Being the only one who had been in contact with Richardson, Snow had suddenly found himself wondering if he really had heard those sounds, if, maybe, he had been the victim of a hallucination. This was why he had said nothing about it at the time. He had just asked, as casually as he could, if any of them had anything they wanted to bring up immediately. They had shaken their heads, beaming their satisfaction, and he had dismissed them all, saying that in view of the length of the test they might all call it a day, and postponing the usual interrogation until the morrow. Then he had hurried back to his quarters, bringing with him the recording machine on which, as was the practice, his conversation with Richardson during the test had been recorded. Controlling his impatience with difficulty, he had rewound the tape on the machine and played it back, the tension rising within him as he listened. There had been no hallucination. He heard Richardson's voice reading the instrument, the sudden cut-off in the middle of it, the short silence, then the voice uttering the strange sounds in a low-pitched chant with a gentle rise and fall to it. Three times he had played it back, and now it seemed to him that these were not just disconnected sounds. They appeared to have a cadence, a phrasing which indicated that they belonged to a language of some sort. Snow was no linguist. He had less than a fair conversational knowledge of French and German, and a scholar's acquaintance with Latin, but he had travelled very extensively in his time and had been accustomed to hear many languages spoken. He was quite sure he had never heard anything even remotely resembling these sounds. Certainly Richardson was no linguist either. He was third-generation American from British stock, and all he knew about languages was what he had learned in school. * * * * * Then where had those sounds come from? Were they a language, and if so, what did they mean? How could this happen to a man like Richardson without his knowing about it? Did it mean that here was, after all, something strange about him which the man himself might not even know about, and which might mean that he was not fit for the project? This last question worried Snow more than the others. He went to the telephone on his desk and dialed the Richardson bungalow. The voice of Richardson's pretty wife answered him. "Yes? Sandra Richardson here." "Hello, Sandra. Phil Snow calling. Is Ham there?" "He's in the shower singing his head off. Shall I get him?" "No, it isn't important. I just wanted to ask him again if he feels all right after the test. It was rather a long one, and I wondered if he might feel tired, or...." "Tired? He seems even more full of pep than usual. Was the test so very long, then?" "Yes, it was. That's why I called and--just to tell him it was a success. I haven't checked all the reports yet, but it looks good. And you say he's as usual?"