"I'd chase it," Borden said somberly, "only I'm not sure it couldn't get itself together and make a sun-mirror. We'll wait till nightfall."
"But what are we doing to it?" demanded Ellen.
Jerry was at the microphone now, going through the Sonnets From the Portuguese, while the living jelly at the edge of the world quivered and fled in shaking revulsion.
"The thing's alive," said Borden. "And it can't help receiving all sorts of impressions. Like any other organism, it learns to disregard any impression it receives that it can anticipate or classify. We don't hear a clock ticking. If we live near a noisy street, we don't hear traffic. But we wake if a door squeaks. That—white spot can disregard the electric waves of lightning. It can disregard sunshine. But it can't disregard things it can't fit into a pattern. It has to pay attention. And I'm giving it the kind of unpatterned signals that normally mean living things. Continuous, nonrepeat patterns of stimulation. And—they're too strong for the devilish thing."
Ellen said doubtfully, "Too strong?"
"You touch people to call their attention. If you touch them too hard, it isn't a touch but a blow, and you can knock them down. That's what I'm giving this thing. It has the quality of a signal the spot can't ignore, and the force of a blow. It should have the psychological effect of thousands of bells of intolerable volume—only worse. But we've got to keep on with the stimulus. And we mustn't repeat, or it might be able to get used to the pattern."
"I'll talk to it in French," said Ellen. "But it doesn't seem to me that a walkie-talkie could be too strong for—"
"It's hooked to the car's power system," Borden told her. "Jerry set it up and connected it just before he began to recite poetry. There are several kilowatts of radiation going to the thing now, and all of it is attention-holding radiation."
When night fell and the use of a sun-mirror was patently impossible, Borden moved on the highway toward what had been the white spot. The walkie-talkie sent on its waves ahead.