The corner upon which he stood held a cigar store and James Carroll entered the shop to buy cigarettes. The store was rather full and he was forced to wait.
And it came to him, then. During that wait it came to his feebly-groping mind that this was the same sort of pattern that he had seen before. Was this truth—or reality? He smiled, and as the storekeeper came towards him, he looked the man in the eye and said:
"When did you split me off?"
There was a look of amazement on the proprietor's face—wonder, puzzlement and a scowl of slight anger.
"You heard me," said Carroll flatly. "What are you doing to my reports?"
"You're nuts," said the storekeeper.
"Am I?" replied Carroll lightly. "Then I'll tell you why. The Lawson Radiation comes from a system of interstellar travel, used by some race out in the Boötes region of the sky. The insoluble dilemma is how to go out to learn the secret of interstellar travel when I need interstellar travel to go out and ask the questions—"
The man's face faded, distorted like a cheap oil-clay image under too warm a light.
The store flowed down, too, and swirled around in a grand melee of semiplastic matter. The light inside the store darkened and the only illumination within the rolling, churning store came from a light that swung back and forth madly in front of the door.
Carroll fell backwards into a cushion of soft-plastic floor which bounced slightly under him from time to time. A low roaring mutter came to his ears. The light continued to swing but it was swinging past a window now and only in one direction.