can't conclude that, Ives. They've inconvenienced us.
They've turned us in on ourselves, and put a drain on our intangible
resources as men and as a crew. But so far they haven't actually done
anything to us. We've done it to ourselves."

Ives looked at him scornfully. "We wrecked the unwreckable controls,
manufactured that case-hardened darkness, and talked to ourselves on an
all-wave carrier with no source, about information no outsider could
get?"

"I didn't say any of that." Paresi paused to choose words. "Of course
they're responsible for these phenomena. But the phenomena haven't hurt
us. Our reactions to the phenomena are what has done the damage."

"A fall never hurt anyone, they told me when I was a kid," said Ives
pugnaciously. "It's the sudden stop."

Paresi dismissed the remark with a shrug. "I still say that while we
have been astonished, frightened, puzzled and frustrated, we have not
been seriously threatened. Our water and food and air are virtually
unlimited. Our ability to live with one another under emergency
situations has been tested to a fare-thee-well, and all we have to do is
recognize the emergency as such and that ability will rise to optimum."
He smiled suddenly. "It could be worse, Ives."

"I suppose it could," said Ives. "That blackness could move in until it
really crowded us, or--"

Very quietly Hoskins said, "It _is_ moving in."

Captain Anderson shook his head. "No...." And hearing him, they slowly
recognized that the syllable was not a denial, but an exclamation. For
the darkness was no longer a half-meter deep on the bulkhead. No one had
noticed it, but they suddenly became aware that the almost-square cabin
was now definitely rectangular, with the familiar controls, the
communications wall, and the thwartship partition aft of them forming
three sides to the encroaching fourth.

[Illustration: Nude woman on chess motif.]

Ives rose shaking and round-eyed from his chair. He made an unspellable
animal sound and rushed at the blackness. Paresi leaped for him, but not
fast enough. Ives collided sickeningly against the strange jet surface
and fell. He fell massively, gracelessly, not prone but on wide-spread
knees, with his arms crumpled beneath him and the side of his face on
the deck. He stayed there, quite unconscious, a gross caricature of
worship.

There was a furiously active, silent moment while Paresi turned the fat
man over on his back, ran skilled fingers over his ble