crash the ship at
full power against the surface.

And again, no sensation. Against all natural laws of inertia, they came
to a full stop at the given level outside the atmosphere without any
feeling of jar or opposing pressure at all.

What now, Mr. Gunderson, sir?

Reluctantly, Gunderson ordered the police captain to contact E McGinnis.
E science apparently had some kind of shield which they'd kept secret
from the people--and wouldn't there be a stink over that one, once he
released that information! Contact E McGinnis and find out!

"Why sure," E McGinnis cackled with derisive laughter, "sure there's a
shield. I didn't make it. I wouldn't know how. No, I don't know what's
causing it. But I'll tell you what I think. I think They've caught the
specimen They want. There's an E down there.

"So, naturally, the trap door is closed."

21

Cal didn't know, couldn't have known, that his efforts to signal
McGinnis not to land were unnecessary. Didn't know, couldn't have known,
that he himself was the specimen They had hoped to catch. That having
caught what They wanted They would naturally close the door to the trap
to prevent any possibility of escape, as yet, or any interference with
their experiment.

From the moment he walked away from the grassy slope where he had
signaled the outer ship, he moved and thought as someone detached from
ordinary existence. As he walked away from the slope, ignoring the
frantic signals from the ship out in space, he felt he was also walking
out of a shell of superficial cerebration and into a deeper sense of
reality. It was as if, in spite of E training, for the first time in his
life, he could commit himself wholly, in all areas of his being, to the
consideration of a problem.

His conviction was complete that the ship could give him nothing he
needed, that all Earth's mechanical science could give him nothing he
needed. That it could not provide the key to unlock the door which led
into this new area of reality. He must find, must define, some new
concept of man's relation to the universe. He must again travel that
road, that million-year-long road man had traveled in trying to
determine his position in reality.

He wandered down to the river, climbed to the top of a great boulder
that overhung a pool, and sat down with his feet hanging over the edge.
He watched some young colonists wade through the pool to drive fish into
the shallows where they could pin them, with