"What the hell does he think he is?" Banning asked angrily.
"I have no idea. Maybe that's problem two for the future. At any rate, as you pointed out, this is an impossible job. It must be infinitely more difficult now that he's on Earth, where there are so many more things to explain away. This is going to set up a terrific strain inside. It may break him."
"What would do that to a man?"
"I don't know that, either," Colin admitted. "Our first problem now is to get him out of the ship. And to do that, we have to contact him."
"This is why you changed to 'please reply'? What good is it going to do if he can't hear it, anyway?"
"That's the point. I think he can hear it. He can't recognize it, but that isn't quite the same thing. His eardrums still vibrate, the data gets in, all right. But it doesn't reach the conscious level. Fortunately, it isn't always necessary to be consciously aware of a stimulus before you can respond to it. Frequently a persistent stimulation just below the threshold of awareness will produce a response in the organism. Sub-threshold stimulation, it's called."
"Yeah," Banning said, "I've heard of it. Used it in advertising, didn't they?"
"For a while. Before Congress passed the Privacy Amendment."
"Okay. Now what?"
"Now we wait and see if it works. I'm going to take a nap. Wake me up if anything happens."