that number doesn't exist here in the same
way it does ordinarily. Take the strength of gravity, for example.
Instead of being a single value it is equally a broad range of values,
and is all of them at the same time. How that can be I don't know.

* * * * *

"It's the same way with the number of objects. Instead of having five
fingers I have three, four, five, six and so on, fingers all at the same
time. But my mind can't see that. It can only grasp a single number. My
eyes look at my fingers and see the many simultaneous numbers of
fingers, but my mind can't grasp that, so _it conjures up a single
number at random_. It RATIONALIZES what it gets, and so we have a real
problem--the devising of some method of helping the mind deal with what
it can't grasp because it hasn't the equipment to grasp it as it really
is.

"There are sixty of us on board--or rather, there WERE sixty. Now there
are three, four, and so on, to some number above sixty. The last report
handed in by the crew shows eighty-three men on board! I can't prove it,
because if I handed you the report sheets you would count more or less
than that number.

"So what we must realize is that now there isn't any NUMBER of crew
members, but a 'something else' that is different than a number,
corresponding to an INTERVAL of numbers. It is real. It's a metaphysical
basic for this part of space around this planet.

"It's subtle, too. For example, right now there may be more than one me
on this ship, depending on whether there are more than sixty people on
board or not. I don't quite understand about that yet. There are a lot
of things I don't understand about it. If there is more than one of any
person on board, i