He went out in the kitchen and started coffee, then came back and sat down next to the radio, hardly listening to the recap of the game. * * * * * Odd, how it had all started. Being suddenly marooned on this planet, forced to survive, somehow, through the long years while waiting for rescue. How many years had it been, now? Some five hundred thousand, in the subjective reference for this particular universe. He knew the formula for conversion into objective time--it all worked out to the equivalent of about six months--but that wasn't what mattered, as long as they'd all had to survive in _this_ universe. Sleep--suspended animation, if you wanted to call it that--had been the only answer. And they couldn't do _that_, directly. They'd had to resort to chrysalids. He smiled to himself, got up, and turned down the fire under the pot until the coffee was percolating softly. The original plan had snowballed, somewhat. Resolving chrysalids was one thing--making them eternal was another, and unnecessary. It was far simpler to arrange the chrysalids so they'd be able to reproduce themselves. And, of course, in order to survive, and take care of itself, a chrysalis had to have some independent intelligence. And, so it worked. The chrysalis housed a sleeper, operating unawares and completely independent of him--or her--until the chrysalis wore out. Then the sleeper was passed on to a new chrysalis, with neither of the chrysalids involved--nor, for that matter, the sleeper--conscious of the transfer. So it would continue, through the weary, subjective years; generation upon generation of chrysalids, until, finally, the paramathematical path drifted back to touch this universe, and the sleepers could wake, and continue their journey. And if the human race chose to speculate on its origins in the meantime, well, that was part of the snowball. He got up again, and turned off the flame under the coffeepot. _Now, if I were a sorcerer--as defined by Cotton Mather's ilk, of course--_, he thought, _I should be able to (a) turn the fire off without getting up, or, (b) generate the flame without the use of Con Edison's gas, or, (c), if I had any self-respect at all, conjure hot coffee out of thin air._ His lips twisted with nausea as he thought that nine out of ten people would expect him to be drinking blood, as a matter of course. He sighed with some bitterness, but more of resignation. Well, that was just another part of the snowball.