As for O'Hara himself, he could not choose between the cold science of the Father and the emotional approach of Anstruther, but stronger at the moment in his heart remained the horror of Emporia. He held out his hand. "I believe you, Anstruther." "You mean, don't you, that you want to believe me?" "That's it," O'Hara answered simply. "I do mean that. I want to believe you." "Good! For it is more important to me that you should want to believe me, despite any uncertainty in your mind, than that you should believe without question. Faith itself can be shattered, but the yearning after faith is indestructible." He took O'Hara's hand, and at last got up from the bunk. "Tomorrow," he said, "or when we next awaken, we resume. Now tell me, for you must have come recently from Stephen Bryce, which was the direction and what the distance? Back along this corridor how far?" "I cannot tell you, Anstruther." "But you came into this room--" "Unconscious," said O'Hara, which was the truth as far as it went. He did not dare to mention the integrocalculators. Yet as warily he drove from his mind the memory of Nedra and his son sinking down toward the bottom of that water-filled room. His path in this struggle seemed obscure--his feeling was to follow Anstruther, to help him and these sleeping Sons, and yet he could not bring himself to follow absolutely, he could not reveal the Father's purpose, or could he permit himself to think of Nedra and the baby, for agitation would defeat him. He must grope through this, betraying neither Anstruther nor the Father. Nor himself. The middle ground, he told himself--the middle ground, always seeming to both extremes contemptible, weak and confused. And perhaps confusion really was the virtue of it, veering this way for a while, then that, but persevering devious and without dogma toward the goal, toward saving Nedra and his child. Was that contemptible? He could not think that it was. In the first phase of mankind, before codes and ideologies, there had been only the preservation of the family and a dim concept of God--and so, O'Hara felt, would be the final phase. "I was unconscious," he repeated. "Then we are lost again," said Anstruther gloomily. But instantly his eyes were light again. "It does not matter. However long it takes, we will find our way to him. We have come in a straight line this far, and we will continue it until we reach the outer shell of Washington, which must be close to this room. Then we shall cut back again through the heart of the city, never leaving between the lines we cut the space that Stephen Bryce's vast throne room occupies. Somewhere, someday, we'll find the heart of this." O'Hara asked, "You too, Anstruther, were unconscious when you left the Father's hall?"