atter, and their substance was protoplasm. But there was no rationale
present in either of them. I examined the living matter of the smaller
one swiftly. Organs seemed poised in a suspended state. The creature I
observed, housed in a protective shell, seemed paralyzed or dead. I
remembered the word _dead_.

Then the _Pat_ was with me again. "I--I feel something, _Marl_. I am
frightened. What are they, those things there?"

"They seem to be--" I stopped communicating.

The _Pat_ had disappeared!

The thing of protoplasm nearest me was moving but I was no longer
interested. I remember the _Pat_ had touched the upper extremity of the
creature and had vanished, had ceased to be.

The old sickness was back. I was lonely. I wanted the other entity. I
could not, did not wish to exist without the _Pat_.

I darted frantically about the metal shell, here and there, searching,
searching. Where was the _Pat_? I _screamed_ for it. I thought _Pat_ as
far away as I could reach, but there was no reaction, no response at
all.

In my frenzy, I was back beside the creatures of protoplasm before I
realized it, near the one I had not yet examined.

"Perhaps they took her," I thought. It was not logical, but it was a
hope. Hope is emotional; I was becoming more emotional than rational.

I touched the larger of the two creatures, experimentally; moved
cautiously inside it, searching, searching.

Suddenly I was seized by a great force, an inexorable power that grasped
me and wrenched me, tearing me from the point in space I had occupied a
moment before. My perception blurred, but I was not frightened. Without
the _Pat_ I did not care what happened. I was intensely curious. "So
this is how it is," I reasoned in a flash, "to _cease to be_."

And I ceased to be....

* * * * *

Marlow shook his head. I must have dozed, he thought. He glanced at the
chronometer on the console ahead. No, only a minute or two had elapsed
since the last time he had checked.

"Sleepy head! Wake up and live!"

He looked to his right. Pat sat in the navigator's seat smiling at him.

"I didn't sleep, honestly," he protested. "We hit some sort of barrier
back there. It knocked me out for a moment. I had the damnedest
impression--"

"Remember what you promised!" She swiveled the seat about to face him.
"No more scientific lectures on the mysteries of space or I'll return to
earth. You know my poor brain can't absorb it."