The Project Gutenberg EBook of Viewpoint, by Gordon Randall Garrett

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Title: Viewpoint

Author: Gordon Randall Garrett

Release Date: November 20, 2007 [EBook #23563]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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VIEWPOINT.

BY RANDALL GARRETT

Illustrated by Bernklau

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction January 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

_A fearsome thing is a thing you're afraid of--and it has nothing
whatever to do with whether others are afraid, nor with whether it
is in fact dangerous. It's your view of the matter that counts!_

There was a dizzy, sickening whirl of mental blackness--not true
blackness, but a mind-enveloping darkness that was filled with the
multi-colored little sparks of thoughts and memories that scattered
through the darkness like tiny glowing mice, fleeing from something
unknown, fleeing outwards and away toward a somewhere that was equally
unknown; scurrying, moving, changing--each half recognizable as it
passed, but leaving only a vague impression behind.

Memories were shattered into their component data bits in that maelstrom
of not-quite-darkness, and scattered throughout infinity and eternity.
Then the pseudo-dark stopped its violent motion and became still, no
longer scattering the fleeing memories, but merely blanketing them. And
slowly--ever so slowly--the powerful cohesive forces that existed
between the data-bits began pulling them back together again as the
not-blackness faded. The associative powers of the mind began putting
the frightened little things together as they drifted back in from vast
distances, trying to fit them together again in an ordered whole. Like a
vast jigsaw puzzle in five dimensions, little clots and patches formed
as the bits were snuggled into place here and there.

The process was far from complete when Broom regained consciousness.