"Your logic escapes me."
"It wouldn't if you had emerged from your cubicle and looked around you among the physical sciences. Some of your more venturesome geneticists believe that man will soon be the master of his heredity and that the next five million years of evolution on Earth will be the controlled evolution of the human mind. That could mean controlled evolution toward psi, Dr. Brill—if Earth science can ever escape the terrible drag of orthodoxy and if the unorthodox can ever learn to avoid the trap of its own dogma."
Nina had been watching Huth with the unblinking intensity that was so characteristic of her in moments of total concentration.
"So we are your nursery!" she exclaimed. "We produce the plants that will bring life back to your own soil!"
Huth came close to one of his rare smiles. "You have admirably reduced the milleniums and mathematics of evolution to a single sentence!" He turned to Lucifer. "Is this a laboratory big enough to challenge you?"
Lucifer took refuge in a question of his own. "What about your Goolies?"
From the shadow on Huth's face, and the faint gasp from Nina's parted lips, Lucifer knew he had made a mistake.
"Where did you learn that name?" Huth asked him coldly.
Lucifer was not a good liar, but he tried. "I—I don't really know. Perhaps—from one of your nurses or drivers...."
"We will accept that explanation, for the moment. Later, I trust you will volunteer another."