They were two weeks and five days on their way. McCauley shook his head to clear his mind. He reread what he had just written in the ship's log, vaguely puzzled because it did not seem to make sense. With enormous effort he checked each word and found that he had left one out here and another one there. With great determination he put them in. Somewhere in his mind there was a feeling that he needed to do something very urgently, but he could not think what it was. "Randy," he said, and something in his brain noted that his voice was plaintive, "I can't seem to think straight! There's something I ought to do! What is it?" Randy shook his head. He floated in the straps of his acceleration chair; not that the chair was needed, but because it held him still so that there was no possible chance of his striking against the unmuffled wall of the ship and so sending a solid-conduction sound back to Bramwell. "I don't know," said Randy flatly. "I don't feel too bright myself." The soundproof door of the after compartment opened. Bramwell came out. Somehow he looked pathetic and frustrated, but he essayed rage. "I have to have silence!" he cried ferociously. "You are making noises! I cannot think! And I must think! I have to have silence!" McCauley said numbly: "I'm sitting here, and Randy's in his chair. There's no noise." "There is noise, or why can't I think? You are doing something to keep me from thinking!... That canary! It has been singing! That's it! You must wring its neck so I can think!" "No," said McCauley, "it hasn't been singing. It hasn't sung for a long time. It did, but it doesn't any more. Why?" "Something is the matter!" insisted Bramwell desperately. "I'm stupid! I'm as stupid as you! And I must use my brains!" "You've got everything we can give you," said McCauley without particular emphasis. "We can't seem to do our work right either." "There is some new condition we do not know about," Bramwell said, in a sort of puny panic. "There is something in space which is working to destroy us! Here! Send this message back to Earth!" McCauley took the slip of paper on which words were written in an erratic, spidery hand. "But _I_ think you are making noises!" Bramwell pulled himself back into his soundproof half of the ship. The door closed behind him, but not quite in time to cut off the beginning of an agitated whimpering sound. McCauley pushed the beam-on button. He should have checked the time, Earth time, to see if Canaveral were on the side of Earth from which it could pick up the beamed message from space. It wasn't, but he didn't think to check. He read, in a monotone, the message Bramwell had written out: _I feel the purpose impossible probable effect similar to X-rays with this is vital to further but I have no instruments._ _Bramwell._