“No good!” said Lamont, sharply. “I didn’t get anywhere.” He had a brooding look about him that went with his deep-set eyes and the slight asymmetry of his long chin. There was a brooding look about him at the best of times, and this was not the best of times. His second formal interview with Hallam had been a greater fiasco than the first.

“Don’t be dramatic,” said Myron Bronowski, placidly. “You didn’t expect to. You told me that.” He was tossing peanuts into the air and catching them in his plump-lipped mouth as they came down. He never missed. He was not very tall, not very thin.

“That doesn’t make it pleasant. But you’re right, it doesn’t matter. There are other things I can do and intend to do and, besides that, I depend on you. If you could only find out—”

“Don’t finish, Pete. I’ve heard it all before. All I have to do is decipher the thinking of a non-human intelligence.”

“A better-than-human intelligence. Those creatures from the para-Universe are trying to make themselves understood.”

“That may be,” sighed Bronowski, “but they’re trying to do it through my intelligence, which is better than human I sometimes think, but not much. Sometimes, in the dark of the night, I lie awake and wonder if different intelligences can communicate at all; or, if I’ve had a particularly bad day, whether the phrase ‘different intelligences’ has meaning at all.”