Burke shrugged. He found that he was tense all over, so he took some pains to appear wholly calm.
"It isn't reasonable!" insisted Holmes. "It doesn't make sense!"
"The question," observed Burke, "isn't whether it makes sense, but whether it's fact. According to the last word from Earth, they're still insisting that the ship's drive is against all reason. But we're here. And speaking of reason, would the average person look at this place and say blandly, 'Ah, yes! A fortress in space. To be sure!' Would they? Is this place reasonable?"
Holmes grinned.
"I'll go along with you there," he agreed. "It isn't. But you say its garrison was men. Look here! Have you seen a place before where men lived without writings in its public places? They tell me the ancient Egyptians wrote their names on the Sphinx and the Pyramids. Nowadays they're scrawled in phone booths and on benches. It's the instinct of men to autograph their surroundings. But there's not a line of written matter in this place! That's not like men!"
"Again," said Burke, "the question isn't of normality, but of fact."
"Then I'll try it," said Holmes skeptically. "How does it work?"
"I don't know. But put a cube about a yard from your head, and doze off. I think you'll have an odd dream. I did. I think the information you'll get in your dream will check with what you find around you. Some of it you won't have known before, but you'll find it's true."
"This," said Holmes, "I will have to see. Which cube do I try it with, or do I use all of them?"
"There's apparently no way to tell what any of them contains," said Burke. "I went back to the storeroom and brought a dozen of them. Take any one and put the others some distance away—maybe outside the ship. I'm going to talk to Keller. He'll make a lot of use of this discovery."