Next he opened a second transmitter unit, sat down on the little seat and pulled the helmet down on his head. As sensations of vastness and lost dimensions spread through him, he reached out and pressed down the switch that would pour his own brain impulses into Humanac's circuits.
Instantly, as with Dr. Peccary, Staghorn found himself standing in the little park.
He examined his hands and slapped his sides a few times, taking time to assimilate the fact that he felt perfectly solid. Ah, Bishop Berkeley was right all the time! The universe was subjective—a creation of consciousness!
He left off these speculations and recalled himself to his mission.
Glancing around, he saw that people were beginning to reappear. They came up from basements and out of the doors of the dilapidated houses and buildings. If there had been a panic, there was no sign of it now. The men and women moved indolently, returning toward the park and the sunlit streets. All were so much the same age and of such similar beauty that it was difficult to distinguish individual members of the same sex. But he finally recognized the girl Dr. Peccary had identified as Jenny Cheever. She had an attractive strawberry birthmark on her hip.
She strolled back into the park accompanied by a young man. The two of them took possession of the bench where Jenny had been seated earlier. They sat well apart from each other, silently contemplating the other passers-by.
Feeling that his knowledge of Jenny's name constituted a sort of introduction, Staghorn approached the couple. The man paid no attention to him but Jenny watched him curiously. Staghorn was not a man over whom women swooned, and it occurred to him that she found something odd about his dark suit and thick spectacles. He seemed to be the only man in town wearing either.
"How do you do," he said to her. "I believe you're Ben Cheever's daughter."
She continued to examine him languidly, slowly stroking a heavy strand of her auburn hair. "Am I?" she said at last. "It's been so long I've forgotten. But then I had to be someone's daughter and since my name is Cheever, you may be right. I don't remember you. We must have met ages and ages ago."