He took Fred Williams on a general tour of the hall.
"Of course there are others not shown here," he concluded. "The Coma-Virgo system of galaxies, for one example. But these are the ones politically important at this time. In Sagittarius, we have a problem. There's a human colony there—a very early one, as a matter of fact—which we're sending an envoy to. But we don't know what sort of an envoy they are expecting, whether he should be a technical agronomist, a sociologist, a radiation expert, or a plain folksy reminder of Earth, or what. A simple problem really, but a mistake will cost us several billion credits to correct. So your first assignment, under Pat's tuition, will be to find out and report. When you get back, you'll rank officially as a Diver. Rendezvous is over the Peninsula, above San Francisco; you can't miss it. Take your mind there before you leave and come back there on the way in. Around fifteen thousand feet is the recommended height, but that, like your mind, is immaterial, if you'll pardon the pun. And now I suggest you go down to the police gym and take some good strong exercise so that you feel properly tired for the journey."
Dr. Howard Sprinnell put his hands in his pockets and gazed at his polished shoes.
"I don't quite know how to say this, Fred," he continued, "but I'm responsible for you Divers. You're entitled to your own forms of amusement, of course, but please remember you are being watched by Psis. No dropping in on the President's bedroom. Other people's bedrooms, all right, though I trust you'll keep out of mine. But do nothing that could make you be considered a security risk. That is the only thing that would worry us."
Fred Williams assured him and left the hall to go down to the police gym. He did not understand why the warning should be necessary. On the other hand, you could take it as a delicate permission to do anything that was not a security risk. He passed the police canteen and restrained himself from going in to order a doughnut with Martian syrup. It would keep him from Diving.
He rose into the atmosphere above the city and headed across America to the rendezvous above the West Coast. The Earth spun away from beneath him. He had time to be surprised that in the few hours back on Earth he had forgotten the unburdened clarity of mind in a Dive. He knew who he was. He was unquestionably Fred Williams up here, as much as he was Fred Williams down there. But here he felt different, free, while down there he was embedded and obscured in a shell of a body. Here, this time, his vision was not limited to a forward cone but extended in a complete sphere around him.
He saw the large nick in the coast ahead and came down to meet his tutor Diver.
Pat had said he looked like the inside of an egg, but he was not prepared for the great ovoid poised there below him. He came up to her with a rush and found he was even bigger by comparison. When they touched, he heard her voice. There was a slight resistance as his mind met hers and then she slipped inside his, so that he enclosed her mind within his ovoid mind.
"One of the disadvantages of a Diver," she said quietly within him, "is that we can only talk to each other by contact. A Psi could see our thoughts radiating out like an aurora, but we can't. We travel this way when two Divers are together, which isn't often, so that we both think of going to the same place. If we do get separated, come back here immediately and we'll start again."