Five days later, Parzen and Lu-lan arrived and found the other ship and its pinnace, both in perfect working condition. Ruttledge and Kaminski were in the pinnace, alive but suffering from dehydration and malnutrition. They were incapable of speech or simple motor movement, and subsequent tests showed that their memories held no more information than the mind of a newborn baby. The data banks and computer memory on the pinnace were wiped clean.

Following a review of the other ship’s records, Parzen and Lu-lan drew lots to decide who would make a second trip inside the Paradox sphere. Lu-lan won and made the descent. No signals were received from him by Parzen, although there had been prior agreement to send a message every four hours. Lu-lan returned, physically unharmed, after three days. His memory was empty of all learned information, though somatic (instinctive) knowledge was unchanged.

Paradox was declared off-limits to all but trained investigators in E. 1557.

Physical Description: Paradox is a spherical region, fifty kilometers in diameter. Its outer boundary displays “soap bubble” color shifts across the surface, reflecting or transmitting different wavelength radiation apparently randomly.

The sphere is opaque in certain spectral regions (1.2-223 meters) and perfectly transparent in others 5.6-366 micrometers). Nothing is known of the appearance of Paradox’s interior.

Paradox’s size and appearance are not invariant. Changes in size and color have been reported nine times during its history.

Physical Nature: Based on transmission through it, Paradox is believed to have a complex interior structure. However, no first-hand information has ever been obtained, because of Paradox’s information-destroying nature. Most analysts believe that Paradox is the four-dimensional extrusion in space and time of a body of much higher dimension, perhaps the twenty/three/seven knotted manifold of Ikro and H’miran.