“Not of themselves, I don’t think . . . no. An entity of pure energy would have to be held together by forces of magnitudes we can’t even guess at; much too intense to permit bodily radiation. Something like the binding energies of particles, I imagine; but different and very probably even more so.” The fusion leaped then to the bands of thought. It sought out and seized the thoughts of various of the ship’s personnel; gripping, molding, working, analyzing. Joan and Cloud were not reading minds now, at all; they were studying the fundamental mechanisms of the thoughts themselves. How they were generated; upon what, if anything, they were heterodyned; how they were transmitted; and, above all, exactly how they were received and exactly how they were converted from pure thought, couched at least in part in the symbols of language, into usefully assimilable information. And, such was the power of that fusion, it succeeded. Then up and up and up the scale of thought the fused minds went; seeking, finding, mastering. And up and up and up, into regions where no thoughts at all were to be found. And up and up, and up. . . . “Stop it! Let me go! I’m burning out!” Joan shrieked aloud. “My God, Storm, is there no limit at all to your ceiling?” Cloud stopped; loosed her mind. “I’m sorry, chick, but I was just getting nicely organized. We’ve got a long ways to go yet, I’m afraid.” “I’m sorry, too, Storm, sorrier than you’ll ever know, but I simply can’t take it. Three seconds more of that and I’d’ve gone stark, raving mad. And when we get to Cahuita I don’t know what I’ll do. I may blow up completely.” “You may think so, but you won’t. You’re not the type. And we aren’t going to Cahuita—at least, not in the flesh. When we hit that band we’ll be there automatically.” “Not quite automatically, of course, but we’ll be there, yes. I want to stay with you, more than I ever wanted anything before in my whole life, and I want to help you . . . couldn’t we loosen the fusion just a little, so that I can pull away when the going gets too rough for me? Just enough to keep away from a burnout, but close enough to see and perhaps to help a little?” “I don’t know why not . . . sure, like this.” He showed her. Again the fusion went up and up and up, and this time it did not stop at Joan’s ceiling. She pulled away a little, but not enough so that she could not sense and understand, in a way, what was going on. Cloud, every muscle set and eyes closed tight, sat in a chair, his hands gripping fiercely its arms. Joan lay face down upon a davenport, her face buried in a pillow, her fists tight-clenched. And the linked minds—linked now, not fused—went up . . . and up . . . and up. . . . And, finally, they reached the band upon which a Cahuitan fulfillment was thinking.