All right then, a little nudge in another direction. Change the concept of the planet slightly, so that one thing cannot act upon another, no tool be used except this crystal set to act as intermediary. Let that happen, and out from Earth a man would come, perhaps a dozen men, perhaps a hundred ships, a thousand men, and all to find their ships, their tools, were gone. But someday there would come a man with mind trained in the ability to conceive that there might be a road to truth outside the useless superstitions that sent man to groveling in the dust at each small breath that blew, and also one who would not quit because he had no weather vane to test the direction of that breath.
And they would know when that mind came.
The first man came. Take away his tools and wait. He did not fall to earth in awe nor freeze in fear. His mind searched curiously. Enough. The man was here. Shield off the planet from the rest that he be undisturbed in his thought.
Could he go farther? Conceive the purpose of this lack of tools, that it was by design? And still not grovel in the dust? They'd made their move. Could he respond?
He drew a circle in the sand!
Joy! Ecstasy!
This time there might be surcease to the loneliness, and two intelligences so unlike commune. The very unlikeness of each bringing to the other thought not yet considered, and together going on to find ... to find ...
Now let him see the fallacy of such strict measurement. Now let him think, to realize that measuring the balance of the status quo of things in only one relationship of an infinity of possibilities, to realize that he can change his measurements to balance an equation designed to express the status quo, or with equal truth, at his desire, he can change the status quo, the shape of things, to fit the equation he desires.
Let him wander, puzzled, worrying on this. Let him work it out himself, for experience from long ago had taught them that if man was not ready to accept an alien thought he could not, would not, accept but in his own interpreting.
Now, at last, at his readiness to make things fit the equation he conceives, instead of making the equation fit the things as they are, bring him closer in the range of the amplifier, the crystal tool, that communication might be direct.