ust said,
and with exactly the same emphasis.

"Third, consider this last jump all by itself. It's the first time we've
ever stayed in the same galaxy. It's the first time we've ever gone
where we wanted to. And it's the first time--here's the crux, as I see
it--that any of us has been concentrating on any destination at the
moment of firing the charge. Brownie was willing the _Pleiades_ to this
planet so hard that we all could taste it. The rest of us, if not really
pushing to get here, were at least not opposed to the idea. Check?"

"Check." "That's right." "Yes, I was pushing with all my might," came
from the three listeners, and James went on:

"Are you saying the damn thing's _alive_?"

"No. I'm saying I don't believe in miracles. I don't believe in
coincidence--that concept is as meaningless as that of paradox. I
certainly do _not_ believe that we hit this planet by chance against
odds of almost infinity to one. So I've been looking for a reason. I
found one. It goes against my grain--against everything I've ever
believed--but, since it's the only possible explanation, it must be
true. The only possible director of the Gunther Drive _must_ be the
mind."

"Hell's blowtorches--Now you're _insisting_ that the damn thing's
alive."

"Far from it. It's Brownie who's alive. It was Brownie who got us here.
Nothing else--repeat, _nothing_ else--makes sense."

James pondered for a full minute. "I wouldn't buy it except for one
thing. If you, the hardest-boiled skeptic that ever went unhung, can
feed yourself the whole bowl of such a mess as that, I can at least take
a taste of it. Shoot."

"Okay. You know that we don't know anything really fundamental about
either teleportation or the drive. I'm sure now that the drive is simply
mechanical teleportation. If you tried to 'port yourself without any
idea of where you wanted to go, where do you think you'd land?"

"You might scatter yourself all over space--no, you wouldn't. You
wouldn't move, because it wouldn't be teleportation at all. Destination
is an integral part of the concept."

"Exactly so--but only because you've been conditioned to it all your
life. This thing hasn't been conditioned to anything."

"Like a new-born baby," Lola suggested.

"Life again," James said. "I can't see it--too many bones in it. Pure
luck, even at those odds, makes a lot more sense."

"And to make matters worse," Garlock went on as though neither of them
had spoken. "Just supp