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 dog, and opened a cabinet. From it he took a rack of spare radar parts and three thick coils of wire. Paresi, startled, turned and saw Hoskins peering owlishly at the Captain. Anderson withdrew some tools, reached far back in the cabinet, and took out a large bottle. "Oh," said Paresi. "That.... I thought you were doing something constructive." In the far shadows, Hoskins turned silently back to his game. The Captain gazed down at the bottle, tossed it, caught it. "I am," he said. "I am." He came and sat beside the doctor. He thumbed off the stopper and drank ferociously. Paresi watched, his eyes as featureless as the imprisoning dark. "Well?" said the Captain pugnaciously. Paresi's hands rose and fell, once. "Just wondering why." "Why I'm going to get loopin', stoopin' drunk? I'll tell you why, head-shrinker. Because I want to, that's why. Because I like it. I'm doing something I like because I like it. I'm not doing it because of the inversion of this concealed repression as expressed in the involuted feelings my childhood developed in my attitude toward the sex-life of beavers, see, couch-catechizer old boy? I like it and that's why." "I knew a man who went to bed with old shoes because he liked it," said Paresi coldly. The Captain drank again and laughed harshly. "Nothing can change you, can it, Nick?" Paresi looked around him almost fearfully. "I can change," he whispered. "Ives is gone. Give me the bottle." Something clattered to the deck at the hem of the black curtain. "'S another hallucination," said the Captain. "Go pick up the hallucination, Nicky-boy." "Not my hallucination," said Paresi. "Pick it up yourself." "Sure," said the Captain good-naturedly. He waited while Paresi drank, took back the bottle, tilted it sharply over his mouth. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, exhaled heavily, and went to the blackness across the cabin. "Well, what do you know," he breathed. "What is it this time?" [Illustration: Spaceman in melting room.] Anderson held the thing up. "A trophy, that's what." He peered at it. "_All-American, 2675._ Little statue of a guy holding up a victory wreath. Nice going, little guy." He strode to Paresi and snatched away the bottle. He poured liquor on the head of the figurine. "Have a drink, little guy." "Let me see that."