"I think you have had quite enough orientation for the time being," Huth replied.
The strange conveyance whisked them back to their bungalow. Lucifer soaked himself in a hot bath, and it was a long time before his trembling muscles relaxed. Dinner, via the tubicular, consisted of a meat dish, more strongly flavored than venison, two rather salty green vegetables and a flagon of warm, spicy amber liquid. They ate in silence.
Soon after dinner, Huth appeared on the visagraph screen, for what he called their second orientation session. This was largely a development of the first, and so were those that followed on succeeding days. Each left Lucifer feeling more unsure of himself, tense, mentally adrift. The distance between Melus and his safe, secure little laboratory at Western University was becoming greater than could be measured in light years.
Ranging from geology to biochemistry, from physio-psychical sources of neurosis to what he called the "molecular site of understanding", Huth hammered incessantly with semantics and logic against the carefully mortared bricks of Lucifer's own scientific cubicle. Sometimes he spoke with almost mystical fervor of a frontier beyond a frontier, a science beyond a science. One evening, during a visagraph session, Nina suddenly interrupted:
"Your words speak about the infinite," she murmured, "but your mind does not sing with the music of infinity."
Now, for the first time, Lucifer saw uncertainty on Huth's face.
Uncertainty, and a look of indescribable sadness.
Then the visagraphs screen went dark.
Nina was on the couch beside Lucifer. Her eyes were half-closed; her strong fingers were clasped around her knees and she rocked back and forth gently.
"What a strange man," she said. "What a strange and strong and lonely man. For a moment, I saw all the loneliness of the universe in his eyes...."