He tensed the muscles of the laggard leg for the spring that would carry him to destruction, and then he saw that the chess pieces were shimmering gray, and the oval frame of the doorway to the flaming fuel was shimmering gray, and even what had seemed hot white burning was cold gray waiting mist, and with a yell of remembrance, Jerry clamped shut his eyes and let himself plunge downward into nothingness.... III "Are you all right, Norcriss?" Jerry blinked slowly, then focused on the face of Dr. Alan Burgess. He found himself lying on a narrow, white-sheeted cart, in the corridor outside the room where all the trouble had begun. "Mawson," he said groggily. "Is he--?" Burgess nodded wearily. "Still in there, in full control of his one-man universe. What happened, Norcriss? You came tumbling out that door like a wild man, clawing the air and yelling. Then you went into shock. You've been unconscious for two hours." "I--I thought I was falling," Jerry admitted. "The last thing I remember is stepping through the open space between a spaceship's supporting girders." "What open space?" said Burgess, frowning curiously. Jerry shook his head. "There isn't any such thing. But something happens to logic in that room. It's like having a dream, Doctor. Things that would startle you in everyday life seem correct. Even familiar. But there's a kind of pattern to events. At first, I'm in my universe, and mostly in control. Then little fragments of my pseudo-reality start slipping, changing into other things. The changes seem perfectly normal to me. Then, all at once, the guy with the brass buttons turns up--and I've managed in the nick of time, twice, to realize that I was about to be sent or led between the disrupting plates of your atomic duplicator." "The man with the brass buttons," Burgess said slowly. "Do you think it's Mawson?" "Either him or a robot he's made to keep his machine fed." When Burgess scowled, Jerry shrugged and appended, "It is his machine, for all practical purposes. He's the boss of that hungry electronic monster, Doctor, however the hospital feels about it." "This Carol. Is she a real woman, or a figment of your imagination, wishful thinking?" "She's real enough," Jerry sighed. "She's the personal secretary of the entire Space zoology program. I take her out sometimes. There's nothing special between us." "But you wish there were," said Burgess. Jerry stared at him. "What makes you think that?" Burgess tilted his head toward the room where Mawson still maintained control. "Your visions in there. You must think a lot of her. You can kid yourself consciously; but nearly all you underwent in there came straight from your subconscious. And a subconscious just doesn't know how to lie." Jerry changed the subject, "What's our next move? How soon can I go back after Mawson?"