's a part of that stream of electrons, right?" Cercy asked.

"That's what he told us," Malley said.

"But still keeping his pattern, within the stream," Cercy continued.
"He has to, in order to get back into his own shape. Now we start the
first disrupter."

Harrison hooked the machine into circuit, and sent his helpers away.

"Here's a running graph of the electron stream," Cercy said. "See the
difference?" On the graph there was an irregular series of peaks and
valleys, constantly shifting and leveling. "Do you remember when you
hypnotized the Ambassador? He talked about his friend who'd been
killed in space."

"That's right," Malley nodded. "His friend had been killed by
something that had just popped up."

"He said something else," Cercy went on. "He told us that the basic
organizing force of the Universe usually stopped things like that.
What does that mean to you?"

"The organizing force," Malley repeated slowly. "Didn't Darrig say
that that was a new natural law?"

"He did. But think of the implications, as Darrig did. If an
organizing principle is engaged in some work, there must be something
that opposes it. That which opposes organization is--"

"Chaos!"

"That's what Darrig thought, and what we should have seen. The chaos
is underlying, and out of it there arose an organizing principle. This
principle, if I've got it right, sought to suppress the fundamental
chaos, to make all things regular.

"But the chaos still boils out in spots, as Alfern found out. Perhaps
the organizational pattern is weaker in space. Anyhow, those spots are
dangerous, until the organizing principle gets to work on them."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

* * * * *

He turned to the panel. "Okay, Harrison. Throw in the second
disrupter." The peaks and valleys altered on the graph. They started
to mount in crazy, meaningless configurations.

"Take Darrig's message in the light of that. Chaos, we know, is
underlying. Everything was formed out of it. The Gorgon Medusa was
something that _couldn't be looked upon_. She turned men into stone,
you recall, destroyed them. So, Darrig found a relationship between
chaos and that which can't be looked upon. All with regard to the
Ambassador, of course."

"The Ambassador can't look upon chaos!" Malley cried.

"That's it. The Ambassador is capable of an infinite number of
alterations and permutations. But _something_--the matrix--can't
change, b