He knew the other Thorn's emotions almost better than his own, but the actual conditions and specific details of the dream Thorn's life were blurred and confused in a characteristically dreamlike fashion. It was as if he were dreaming that other Thorn's dreams—while, by some devilish exchange, that other Thorn dreamed his dreams and hated him for his good fortune.
A sense of guilt toward his dream-twin was the dominant fact in Thorn's inner life.
And now, pushing through the forest, he began to fancy that he could see something at the receding focus of his vision a dozen yards ahead, something that kept flickering and fading, so that he could scarcely be sure that he saw it, and that yet seemed an embodiment of all the unseen forces dragging him along—a pale, wraithlike face, horribly like his own.
The sense of a destination grew stronger and more urgent. The mile wall of the Opal Cross, a pale cataract of stone glimpsed now and then through overhanging branches, still seemed to rise almost at his heels, creating the maddening illusion that he was making no progress. The wraith-face blacked out. He began to run.
Twigs lashed him. A root caught at his foot. He stumbled, checked himself, and went on more slowly, relieved to find that he could at least govern the rate of his progress.
The forces tugging at him were both like and infinitely unlike those which had for a moment controlled his movements at the symchromy. Whereas those had seemed to have a wholly alien source, these seemed to have come from a single human mind.
He felt in his pocket for the object he had stolen from Clawly's mysterious confidant. He could not see much of its color now, but that made its baffling texture stand out. It seemed to have a little more inertia than its weight would account for. He was certain he had never touched anything quite like it before.
He couldn't say where the notion came from, but he suddenly found himself wondering if the thing could be a single molecule. Fantastic! And yet, was there anything to absolutely prevent atoms from assembling, or being assembled, in such a giant structure?
Such a molecule would have more atoms than the universe had suns.
Oversize molecules were the keys of life—the hormones, the activators, the carriers of heredity. What doors might not a supergiant molecule unlock?