"But you said that you found the People and they're coming back to Earth," said Martha. "Can't you tell us more about them and when they're coming back…"
"My dear," said Jason, softly, "I think there's more that John wants to tell us, that he has to tell us before he talks about the People,"
John rose from the chair in which he had been sitting, walked to the ram-smeared window and looked out, then came back to face the two sitting on the davenport. "Jason is right," he said. "There is more I have to tell. I've wanted for so long to tell it to someone, to share it all with someone. I may be wrong. I've thought about it for so long that I may have become confused. I'd like to have you two hear me out and tell me what you think."
He sat down on the chair again. "I'll try to present it as objectively as I can," he said. "You realize that I never saw this thing, this Principle. I may not have even gotten close to it. But close enough to know that it is there and to sense a little, perhaps as much as any man may sense, the sort of thing it is. Not understanding it, of course, not even trying to understand it, for you know you are too small and weak for understanding. That was the thing that hurt the most, perhaps—realizing how small and weak you were, and not only you yourself, but all humanity. Something that reduced the human race to microbe status, perhaps to less than microbe status. You know instinctively that you, as one human being, are beneath its notice, although there is evidence, or I think there may be evidence, that it could and did take notice of humanity.
"I got as close to it as my mind could bear. I cowered before it. I don't know what else I did. There is a part of all of this that tends to go foggy in the mind. Perhaps I got too close. But I had to know, you see. I had to be sure and I am sure. It is out there and it watches and it knows and if need be it can act, although I am inclined to think it would not be quick to act…"
"Act—how?" asked Jason.
"I don't know," John told him. "You have to understand this is all impression. Intellectual impression. Nothing visual. Nothing that I saw or heard. It's the fact that it's all intellectual impression that makes it so hard to describe. How do you describe the reactions of the human mind? How do you blueprint the emotional impact of those reactions?"
"We had the report," Jason said to Martha. "You picked it up from someone. Do you remember who it was, who it might have been who was out as far as John, or almost as far as John…"
"They wouldn't have had to be out as far as I was," said John. "They could have picked up the sense of it a good deal farther off. I deliberately tried to get in close to it."
"I don't remember who it was," said Martha. "Two or three people told me of it, It was, I'm sure, all very second-hand. Maybe tenth- or twelfth-hand. Word that had been passed on from one person to another, from many persons to many other persons. Simply that there was something evil out near the center of the galaxy. That someone had been out there and had run into it. But no hint that anyone had investigated. Afraid to investigate, perhaps."
"That would be right," said John. "I was very much afraid."
"You call it a Principle," said Jason. "That is a funny thing to call it. Why the Principle?"
"It was what I thought when I was close to it," said John. "It didn't tell me. It didn't communicate at all. It probably was not even aware of me, didn't know that I existed. One tiny little microbe creeping up on it…"
"But Principle? It was a thing, a creature, an entity. That is a strange designation to hang on a creature or an entity. There must have been a reason."
"I'm not sure, Jason, that it is a creature or an entity. It is simply something. A mass of intelligence, perhaps. And what form would a mass of intelligence take? What would it look like? Could you even see it? Would it be a cloud, a wisp of gas, trillions of tiny motes dancing in the light of the center's suns. And the reason for calling it the Principle? I can't really tell you. There is no logic to it, no single reason I can put a finger on. Simply that I felt it was the basic principle of the universe, the director of the universe, the brain center of the universe, the thing that holds the universe together and makes it operate—the force that makes the electrons spin about the nucleus, that makes the galaxies rotate about their centers, that holds everything in place."
"Could you pinpoint its location?" Jason asked. John shook his head. "No way that I could. No such thing as triangulation. The feel of the Principle was everywhere, it seemed; it came from everywhere. It closed in around you. It muffled and engulfed you; there was no sense of direction. And in any case, it would be difficult, for there are so many suns and so many planets. Jammed close together. Suns fractions of light-years apart. Old, the most of them. Most of the planets dead. Some of them with the wreckage and ruin of what at one time must have been great civilizations, but now all of them are gone…"
"Perhaps it was one of these civilizations…"
"Perhaps," said John. "I thought so at first. That one of the ancient civilizations had managed to survive and that its intelligence evolved into the Principle. But since then I've come to doubt it. For more time would have been needed, I'm convinced, than the lifetime of a galaxy could afford. I can't begin to tell you, I don't know how to tell you, the sheer force of this intelligence, or the alienness of it. Not just the difference of it. Throughout all space you find scattered intelligences that are different and these differences make them alien. But not alien in the way the Principle is alien. And this terrible alienness hints at an origin not of the galaxy, of a time before the galaxy, of a place and time so different from the galaxy that it would be inconceivable. You are acquainted, I suppose, with the theory of the steady-state?"
"Yes, of course," said Jason. "The universe had no beginning and will never have an end, that it is in a state of continual creation, new matter being formed, new galaxies coming into being even as the old ones die. But the cosmologists, before the disappearance of the People, had fairly well established that the theory was untenable."
"I know they did," said John. "But there was still one hope—you could call it hope, for there were certain people who, for philosophical reasons, clung stubbornly to the steady-state concept. It was so beautiful, so superb and awe-inspiring, that they would not let it go. And they said, suppose that the universe is far bigger than it seems to be, that what we see is only a local segment, one tiny local bubble on the skin of this greater universe and this local bubble is going through a phase that makes it appear not to be steady-state, but an evolving universe."
"And you think that they were right?"
"I think they could be right. Steady-state would give the Principle the time that it needed to come into being. Before it came into being the universe may have been chaotic. The Principle may be the engineering force that put it all to right."
"You believe all this?"
"Yes, I do believe it. I've had time to think of it and I put it all together and I did the job so well that I'm convinced of it. Not a shred of proof. Not a point of information. But it's fastened in my mind and I can't shake it free. I try to tell myself that the Principle, or certain features of the Principle, may have put it in my mind, might have planted it. I try to tell this to myself because it's the only way that I can explain it. And yet I know I must be wrong, for I am sure the Principle was entirely unaware of me. There was never any sign it was aware of me."
"You got close to it, you say."
"As close as I dared to get. I was frightened all the way. I went to a point where I had to break and run."