“I THINK HE’S DESPERATE,” I said. “I think he’s learned all he can. He’s learned what the nearest Earthly equivalents to Veldish things are. And he’s learned that all Earth can give him nothing closer. I don’t see how he could do better. Even he. You cannot make apples of cabbages. But he wants to get home—you know he wants so much to leave here and get home—and now he’s desperate, and is going to try making a new transporter out of materials nothing like those in the one that broke and marooned him here.”
“And it won’t function?” Charpantier asked. “There is that risk. But why shouldn’t he try? What’s insane in that?”
“I fear it might work. I fear it might work in ways a transporter should not.” And I shivered, for if I say something I feel it, and I do not feel anything I don’t believe
