Now, suddenly, it swept over him how alien his environment was. He wanted with all the want of which his soul was capable to be in his mother’s arms and safe in the homey cabin in which they were spending the summer months.
He began to wail.
The ship’s computer-sensor system recognized the change in the intelligent-life charge which it had allowed to enter. It recognized, too, that the change was motivated through the devices of the entity beyond the screen, which was still projecting fear-hate-and-the-desire-to-destroy. It considered, and for the time rejected, the destruction of the hate-emanating-entity. The external menace was not as yet of the magnitude that its own minimal defensive reaction was allowed to function.
It had recorded earlier the fact that the hate-destroy-entity bey
