"Cut the persiflage, you two," Garlock ordered. "Consider three things. First, as you all know, I've been trying to figure out a generator that would give us intrinsic control, but I haven't got any farther with it than we did back on Tellus. Second, consider all the jumps we've made except this last one. Every time we've taken off, none of us has had his shield really up. You, Jim, were concentrating on the drive, and so were wide open to it. The rest of us were at least thinking about it, and so were more or less open to it. Not one of us has ever ordered it to take us to any definite place; in fact, I don't believe that anyone of us has ever even suggested a destination. Each one of us has been thinking, at the instant of energization of the fields, exactly what you just said, and with exactly the same emphasis. "Third, consider this last jump all by itself. It's the first time we've ever stayed in the same galaxy. It's the first time we've ever gone where we wanted to. And it's the first time--here's the crux, as I see it--that any of us has been concentrating on any destination at the moment of firing the charge. Brownie was willing the _Pleiades_ to this planet so hard that we all could taste it. The rest of us, if not really pushing to get here, were at least not opposed to the idea. Check?" "Check." "That's right." "Yes, I was pushing with all my might," came from the three listeners, and James went on: "Are you saying the damn thing's _alive_?" "No. I'm saying I don't believe in miracles. I don't believe in coincidence--that concept is as meaningless as that of paradox. I certainly do _not_ believe that we hit this planet by chance against odds of almost infinity to one. So I've been looking for a reason. I found one. It goes against my grain--against everything I've ever believed--but, since it's the only possible explanation, it must be true. The only possible director of the Gunther Drive _must_ be the mind." "Hell's blowtorches--Now you're _insisting_ that the damn thing's alive." "Far from it. It's Brownie who's alive. It was Brownie who got us here. Nothing else--repeat, _nothing_ else--makes sense." James pondered for a full minute. "I wouldn't buy it except for one thing. If you, the hardest-boiled skeptic that ever went unhung, can feed yourself the whole bowl of such a mess as that, I can at least take a taste of it. Shoot." "Okay. You know that we don't know anything really fundamental about either teleportation or the drive. I'm sure now that the drive is simply mechanical teleportation. If you tried to 'port yourself without any idea of where you wanted to go, where do you think you'd land?" "You might scatter yourself all over space--no, you wouldn't. You wouldn't move, because it wouldn't be teleportation at all. Destination is an integral part of the concept." "Exactly so--but only because you've been conditioned to it all your life. This thing hasn't been conditioned to anything."