There was a brief pause. "Perhaps we should illuminate." "Please do," I vibrated politely. They gathered round the edges of my haze and explained. It seemed a very senior e had suggested once that there might, just might, theoretically be side-effects of mush. The little round things were e beings. And "mush" was the accepted term for the static and orbital tracks of electrons in fixed patterns, such as one found here and there in space. But the very senior e, apparently, had speculated that in a certain narrow band of light frequencies mush might possibly give an appearance of "matter"--to coin a word--a kind of condensed or crystalline energy. "But no one," they vibrated, "ever suggested there might be forms of life based on such 'material' structures. We admire your imagination. Hail bright e! All hail." A rapid circuit of my haze failed to show anyone else that they might be vibrating to. "Do you mean me?" I inquired. "Naturally. Hail, bright e!" "I'm an e?" "What else?" "Very well," I thought. "Perhaps you'll tell me what an e is." "An e? We are all e beings." "So you mentioned earlier. But what is an e being?" "Ah, you are too deep for us. Highly original philosopher, yes. But please get off the spaceway. There is a food flood due." And they edged me firmly down, and down, to a vast doughnut with a hole in the center. I ate a piece out of habit. It was insipid and tasteless. But then, a doughnut several thousand miles across must have some drawbacks. "The pasture is better inside," they vibrated. So I sank down into the enormous piece of pastry and came out of a couple of inner layers to see a big ball of mush. There was no mistaking it. A vast, tangled, interconnecting mass of tiny points of light. Mush was a good name for it. But here and there on its surface were great rivers of liquor and mounds of food in delectable variety. I stuffed myself for days, browsing here and there across the surface of the globe of mush. In fact, I was chewing quietly on an apparently endless streaming ribbon of--well--trout, steak, caviar, you-name-your-favorite food; that's what it was to me. And I happened to bite too deeply. There was a core of this mush stuff inside and, when I bit it, the whole food supply stopped. The stream of entrancing food just disappeared. And there I was, hovering on a plain of bare mush. * * * * * I was brooding on this and belching contentedly with a sort of cracking noise, when the skeleton came driving over the surface of the mush ball. It was in a framework of mush shaped like a jeep but squirting delicious little fountains of liquor in the front, where the engine of a real jeep would have been. I moved over and tasted them. And the whole framework stopped. "Triple purple hell," said a voice. "The damned thing's broken down again. Wait till I get my hands on that idiot mechanic!" "Hey," I vibrated. "Where are you?"