"Nothing in particular. This is unheard of indeed. Kidney cells are busy little widgets doing a tremendous job night and day. Like the individual muscle fibers of the heart, they work on year after year with no vacations, no coffee breaks, secure in the knowledge of their purpose." "No pseudo-sermons, please, Father!" Father Phillip's voice was stern. "You don't have to Peter Rabbit up biology for me." "A scholar indeed to have heard of Peter Rabbit," I laughed but he did not smile. Then I asked, "Do you want to see how real kidney cells--yours---are behaving? I have a projecting microscope in the basement. Do you want to see what's going on?" "Not particularly. If you think you can cure me, go ahead and try." "Are you willing to pray for your own recovery?" "No!" He spat out the word with a ferocity that seemed to surprise even himself. "Then I am going to sermonize indeed. And you are going to listen, my dear little kidney cell." "Oh, go ahead. But I warn you that I know something that will cancel it all in advance." He had developed more force of personality than he had showed since I came in. "Oh? Then suppose you tell me about that. I always do better in rebuttal." * * * * * And he blurted it out ... the whole story of the Phoenix Nebula expedition and its discovery of the memorials of that beautiful race which was destroyed utterly in the explosion of its star ... the supernova which was our own Star of Bethlehem. "So you see," he concluded, "we found out that ultimate dreadful secret of the cosmos, that there is no plan, no purpose, no good God who watches the fall of the sparrows with tender concern. To whom could I pray for my recovery? To the random spin of electrons or planets? To a petty tribal totem? To nothing!" "_We_ found out? You _and_ the crew?" "I gave them what answers I could." "They asked _you_ ... and for a fish you gave them a stone, is that it?" "Scold away," he said tonelessly. "I would not lie to them." "The poet Dante," I began. "Spare me the poets," he said bitterly.