"Something else first. I couldn't help noticing, back there, that you and Jack ... well, not out of phase, exactly, or really out of sync, but sort of ... well, as though ..."
"'Hunting'?" she suggested.
"Not exactly ... 'forcing' might be better—like holding a tight beam together when it wants to fall apart. So you noticed it yourself?"
"Of course, but I thought Jack and I were the only ones who did. Like scratching a blackboard with your finger-nails—you can do it, but you're awfully glad to stop ... and I like Jack, too, darn it—at a distance."
"And you and I fit like precisely tuned circuits. Jack really meant it, then, when he said that you ... that is, he ... I didn't quite believe it until now, but if ... you know, of course, what you've already done to me."
Jill's block went on, full strength. She arched her eyebrows and spoke aloud—"why, I haven't the faintest idea!"
"Of course not. That's why you're using voice. I've found out, too, that I can't lie with my mind. I feel like a heel and a louse, with so much job ahead, but you've simply got to tell me something. Then—whatever you say—I'll hit the job with everything I've got. Do I get heaved out between planets without a space-suit, or not?"
"I don't think so." Jill blushed vividly, but her voice was steady. "You would rate a space-suit, and enough oxygen to reach another plan—another goal. And now we'd better get to work, don't you think?"
"Yes. Thanks, Jill, a million. I know as well as you do that I was talking out of turn, and how much—but I had to know." He breathed deep. "And that's all I ask—for now. Cut your screens."
She lowered her mental barriers, finding it surprisingly easy to do so in this case; let them down almost as far as she was in the habit of doing with her father. He explained in flashing thoughts everything he knew of the four Operations, concluding: