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the direction/deceleration crisis—or in plain language, of making the right hole at the right time.”
    “I expect you’ll want to clear the System before the—er—experiment begins,” ventured Mauris.
    “Naturally,” said Kobler. “By the way, would you like me to tell the crew what it’s all about?”
    “I was going to suggest a brief lecture,” replied Mauris. “But since you have explained the background to me so lucidly, I think I might save you that little job. I’ll tell them we’re going to make a nice little hole in the balloon of space and pop up again sixteen hundred thousand light-years away. That should make for some interesting discussion.”
    “You think they’ll panic?”
    The Captain shook his head. “They’ll just laugh politely and think I’m getting too old for the job.”
    “So far as I can see,” said Kobler, downing the remainder of his whiskey, “everything is predictable—except the human reaction.”
    “It makes for a nice philosophical problem,” observed Mauris.
    “What does?”
    “Whether or not we can be conscious of our own nonexistence.”
    Kobler gave him a look of respect. “That’s the crux of the matter,” he admitted. “You see, the Santa Maria and all aboard will cease to be a system of molecular organizations.”
    “Conversely,” said the Captain in a matter-of-fact voice, “it will become the abstract memory of an energy pattern which will be resynthesized out of space—when and if your infallible cosmometer correlates the pattern of M 81 with that of its own environment.”
    Kobler sat up. “I didn’t know you were a physicist.”
    “I’m not,” retorted Mauris dryly. “But I’ll tell you something else, too. It’s going to be damn cold!”
    Pluto’s orbit was a hundred million miles astern, and the Santa Maria had achieved a satisfactory clearance of the System. For the last ten hours she had voyaged under her stellar drive. Through the dark plastiglass portholes, men occasionally stared at the long star-torn silence of total night.
    The navigation deck was a scene of activity and tension, for deceleration point was rapidly approaching. A fat copper cylinder had been battened to the deck in front of the main control panel, and the second bank of switches, with their mysterious calibrations, had now been unsealed. Kobler had lovingly supervised the installation of his cosmometer and was now displaying sufficient humanity to fuss about it much as an anxious father nursing his firstborn. Phylo, the first officer, was surreptitiously biting his nails. He was definitely unhappy. His appreciation of the science of physics being rather more limited than usual for one in his position, he had come to believe simply that the approaching - experiment was merely the most elaborate method yet invented of committing suicide.
    Of all the personnel of the Santa Maria, Captain Maims was the most calm. He was very busy breaking several regulations. He lay on his master’s contour berth and watched all the extra berths that were needed by the physicists being bolted down. Kobler had decided, after much consultation, that the entire S.F.P. team should foregather on the navigation deck for the experiment. Half a dozen extra baths had then been hastily erected, giving the impression of a surrealist hospital.
    Normally Captain Mauris would have regarded the invasion with frigid resentment. But now he watched the proceedings with a benevolent air.
    It was his duty as Master of the ship to present at all times an aspect of confidence. With the aid of a bottle of Scotch and a somewhat prehistoric corncob pipe, he was fulfilling this obligation admirably. He was also sweating, for he had discarded his uniform jacket in favor of two old polo-necked jerseys. . . . Doubtless the Field Testing Executive would strongly disapprove of his unconventional approach, but then the F.T.E. were millions of miles away.
    Having taken what he