I will not defend that statement. I will not rationalize it. But I will seek explanations; consider possibilities. Known: This sparkling fog through which we drift is intelligent matter; the stuff of thoughts; the basic material from which consciousness springs. It is consciousness itself. Supposed: It is probably electronuclear in composition, and appears to be completely innocent. By that I mean it has no intention to harm, perhaps because it does not understand the difference between good and evil, harm and help, pain and pleasure. It has only one urge; the basic urge of all creation. To evolve, to develop. As the tree has but one basic urge--to grow and greaten; the flower but one desire--to bloom, to improve; to assert itself through evolution and become better. Perhaps--and who can successfully deny it?--this great space cloud could be a storage place of the Creator Himself; a storage place for mind stuff. When an infant or an animal or a plant is touched with the magic thing called life--where does that magic come from? Is it created at the very moment or does it come somehow from a source-pile? Is this cloud a source-pile of life itself? No one can say. But I think I've hit on a limitation of this mind stuff. I'm going to try an experiment and pray to God it works. I'm going to find Murdo and knock him unconscious. I have solved the mind-stuff. What just happened is the last bit of proof I need. I went to the galley. Murdo had wandered away. I found him in the lounge. I stepped casually in front of him, set myself, and drove a straight right to his jaw. He went down like a log. I closed my eyes and counted to twenty praying to God to make me right in my belief--in the crazy theory I evolved. I opened my eyes and turned to the storage locker. I looked inside. The dead leopard was gone. I went to the port and looked out. The huge ice bear had been ravening insanely among the shreds of the water buffalo's body. As I watched both bear and buff began fading. Before my eyes, they disappeared, evolved back into the stuff of the sparkling fog. I had proved my theory. Now all the parts dropped into place. The mind stuff has only the ability and the urge to evolve--nothing else--no imagination. It can evolve only if given something to reproduce. This it can get only from a human mind. It is able to see an image pictured in the human memory and reproduce it in a state of absolute reality. Witness: Jane saw a tiger in the companionway. Clear in her memory was the image of the tiger she had shot at in India. The mind-stuff saw it and reproduced it in reality. The water buffalo came from my own mind. I killed one exactly like it a year ago. The ice bear was out of Murdo's memory as was the black leopard and the snake.