'm not going to do it."

"I don't want to be told anything so general," said the Captain. "I just
want to know why _you_ came out here."

Paresi scowled. The Captain looked away from him and hazarded, "Big frog
in a small pond, Nick?"

Paresi snorted.

Anderson asked, "Women don't like you, do they, Nick?"

Almost inaudibly, Paresi said, "Better cut it out, skipper."

Anderson said, "Closest thing to being a mother--is that it?"

Paresi went white.

The Captain closed his eyes, frowned, and at last said, "Or maybe you
just want to play God."

"I'm going to make it tough for you," said Paresi between his teeth.
"There are several ways you can break, just as there are several ways to
break a log--explode it, crush it, saw it, burn it.... One of the ways
is to fight me until you win. Me, because there's no one else left to
fight you. So--I won't fight with you. And you're too rational to attack
me unless I do. _That_ is the thing that will make it tough. If you must
break, it'll have to be some other way."

"Is that what I'm doing?" the Captain asked with sudden mildness. "I
didn't know that. I thought I was trying to get your own case history
out of you, that's all. What are you staring at?"

"Nothing."

There was nothing. Where there had been forward viewports, there was
nothing. Where there had been controls, the communication station, the
forward acceleration panels and storage lockers; the charts and
computers and radar gear--there was nothing. Blackness; featureless,
silent, impenetrable. They sat on one couch by one wall, to which was
fixed one table. Around them was empty floor and a blackness. The
chess-player faced into it, and perhaps he was partly within it; it was
difficult to see.

The Captain and the medical officer stared at one another. There seemed
to be nothing to say.

VI

_For man's sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of
things: on the contrary, all the perceptions, both of the senses
and the mind, bear reference to man and not to the universe; and
the human mind resembles those uneven mirrors which impart their
own properties to different objects ... and distorts and
disfigures them ... For every one ... has a cave or den of his
own which refracts and discolors the light of nature._
--Sir Francis Bacon
(1561--1626)

It was the Captain who moved first. He went to the remaining bulkhead,
spun a do