He stopped, half-awaiting the echoed response, "Such rot," but it was not forthcoming. From a pocket in the girl's soiled dress where she kept her strangely revived pet, a pair of beady eyes looked out at him brightly. "All right, maybe I shouldn't have said a reasoning creature, but a skeptical creature. After all, it's as unreasonable to disbelieve as to believe--when you have no proof either way. Well, let's assume that you're right." "Pearlie is right," she assured him. "H'mm. Maybe so. Well, assuming all this, I suppose the same entity could carry the process further and cause all the activities of so-called civilization. It could stir up the restlessness that sends explorers and colonists to distant parts of the globe. It could inspire persecutions, such as those that drove the Pilgrim fathers across the ocean. It could drive men through greed, lust of conquest--any number of urges. War--perhaps that's Nature's way of purging elements she wants to get rid of, or preparing for some new stage of development. Which brings the topic down to us." He glanced at her, half expecting a response, but she merely smiled in her vaguely knowing way. "We all seemed to be free agents," he went on, "but somehow we drifted toward old Eli's shelter--a bunch of misfits that weren't of any particular use in Earth's economy. What financiers not under some strange influence would have invested in Eli's wild theories? And that pit of encrusted mire where the old coot was led to build his sphere. Who knows what substances were brought together by what we call natural forces, and mixed into the right composition to protect us for this dash across space?" The sphere gave a trembling lurch. Something had brushed its surface, but in his intensity he scarcely noticed. "There are only two ways of looking at it," he declared, breathing heavily. "Either the whole thing was a freakish combination of accidents, or--it was consciously directed. I'm just sufficiently space-struck to entertain the possibility that it might be conscious purpose. What do you say, Pearl? Accident--or purpose?" "Or purpose," she assured him dutifully. He gave a short laugh. "That was hardly fair. I should have phrased it the other way around, knowing your fondness for repeating last words." CHAPTER XIII Marlin regretted afterward that he had not attempted to offer Norma some antidote for her moody thoughts on her visit to his observation point. He might have tried to put in words his own fatalistic point of view. Possibly it would have helped to sustain her. If only he had been less preoccupied-- But it was useless to regret, when they found the girl stretched out on her sleeping pallet with eyes rigidly staring upward. They gathered in silence around the inert form. Death had been their constant companion from the start, but this was the first time it had shown its grim face.