e body in balance. That
society is the one you have found here, in our world. You found it
pleasant and attractive, you say, but that doesn't mean you're suited
to it.

"Nature's harsh rules may have operated to let you observe a way of
life here that you enjoy, but to exclude you otherwise--except from a
mind that is not well. In nature's balance, it could be that the
refuge on this world most closely resembling your needs is in the mind
of the psychotic. One conclusion could be that your race is mentally
ill--by our standards, if not by yours--and that the type of person
here most closely approximating your way of life is one with a
disordered mind."

* * * * *

Dr. Cloyd paused. Mersey had no immediate reply.

The traveler made use of the silence to consider this plausible, but
frightening theory. To accept the theory would be to accept a destiny
of madness here on this world, although the doctor had been kind
enough to draw a distinction between madness in one dimension and a
mere lack of natural balance in another.

Mersey again seized upon the traveler's mind and spoke its thoughts.
But as he spoke, he voiced a conclusion which the traveler had not yet
admitted even to himself.

"Then the answer is inescapable," Mersey said, his tone flat and
unemotional. "It is theoretically possible for all of our people to
migrate to this world and find refuge of a sort. But if we established
ourselves in the minds of your normal people, we'd be without will. As
mere observers, we'd become assimilated in time, and thus extinguished
as a separate race. That, of course, we could not permit. And if we
settled in the minds most suitable to receive us, we would be in the
minds of those who by your standards are insane--whose destiny is
controlled by the others. Here again we could permit no such fate.

"That alone would be enough to send me back to my people to report
failure. But there is something more--something I don't think you will
believe, for all your ability to synthesize acceptance of another
viewpoint."

"And what is that?"

"First I must ask a question. In speaking to me now, do you still
believe yourself to be addressing Mersey, your fellow human being, and
humoring him in a delusion? Or do you think you are speaking through
him to me, the inhabitant of another world who has borrowed his mind?"

* * * * *

The doctor smiled and took time to rel