Sphere

by Michael Crichton

Norman’s research was considered brilliant, but psychology was notoriously prone to intellectual fashions, and interest in the study of anxiety was declining as many researchers came to regard anxiety as a purely biochemical disorder that could be treated with drug therapy alone; one scientist had even gone so far as to say, “Anxiety is no longer a problem in psychology. There is nothing left to study.” Similarly, group dynamics was perceived as old-fashioned, a field that had seen its heyday in the Gestalt encounter groups and corporate brainstorming procedures of the early 1970s but now was dated and passé. Norman himself could not comprehend this. It seemed to him that American society was increasingly one in which people worked in groups, not alone; rugged individualism was now replaced by endless corporate meetings and group decisions. In this new society, group behavior seemed to him more important, not less. And he did not think that anxiety as a clinical problem was going to be solved with pills. It seemed to him that a society in which the most common prescription drug was Valium was, by definition, a society with unsolved problems.

“You’re already involved in civilian crash-site teams, Dr. Johnson. You know how these emergency groups function. We want your input concerning the optimal composition of a crash-site team to confront an alien invader.” “I see,” Norman said, wondering how he could tactfully get out of this. The idea was clearly ludicrous. He could see it only as displacement: the Administration, faced with immense problems it could not solve, had decided to think about something else. And then the lawyer coughed, proposed a study, and named a substantial figure for a two-year research grant. Norman saw a chance to buy his house. He said yes.

Contact teams meeting an Unknown Life Form (ULF) must be prepared for severe psychological impact. Extreme anxiety responses will almost certainly occur. The personality traits of individuals who can withstand extreme anxiety must be determined, and such individuals selected to comprise the team. Anxiety when confronted by unknown life has not been sufficiently appreciated. The fears unleashed by contact with a new life form are not understood and cannot be entirely predicted in advance. But the most likely consequence of contact is absolute terror.”

Despite the traditional complaints about such tests—that they were sadistic, that they were artificial, that subjects somehow sensed the situations were contrived—Johnson gained considerable information about groups under anxiety stress. He found that fear responses were minimized when the group was small (five or less); when group members knew each other well; when group members could see each other and were not isolated; when they shared defined group goals and fixed time limits; when groups were mixed age and mixed gender; and when group members had high phobic-tolerant personalities as measured by LAS tests for anxiety, which in turn correlated with athletic fitness. Study results were formulated in dense statistical tables, although, in essence, Norman knew he had merely verified common sense: if you were trapped in an elevator, it was better to be with a few relaxed, athletic people you knew, to keep the lights on, and to know someone was working to get you free. Yet Norman knew that some of his results were counterintuitive, such as the importance of group composition. Groups composed entirely of men or entirely of women were much poorer at handling stress than mixed groups; groups composed of individuals roughly the same age were much poorer than groups of mixed age. And pre-existing groups formed for another purpose did worst of all; at one point he had stressed a championship basketball team, and it cracked almost immediately.

You know an octopus is smarter than a dog, and would probably make a much better pet. It’s a wonderful, clever, very emotional creature, an octopus. Only we never think of them that way.”

He wasn’t sure what Fielding meant, but Ted tended to literary quotations. Ted saw himself as a Renaissance man, and random quotations from Rousseau and Lao-tsu were one way to remind you of it. Yet there was nothing mean-spirited about him; someone once said that Ted was “a brand-name guy,” and that carried over to his speech as well. There was an innocence, almost a naïveté to Ted Fielding that was endearing and genuine. Norman liked him.

“I don’t know what it is, but I know what it isn’t. It isn’t a spacecraft from another civilization.” Ted, standing nearby, turned away in annoyance. Harry and Ted had evidently had this same conversation already. “How do you know?” Norman asked. “A simple calculation,” Harry said, with a dismissing wave of his hand. “Trivial, really. You know the Drake equation?” Norman did. It was one of the famous proposals in the literature on extraterrestrial life. But he said, “Refresh me.” Harry sighed irritably, pulled out a sheet of paper. “It’s a probability equation.” He wrote: “What it means,” Harry Adams said, “is that the probability, p, that intelligent life will evolve in any star system is a function of the probability that the star will have planets, the number of habitable planets, the probability that simple life will evolve on a habitable planet, the probability that intelligent life will evolve from simple life, and the probability that intelligent life will attempt interstellar communication within five billion years. That’s all the equation says.” “Uh-huh,” Norman said. “But the point is that we have no facts,” Harry said. “We must guess at every single one of these probabilities. And it’s quite easy to guess one way, as Ted does, and conclude there are probably thousands of intelligent civilizations. It’s equally easy to guess, as I do, that there is probably only one civilization. Ours.”

In the morning light, the submarine Charon V bobbed on the surface, riding on a pontoon platform. Bright yellow, it looked like a child’s bathtub toy sitting on a deck of oildrums. A rubber Zodiac launch took Norman over, and he climbed onto the platform, shook hands with the pilot, who could not have been more than eighteen, younger than his son, Tim. “Ready to go, sir?” the pilot said. “Sure,” Norman said. He was as ready as he would ever be. Up close, the sub did not look like a toy. It was incredibly massive and strong. Norman saw a single porthole of curved acrylic. It was held in place by bolts as big as his fist. He touched them, tentatively. The pilot smiled. “Want to kick the tires, sir?” “No, I’ll trust you.” “Ladder’s this way, sir.”

“You know,” Ted said, “when we open this alien craft up and make our first contact with another form of life, it’s going to be a great moment in the history of our species on Earth. I’ve been wondering about what we should say.” “Say?” “You know, what words. At the threshold, with the cameras rolling.” “Will there be cameras?” “Oh, I’m sure there’ll be all sorts of documentation. It’s only proper, considering. So we need something to say, a memorable phrase. I was thinking of “This is a momentous moment in human history.’ ” “Momentous moment?” Norman said, frowning. “You’re right,” Ted said. “Awkward, I agree. Maybe ‘A turning point in human history’?” Norman shook his head. “How about “A crossroads in the evolution of the human species’?” “Can evolution have a crossroads?” “I don’t see why not,” Ted said. “Well, a crossroads is a crossing of roads. Is evolution a road? I thought it wasn’t; I thought evolution was undirected.” “You’re being too literal,” Ted said.

“What happens now?” Norman said. “They pressurize us,” Ted said. “Switch us over to exotic-gas atmosphere. We can’t breathe air down here.” “Why not?” Norman said. Now that he was down here, staring at the cold steel walls of the cylinder, he wished he had stayed awake for the briefing. “Because,” Ted said, “the atmosphere of the Earth is deadly. You don’t realize it, but oxygen is a corrosive gas. It’s in the same chemical family as chlorine and fluorine, and hydrofluoric acid is the most corrosive acid known. The same quality of oxygen that makes a half-eaten apple turn brown, or makes iron rust, is incredibly destructive to the human body if exposed to too much of it. Oxygen under pressure is toxic—with a vengeance. So we cut down the amount of oxygen you breathe. You breathe twenty-one percent oxygen at the surface. Down here, you breathe two percent oxygen. But you won’t notice any difference—”

Norman said, “I notice your support team is all women.” “Yes,” Barnes said. “All the deep-diving studies show that women are superior for submerged operations. They’re physically smaller and consume less nutrients and air, they have better social skills and tolerate close quarters better, and they are physiologically tougher and have better endurance. The fact is, the Navy long ago recognized that all their submariners should be female.” He laughed. “But just try to implement that one.” He glanced at his watch. “We’d better move on. Ted?”

Ted rubbed his hands together. “You realize, of course, that even without opening that spacecraft, we have already made a major discovery of profound importance.” “What’s that?” Norman said. “We’ve shot the unique event hypothesis to hell,” Ted said, glancing at Beth. “The unique event hypothesis?” Barnes said. “He’s referring,” Beth said, “to the fact that physicists and chemists tend to believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life, while biologists tend not to. Many biologists feel the development of intelligent life on Earth required so many peculiar steps that it represents a unique event in the universe, that may never have occurred elsewhere.” “Wouldn’t intelligence arise again and again?” Barnes said. “Well, it barely arose on the Earth,” Beth said.” The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and single-celled life appeared 3.9 billion years ago—almost immediately, geologically speaking. But life remained single-celled for the next three billion years. Then in the Cambrian period, around six hundred million years ago, there was an explosion of sophisticated life forms. Within a hundred million years, the ocean was full of fish. Then the land became populated. Then the air. But nobody knows why the explosion occurred in the first place. And since it didn’t occur for three billion years, there’s the possibility that on some other planet, it might never occur at all. “And even after the Cambrian, the chain of events leading to man appears to be so special, so chancy, that bio...

“You know,” Ted said thoughtfully, “this is still a remarkable situation. In one sense, it’s even more remarkable than contact with extraterrestrials. I was already quite certain that extraterrestrial life exists in the universe. But time travel! Frankly, as an astrophysicist I had my doubts. From everything we know, it’s impossible, contradicted by the laws of physics. And yet now we have proof that time travel is possible—and that our own species will do it in the future!” Ted was smiling, wide-eyed, and happy again. You had to admire him, Norman thought—he was so wonderfully irrepressible. “And here we are,” Ted said, “on the threshold of our first contact with our species from the future! Think of it! We are going to meet ourselves from some future time!”

Barnes: “Stop tape, please.” Edmunds: “Tape is stopped, sir.” Barnes: “Let’s everyone settle down.” Harry: “I consider all this ceremony utterly irrelevant.” Ted: “Well, it’s not irrelevant; it’s appropriate.” Barnes: “All right, I’ll do it. Roll the tape.” Edmunds: “Tape is rolling.” Barnes: “This is Captain Barnes. We are now about to open the hatch cover. Present with me on this historic occasion are Ted Fielding, Norman Johnson, Beth Halpern, and Harry Adams.” Harry: “Why am I last?” Barnes: “I did it left to right, Harry.” Harry: “Isn’t it funny the only black man is named last?” Barnes: “Harry, it’s left to right. The way we’re standing here.” Harry: “And after the only woman. I’m a full professor, Beth is only an assistant professor.” Beth: “Harry—” Ted: “You know, Hal, perhaps we should be identified by our full titles and institutional affiliations—” Harry: “—What’s wrong with alphabetical order—” Barnes: “—That’s it! Forget it! No tape!” Edmunds: “Tape is off, sir.” Barnes: “Jesus Christ.”

“Did Harry find you all right?” he said. “I know he wanted to see you.” “Yes, sir. And I have the information he requested now. Why? Did you want to make out your will, too?” Norman frowned. “Dr. Adams said he didn’t have a will and he wanted to make one. He seemed to feel it was quite urgent. Anyway, I checked with the surface and you can’t do it. It’s some legal problem about it being in your own handwriting; you can’t transmit your will over electronic lines.” “I see.” “I’m sorry, Dr. Johnson. Should I tell the others as well?” “No,” Norman said. “Don’t bother the others. We’ll be going to the surface soon. Right after we have one last look at the ship.”

“You see,” Norman said, “at first I thought the Anthropomorphic Problem—the fact that we can only conceive of extraterrestrial life as basically human—I thought it was a failure of imagination. Man is man, all he knows is man, and all he can think of is what he knows. Yet, as you can see, that’s not true. We can think of plenty of other things. But we don’t. So there must be another reason why we only conceive of extraterrestrials as humans. And I think the answer is that we are, in reality, terribly frail animals. And we don’t like to be reminded of how frail we are—how delicate the balances are inside our own bodies, how short our stay on Earth, and how easily it is ended. So we imagine other life forms as being like us, so we don’t have to think of the real threat—the terrifying threat—they may represent, without ever intending to.”

Tired, Norman thought. We’re all tired. He watched Tina, who moved smoothly and continuously, adjusting the monitors, checking the sensor inputs, changing the videotapes on the bank of VCR’s, tense, alert. Because Edmunds was in the spaceship with Ted, Tina had to look after the recording units as well as her own communications console. The Navy woman didn’t seem to be as tired as they were, but, then, she hadn’t been inside the spaceship. To her, that spaceship was something she saw on the monitors, a TV show, an abstraction. Tina hadn’t been confronted face-to-face with the reality of the new environment, the exhausting mental struggle to understand what was going on, what it all meant. “You look tired, sir,” Tina said. “Yes. We’re all tired.” “It’s the atmosphere,” she said. “Breathing the heliox.” So much for psychological explanations, Norman thought. Tina said, “The density of the air down here has a real effect. We’re at thirty atmospheres. If we were breathing regular air at this pressure, it would be almost as thick as a liquid. Heliox is lighter, but it’s far denser than what we’re used to. You don’t realize it, but it’s tiring just to breathe, to move your lungs.”

Congruity theory was a troublesome matter for the people who thought about extraterrestrial life. In a simple way, the astronomers and physicists who considered the possibility of contact with extraterrestrial life imagined wonderful benefits to mankind from such a contact. But other thinkers, philosophers and historians, did not foresee any benefits to contact at all. For example, astronomers believed that if we made contact with extraterrestrials, mankind would be so shocked that wars on Earth would cease, and a new era of peaceful cooperation between nations would begin. But historians thought that was nonsense. They pointed out that when Europeans discovered the New World—a similarly world-shattering discovery—the Europeans did not stop their incessant fighting. On the contrary: they fought even harder. Europeans simply made the New World an extension of pre-existing animosities. It became another place to fight, and to fight over. Similarly, astronomers imagined that when mankind met extraterrestrials, there would be an exchange of information and technology, giving mankind a wonderful advancement. Historians of science thought that was nonsense, too. They pointed out that what we called “science” actually consisted of a rather arbitrary conception of the universe, not likely to be shared by other creatures. Our ideas of science were the ideas of visually oriented, monkey-like creatures who enjoyed changing their physical environment. If the aliens were blind and comm...

Norman sat on the bunk opposite Harry and watched as Harry drank. Harry was demonstrating a rather typical manifestation of shock: the agitation, the irritability, the nervous, manic flow of ideas, the unexplained fears for the safety of others—it was all characteristic of shocked victims of severe accidents, such as major auto crashes or airplane crashes. Given an intense event, the brain struggled to assimilate, to make sense, to reassemble the mental world even as the physical world was shattered around it. The brain went into a kind of overdrive, hastily trying to reassemble things, to get things right, to re-establish equilibrium. Yet it was fundamentally a confused period of wheel-spinning. You just had to wait it out.

“Where is this coming from?” “Obviously, from the ship.” “But we’re not connected to the ship. How is it managing to turn on our computer and print this?” “We don’t know.” “Well, shouldn’t we know?” Beth said. “Not necessarily,” Ted said. “Shouldn’t we try to know?” “Not necessarily. You see, if the technology is advanced enough, it appears to the naïve observer to be magic. There’s no doubt about that. For example, you take a famous scientist from our past—Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, even Isaac Newton. Show him an ordinary Sony color-television set and he’d run screaming, claiming it was witchcraft. He wouldn’t understand it at all. “But the point,” Ted said, “is that you couldn’t explain it to him, either. At least not easily. Isaac Newton wouldn’t be able to understand TV without first studying our physics for a couple of years. He’d have to learn all the underlying concepts: electromagnetism, waves, particle physics. These would all be new ideas to him, a new conception of nature. In the meantime, the TV would be magic as far as he was concerned. But to us it’s ordinary. It’s TV.”

“I think we have to accept the possibility,” Ted said, “that we may not be able to understand it.” Norman noticed the energy with which they threw themselves into this discussion, pushing aside the tragedy so recently witnessed. They’re intellectuals, he thought, and their characteristic defense is intellectualization. Talk. Ideas. Abstractions. Concepts. It was a way of getting distance from the feelings of sadness and fear and being trapped. Norman understood the impulse: he wanted to get away from those feelings himself.

we’re in a very dangerous environment. Barnes didn’t bother to give us all the gory details. You know why the Navy has that rule about pulling people out within seventy-two hours? Because after seventy-two hours, you increase your risk of something called ‘aseptic bone necrosis.’ Nobody knows why, but the pressurized environment causes bone destruction in the leg and hip. And you know why this habitat constantly adjusts as we walk through it? It’s not because that’s slick and hightech. It’s because the helium atmosphere makes body-heat control very volatile. You can quickly become overheated, and just as quickly overchilled. Fatally so. It can happen so fast you don’t realize it until it’s too late and you drop dead. And ‘high pressure nervous syndrome’—that turns out to be sudden convulsions, paralysis, and death if the carbon-dioxide content of the atmosphere drops too low. That’s what the badges are for, to make sure we have enough CO2 in the air. That’s the only reason we have the badges. Nice, huh?”

“Let’s cut the crap,” Barnes said. “Ask him about his weapons.” “I doubt he’ll understand the concept of weapons.” “Everybody understands the concept of weapons,” Barnes said. “Defense is a fact of life.” “I must protest that attitude,” Ted said. “Military people always assume that everyone else is exactly like them. This alien may not have the least conception of weapons or defense. He may come from a world where defense is wholly irrelevant.” “Since you’re not listening,” Barnes said, “I’ll say it again. Defense is a fact of life. If this Jerry is alive, he’ll have a concept of defense.” “My God,” Ted said. “Now you’re elevating your idea of defense to a universal life principle—defense as an inevitable feature of life.” Barnes said, “You think it isn’t? What do you call a cell membrane? What do you call an immune system? What do you call your skin? What do you call wound healing? Every living creature must maintain the integrity of its physical borders. That’s defense, and we can’t have life without it. We can’t imagine a creature without a limit to its body that it defends. Every living creature knows about defense, I promise you. Now ask him.” “I’d say the Captain has a point,” Beth said. “Perhaps,” Ted said, “but I’m not sure we should introduce concepts that might induce paranoia—” “—I’m in charge here,” Barnes said.

Norman reached over to remove something crumpled on the pillow beneath Harry’s head. It was Ted Fielding’s notebook. Norman suddenly felt overwhelmed. He sat on his bunk, holding the notebook in his hands. Finally he looked at a couple of pages, filled with Ted’s large, enthusiastic scrawl. A photograph fell onto his lap. He turned it over. It was a photo of a red Corvette. And the feelings just overwhelmed him. Norman didn’t know if he was crying for Ted, or crying for himself, because it was clear to him that one by one, they were all dying down here. He was very sad, and very afraid.

“Beth,” he said, “what do you suppose happened here? Why is this woman the only one left?” “I think she was important to the expedition,” Beth said. “Maybe even the captain, or the co-captain. The others were mostly men. And they did something foolish—I don’t know what—something she advised them against—and as a result they all died. She alone remained alive in this spacecraft. And she piloted it home. But there was something wrong with her—something she couldn’t help—and she died.” “What was wrong with her?” “I don’t know. Something.” Fascinating, Norman thought. He’d never really considered it before, but this room—for that matter, this entire spacecraft—was one big Rorschach. Or more accurately, a TAT. The Thematic Apperception Test was a psychological test that consisted of a series of ambiguous pictures. Subjects were supposed to tell what they thought was happening in the pictures. Since no clear story was implied by the pictures, the subjects supplied the stories. And the stories told much more about the storytellers than about the pictures. Now Beth was telling them her fantasy about this room: that a woman had been in charge of the expedition, the men had failed to listen to her, they had died, and she alone had remained alive, the sole survivor. It didn’t tell them much about this spaceship. But it told them a lot about Beth.

“I’m speaking to you! Don’t you walk away while I’m speaking to you, Norman!” He came into the galley once more and started opening the drawers, looking for the nut bars. He was hungry again, and the search took his mind off the other two. He had to admit he was disturbed by the way things were going. He found a bar, tore the foil, ate it. Disturbed, but not surprised. In studies of group dynamics he had long ago verified the truth of the old statement “Three’s a crowd.” For a high-tension situation, groups of three were inherently unstable. Unless everybody had clearly defined responsibilities, the group tended to form shifting allegiances, two against one. That was what was happening now.

Walking back across the ocean floor, they were tense, watching for the squid. But Norman derived comfort from the fact that they were armed. And something else: some inner confidence that came from his earlier confrontation with the squid. “You hold that spear gun like you mean it,” Beth said. “Yes. I guess so.” All his life he had been an academic, a university researcher, and had never conceived of himself as a man of action. At least, nothing beyond the occasional game of golf. Now, holding the spear gun ready, he found he rather liked the feeling.

Everything is changing, he thought. It’s all changing around us. But he wasn’t sure about that. He didn’t really trust his memory down here. There were too many other things to alter his perceptions—the high-pressure atmosphere, the injuries he had received, and the nagging tension and fear he lived with.

“Do you know what kind it is?” Norman said. “It may be a Belcher’s,” Beth said. “Pacific sea snakes are all poisonous, but Belcher’s sea snake is the most poisonous. In fact, some researchers think it’s the deadliest reptile in the world, with venom a hundred times more powerful than the venom of a king cobra or the black tiger snake.” “So if it bit you …” “Two minutes, tops.” They watched the snake slither away among the fans. Then it was gone. “Sea snakes are not usually aggressive,” Beth said. “Some divers even touch them, play with them, but I never would. God. Snakes.” “Why are they so poisonous? Is it for immobilizing prey?” “You know, it’s interesting,” Beth said, “but the most toxic creatures in the world are all water creatures. The venom of land animals is nothing in comparison. And even among land animals, the most deadly poison is derived from an amphibian, a toad, Bufotene marfensis. In the sea, there are poisonous fish, like the blowfish, which is a delicacy in Japan; there are poisonous shells, like the star cone, Alaverdis lotensis. Once I was on a boat in Guam and a woman brought up a star cone. The shells are very beautiful, but she didn’t know you have to keep your fingers away from the point. The animal extruded its poison spine and stung her in the palm. She took three steps before she collapsed in convulsions, and she died within an hour. There are also poisonous plants, poisonous sponges, poisonous corals. And then the snakes. Even the weakest of the...

I AM ENJOYING TO MANIFEST FOR YOU NORMAN. AND ALSO FOR YOU HARRY. “Thank you, Jerry.” I AM ENJOYING YOUR MANIFESTATIONS ALSO. “Our manifestations?” Norman said, glancing at Harry. Apparently Jerry thought that the people on the habitat were manifesting something in return. Jerry seemed to consider it an exchange of some kind. YES I AM ENJOYING YOUR MANIFESTATIONS ALSO. “Tell us about our manifestations, Jerry,” Norman said. THE MANIFESTATIONS ARE SMALL AND THEY DO NOT EXTEND BEYOND YOUR ENTITIES BUT THE MANIFESTATIONS ARE NEW FOR ME. THEY ARE HAPPY FOR ME. “What’s he talking about?” Harry said. YOUR MANIFESTATIONS HARRY. “What manifestations, for Christ’s sake?” “Don’t get mad,” Norman warned. “Stay calm.” I AM LIKING THAT ONE HARRY. DO AN OTHER. Norman thought: Is he reading emotions? Does he regard our emotions as manifestations? But that didn’t make sense. Jerry couldn’t read their minds; they’d already determined that. Maybe he’d better check again. Jerry, he thought, can you hear me? I AM LIKING HARRY. HIS MANIFESTATIONS ARE RED. THEY ARE WITFUL. “Witful?” WITFUL = FULL OF WIT? “I see,” Harry said. “He thinks we’re funny.” FUNNY = FULL OF FUN? “Not exactly,” Norman said. “We entities have the concept of …” He trailed off. How was he going to explain “funny”? What was a joke, anyway? “We entities have the concept of a situation which causes discomfort and we call this situation humorous.” HUME OR US? “No. One word.” Norman spelled it for him. I SEE. YOUR MANIFESTATIONS...

Norman decided to take another shower. As he stepped under the spray, he made a startling discovery. The bruises which had covered his body were gone. Anyway, almost gone, he thought, staring down at the remaining patches of yellow and purple. They had healed within hours. He moved his limbs experimentally and realized that the pain had gone, too. Why? What had happened? For a moment he thought this was all a dream, or a nightmare, and then he thought: No, it’s just the atmosphere. Cuts and bruises healing faster in the high-pressure environment. It wasn’t anything mysterious. Just an atmospheric effect.

Norman sighed. His trouble lay in his assumptions. Norman was assuming that the alien had logical processes similar to his own. But that might not be true. For one thing, Jerry might operate at a much faster metabolic rate, and thus have a different sense of time. Kids played with a toy only until they got tired of it; then they changed to another. The hours that seemed so painfully long to Norman might be only a few seconds in the consciousness of Jerry. He might just be playing with the squid for a few seconds, until he dropped it for another toy. Kids also had a poor idea about breaking things. If Jerry didn’t know about death, then he wouldn’t mind killing Ted, because he would think the death was just a temporary event, a “humorous” manifestation by Ted. He might not realize he was actually breaking his toys. And it was also true, when he thought about it, that Jerry had manifested different things. Assuming that the jellyfish and the shrimps and the sea fans and now the sea snakes were his manifestations. Were they? Or were they just normal parts of the environment? Was there any way to tell? And the Navy seaman, he thought suddenly. Let’s not forget the seaman. Where had he come from? Was that seaman another of Jerry’s manifestations? Could Jerry manifest his playmates at will? In that case, he really wouldn’t care if he killed them all. But I think that’s clear, Norman thought. Jerry doesn’t care if he kills us. He just wants to play, and he doesn’t know his own st...

“Let’s assume,” he said, “that something happened to Harry when he went inside the sphere—he acquired some kind of power while in the sphere.” “Like what?” “The power to make things happen just by thinking of them. The power to make his thoughts real.” Beth frowned. “Make his thoughts real …” “It’s not so strange,” he said. “Just think: if you were a sculptor, first you would get an idea, and then you would carve it in stone or wood, to make it real. The idea comes first, then the execution follows, with some added effort to create a reality that reflects your prior thoughts. That’s the way the world works for us. We imagine something, and then we try to make it happen. Sometimes the way we make it happen is unconscious—like the guy who just happens to go home unexpectedly at lunchtime and catches his wife in bed with another man. He doesn’t consciously plan it. It just sort of happens by itself.” “Or the wife who catches the husband in bed with another woman,” Beth said. “Yes, of course. The point is, we manage to make things happen all the time without thinking about them too much. I don’t think of every word when I talk to you. I just intend to say something and it comes out okay.”

“With your hands full of snakes, you looked like Medusa.” “What is that, a rock star?” “No, it’s a mythological figure.” “The one who killed her children?” she asked, with a quick suspicious glance. Beth, ever alert to a veiled insult. “No, that’s somebody else. That was Medea. Medusa was a mythical woman with a head full of snakes who turned men to stone if they looked at her. Perseus killed her by looking at her reflection in his polished shield.” “Sorry, Norman. Not my field.” It was remarkable, he thought, that at one time every educated Western person knew these figures from mythology and the stories behind them intimately—as intimately as they knew the stories of families and friends. Myths had once represented the common knowledge of humanity, and they served as a kind of map of consciousness. But now a well-educated person such as Beth knew nothing of myths at all. It was as if men had decided that the map of human consciousness had changed. But had it really changed? He shivered. “Still cold, Norman?” “Yeah. But the worst thing is the headache.” “You’re probably dehydrated. Let’s see if I can find something for you to drink.” She went to the first-aid box on the wall. “You know, that was a hell of a thing you did,” Beth said. “Jumping in like that without a suit. That water’s only a couple of degrees above freezing. It was very brave. Stupid, but brave.” She smiled. “You saved my life, Norman.” “I didn’t think,” Norman said. “I just did it.” And then he told her h...

“Norman, you are acting irresponsibly. You are a menace to this entire expedition.” Was that true? he wondered. He didn’t think he was a menace to the expedition. It didn’t feel true to him. But how often in his life had he confronted patients who refused to acknowledge what was happening in their lives? Even trivial examples—a man, another professor at the university, who was terrified of elevators but who steadfastly insisted he always took the stairs because it was good exercise. The man would climb fifteen-story buildings; he would decline appointments in taller buildings; he arranged his entire life to accommodate a problem he would not admit he had. The problem remained concealed from him until he finally had a heart attack. Or the woman who was exhausted from years of caring for her disturbed daughter; she gave her daughter a bottle of sleeping pills because she said the girl needed a rest; the girl committed suicide. Or the novice sailor who cheerfully packed his family off on a sailing excursion to Catalina in a gale, nearly killing them all. Dozens of examples came to mind. It was a psychological truism, this blindness about self. Did he imagine that he was immune? Three years ago, there had been a minor scandal when one of the assistant professors in the Psychology Department had committed suicide, sticking a gun in his mouth over the Labor Day weekend. There had been headlines for that one: “PSYCH PROF KILLS SELF, Colleagues Express Surprise, Say Deceased Was ‘...

He remembered one of his teachers, fat old Dr. Temkin. “You always have an option. There is always something you can do. You are never without choice.” I am now, he thought. No choices now. Anyway, Temkin had been talking about treating patients, not escaping from sealed chambers. Temkin didn’t have any experience escaping from sealed chambers. And neither did Norman. The oxygen made him lightheaded. Or was it already running out? He saw a parade of his old teachers before him. Was this like seeing your life running before you, before you died? All his teachers: Mrs. Jefferson, who told him to be a lawyer instead. Old Joe Lamper, who laughed and said, “Everything is sex. Trust me. It always comes down to sex.” Dr. Stein, who used to say, “There is no such thing as a resistant patient. Show me a resistant patient and I’ll show you a resistant therapist. If you’re not making headway with a patient, then do something else, do anything else. But do something.” Do something.

What was the purpose of the thing? He wished he understood its purpose. He thought of Dr. Stein again. What was Stein’s favorite line? “Understanding is a delaying tactic.” Stein used to get angry about that. When the graduate students would intellectualize, going on and on about patients and their problems, he would interrupt in annoyance, “Who cares? Who cares whether we understand the psychodynamics in this case? Do you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.” Okay, Norman thought. Let’s get wet. He turned to face the sphere, and thought, Open up.

On your planet you have an animal called a bear. It is a large animal, sometimes larger than you, and it is clever and has ingenuity, and it has a brain as large as yours. But the bear differs from you in one important way. It cannot perform the activity you call imagining. It cannot make mental images of how reality might be. It cannot envision what you call the past and what you call the future. This special ability of imagination is what has made your species as great as it is. Nothing else. It is not your ape-nature, not your tool-using nature, not language or your violence or your caring for young or your social groupings. It is none of these things, which are all found in other animals. Your greatness lies in imagination. The ability to imagine is the largest part of what you call intelligence. You think the ability to imagine is merely a useful step on the way to solving a problem or making something happen. But imagining it is what makes it happen. This is the gift of your species and this is the danger, because you do not choose to control your imaginings. You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the choice. You say you have inside you both the power of good and the power of evil, the angel and the devil, but in truth you have just one thing inside you—the ability to imagine. I hope you enjoyed this speech, which I plan to give at the next meeting of the American Association of Psychologists and Social Worker...

It was too bad about Harry and Beth; he was sorry to leave them behind. But they had both, in their own ways, failed to explore their inner selves, thus making them vulnerable to the sphere and its power. It was a classic scientific error, this so-called triumph of rational thought over irrational thought. Scientists refused to acknowledge their irrational side, refused to see it as important. They dealt only with the rational. Everything made sense to a scientist, and if it didn’t make sense, it was dismissed as what Einstein called the “merely personal.” The merely personal, he thought, in a burst of contempt. People killed each other for reasons that were “merely personal.”

“The knowledge will be gone forever,” Norman said quietly. He found himself hesitating. Now that they had arrived at this moment, he was strangely reluctant to proceed. He ran his fingertips over the scarred table, touching the surface, as if it might provide an answer. In a sense, he thought, all we consist of is memories. Our personalities are constructed from memories, our lives are organized around memories, our cultures are built upon the foundation of shared memories that we call history and science. But now, to give up a memory, to give up knowledge, to give up the past …