ple, and he could go off on a crazy tangent
because he's upset about Charlie. The thing to do is give him a
logical explanation instead of letting him think his fantasy is a
fact."

Doc was taking all this so hard--because it was upsetting things he'd
taken for granted as being facts all his life, like those astronomers
who were going nuts in droves all over the world. I didn't realize how
upset Doc really was, though, till he woke me up at about 4:00 A.M.

"I can't sleep for thinking about those stars," he said, sitting on
the edge of my bunk. "Roy, I'm _scared_."

That from Doc was something I'd never expected to hear. It startled me
wide enough awake to sit up in the dark and listen while he unloaded
his worries.

"I'm afraid," Doc said, "because what is happening up there isn't
right or natural. It just can't be, yet it is."

It was so quiet when he paused that I could hear the blood swishing in
my ears. Finally Doc said, "Roy, the galaxy we live in is as
delicately balanced as a fine watch. If that balance is upset too far
our world will be affected drastically."

Ordinarily I wouldn't have argued with Doc on his own ground, but I
could see he was painting a mental picture of the whole universe
crashing together like a Fourth of July fireworks display and I was
afraid to let him go on.

"The trouble with you educated people," I said, "is that you think
your experts have got everything figured out, that there's nothing in
the world their slide-rules can't pin down. Well, I'm an illiterate
mugg, but I know that your astronomers can measure the stars till
they're blue in the face and they'll never learn who _put_ those stars
there. So how do they know that whoever put them there won't move them
again? I've always heard that if a man had faith enough he could move
mountains. Well, if a man has the faith in himself that Joey's got
maybe he could move stars, too."

Doc sat quiet for a minute.

"'_There are more things, Horatio...._'" he began, then laughed. "A
line worn threadbare by three hundred years of repetition but as apt
tonight as ever, Roy. Do you really believe Joey is moving those
stars?"

"Why not?" I came back. "It's as good an answer as any the experts
have come up with."

Doc got up and went back to his own bunk. "Maybe you're right. We'll
find out tomorrow."

And we did. Doc did, rather, while I was hard at work hauling red
snappers up from the bottom of the Gulf.

* *