to himself without also voicing it to his invader. “If I am obliged to tell him that he is not made in God’s image at all, but constitutes instead some kind of aberration within Creation....” He ceased subvocalizing, in response to Lumen’s urgent command, but at some level he wondered vaguely whether Archbishop Foxe might take a different inference from the discovery that his own species was unique in a universe teeming with life.
“And now they have penetrated the envelope of their atmosphere,” Lumen said to Aristocles. “They have reached the ether, and have been taken captive in a lowly and tiny outpost of the True Civilization, whose indigenous inhabitants might be disposed to be anxious about that fact, were it not that they have the wise guidance of the Great Fleshcores of the inner galaxy. You and I need to demonstrate clearly that no member of the True Civilization has anything at all to fear from creatures of this sort, do we not?”
At last, Thomas began to see what his guest was driving at.
“Fear?” said Aristocles. “Who mentioned fear? We are seekers after knowledge, who desire to know all things as intimately as we may. If there is a place for endoskeletal species within the harmony of the True Civilization, it must be identified.”
The fact that neither the moth-like monster nor the creature in his head took the trouble to add “And if not....” spoke volumes.
Thomas did not think for a moment that his party of five, or England, or even the entire human race could possibly constitute a threat to a community of species crowding a hundred million worlds. He did think, however, that if John Foxe were ever told that there were no other beings in the universe similar to humankind—even though the star-worlds were teeming with life—the Archbishop would be more than content to cite Genesis to the effect that all other creatures everywhere had been made for the use of man. How long pride of that kind might survive in confrontation with the awareness that it was the arthropodan and crustacean intelligences which could travel between the star-worlds—uniting them into an empire vaster than anything Alexander, Augustus or Jesus Christ could ever have imagined—Thomas did not know. He already had some notion, though, of what response the opinion might evoke in the Selenites, by comparison with whom even Aristocles might pass for enlightened.
“Thomas and his four companions will be pleased to go with you to the Center,” Lumen said, striving to make a virtue out of necessity, “since you have generously guaranteed that they will be allowed to return home thereafter. May they have time to feed and wash themselves?”
“Provided that they do not linger too long,” Aristocles said. “We civilized creatures live more rapidly than you ethereals—though not as briefly as your host’s ephemeral kind, thank God—and we have a horror of wasting time. The etheric transmitter will be ready in six hours.”
“Thank you,” said Lumen. “That will be time enough.”
CHAPTER FIVE
While food was being brought from the ethership Thomas was allowed to go out on to the surface of the moon and climb the slope of a shallow mountain.
“That is the hyperetheric transmitter and receiver,” Lumen told him, as soon as his eye lighted on the massive object, which looked something like a cross between a cannon and a refracting telescope.
When Thomas looked up into the sky his ever-attentive guest was equally prompt to say: “This part of the lunar surface is on the face perpetually turned away from the Earth. Purely from the viewpoint of physics, the transmitter might just as easily have been located deep beneath the surface, but the convenience of practical alignment is a different matter.”
“Never mind that,” Thomas said. “Explain to me what a fleshcore is.”
“A very large organism,” Lumen replied, “compounded out of many individuals, whose alleged harmony—symbiosis is the best word I can synthesize from familiar etymological roots—has been taken to its intimate extreme in bodily fusion. Many inhabited worlds do not have one, as yet. This moon is too small, and is ill-equipped by nature for superficial elaboration and inorganic sophistication, being mostly made of stone without even an iron core like the Earth’s. That is a significant bone of contention here. Some Selenites ambitious to develop their home would be content to make use of matter harvested from the solar system’s halo, imported via ultraetheric canals—but even that sort of development would have a considerable corollary impact on the Earth. Other Selenites contend that it would be a frightful waste of time and effort to transport material from the halo when there is a much richer source of raw materials so close at hand.”
“The Earth,” Thomas said. He did not bother to ask what the difference was between “hyperetheric” and “ultraetheric” methods of transportation. Lumen had made so many other barely-comprehensible improvisations that he had grown used to feeling that he was speaking some strange hybrid in which the Queen’s English was mingled with a Redskin or Hottentot tongue. He was making every possible effort to understand what he was told, but he was keenly aware of the extent to which his intellect and imagination were simply not up to the task. He was glad just to have grasped the broad outlines of the predicament in which he found himself.
“The Earth,” Lumen confirmed. “The Great Fleshcores will not permit its spoliation—and never will, I trust—but that does not prevent the adherents of the scheme hoping that a change of mind might be contrived. At the very least, it might help to license development of a slower and subtler kind, whose effects on the Earth’s surface would be gradual and subtle, as viewed from here, although they might seem considerably greater from the viewpoint of creatures attempting to survive and thrive on the surface. The more massive the moon becomes, the more massive its tidal effects will be—and if the surface is developed, there will be a large population of sapient machines involved, whose rogues and runaways would inevitably see the Earth as a useful refuge. You cannot imagine what a handful of renegade artificial intelligences might do to the pattern and prospects of human progress, but I can. Here comes the bugtrain with supplies from your ethership—we’d best go in and make our meal.”
“I’d rather bathe first,” Thomas said, glad that he still had some authority to decide what he did and thought.
He went down to the quarters that had been provided for his companions below the surface, and made his way to the chamber in which bathing facilities had been provided. Raleigh was there, alone, and seemed very glad to see him. Rather than avoiding him on account of his “possession,” all of his companions—including Field—had quickly become used to treating him as an oracle, capable of answering any and all questions, albeit enigmatically.
“What form will this impending journey take?” Raleigh wanted to know. “How shall we travel distances that would take light itself thousands of years to traverse, without any evident lapse of time?”
Thomas had already consulted his guest about that matter, and had no need to surrender authority over his tongue. “Mercifully,” he told his friend, as he stepped into the heated pool, having handed his clothes to a centipede in order that they might be carefully cleaned and mended by ingenious insectile seamstresses, “the void theorists and atomists alike seem to be completely wrong about the nature of space and matter. The elasticity of the individual goes far beyond the primitive displays of embryonic development and growth, provided one has the art of folding its form. The three dimensions of vision are not the only properties of space; there are many other dimensions, some of which extend beyond the world of vision into a vast series of parallel spaces, while others are squeezed within it into mere lines. We’ll be dispatched along one of those, emerging at a distant terminus without any sensation of time elapsed. Quite painless, I’m assured.”
“Painless it might be,” Raleigh replied, “but I can’t help feeling a certain nausea
