"I seem to remember now, too. Some of it is coming back. Slowly, almost painfully. I'm afraid to think about it, to even try to remember. We were far more frightened than we are now. Something terrible happened to us."
"We'd better just relax, take it easy and let it come back in a natural way."
The woman shuddered. "Sometimes not knowing is worse than remembering, worse than any positive knowledge can be. When a memory is crouching like some great beast in the darkness of your mind it is safer to remember. Safer to see the hideous shape clearly, to at least try to force it out into the open."
"Not always, Ruth."
"Ruth. Yes, I am Ruth. You are Peter. You are my husband. The instant you spoke my name it came back to me. Oh, darling, I love you so much. I have always loved you."
"I know, Ruth. And I have always loved you. But beyond that everything is obscure, and in some strange way incomplete. It's as though there are many things which I should recall and understand but which have been—left out."
"Left out? What do you mean?"
"It's hard to explain. But there's a kind of gulf, an emptiness, a falling away when I try to remember what happened to us. The memory doesn't seem to be there at all. I can remember the ship, and how frightened we were. We were traveling through space toward a distant star. There were others. How many I do not know or even what they looked like. It may come back. We must wait and see."
"Wait? What good will waiting do, Peter? We can't just stand here trying to remember or refusing to remember. We don't know where we are. We have no idea where we are, or why we were brought here. Were we brought here against our will? Or did we come voluntarily? Shall we wait for something to happen, or try to make it happen? What shall we do, Peter? Beat on the walls with our bare hands? Shout and create a disturbance? Some of these instruments look fragile. Perhaps if we smashed one—"
The man who resembled Summers shook his head. "No, Ruth. That would be too dangerous a way of bringing down the thunder."