* * * * * Some of the sparkling fog has penetrated the ship. Turn out the light and you can see it in the cabin. Not as thick as out in the void but thick enough to see; thick enough to stand there and ask you to talk to it. Murdo is ready to turn back. He came to the control room and said, "I saw it out there." "You saw what?" His face was pale and his hands twitched. "A boa-constrictor. Exactly like the one I killed four years ago on the Amazon. It came to the port and looked in at me." "It must be your imagination." "No. It was there. Let's turn back. Get out of this." "I wish we could." "You mean--?" "I don't know where back is. We might just as well go as we are. Changing course doesn't help if you don't know your directions. Our only hope is to drive on out of this cloud. If I turned I might go right back into it." "Then one direction is as good as another?" "That's right." His mind wandered as he turned away. "I didn't know it would be like this," he muttered. "I thought it would be fun--sport. I thought we'd put on space suits and go out and make a kill. I thought--" "The space suits are ready. Do you want to try it?" He shuddered, his hanging jowls almost flapping. "You couldn't drag me out there." The stuff is getting thicker in the ship. Jane came into my cabin. She had an odd look on her face. She said, "There's a big tiger in the companionway." I got up from my bunk and suddenly she seemed to realize what she'd said. She repeated it. Then she fell down in a faint. I put her in my bunk and looked out into the companionway. The sparkling fog glittered but there was no tiger. When she came to, she didn't seem to know where she was. Then she smiled. "I must have been drinking too much," she said. Then she realized where she was. "But look where it got me? Into your bunk." "Do you feel all right now?" "I guess so. I can get up now. I _do_ have to get up, don't I?" "I think you'd better." After she left I did some thinking. The sparkling haze had been outside the ship and I'd seen a water buffalo through the port. Murdo had seen a boa-constrictor. Then the haze penetrated the hull and got inside the ship. And Jane had seen a tiger in the companionway. Were they phantoms? Was Jane's tiger a tiger of the mind? Murdo swore his snake had been real and my buffalo left a mark on the port. I sat there trying to think. With the sparkling fog drifting around me. It seemed to be trying to tell me something.