Somewhere along the way, he picked himself up a crew of companions, most of which were only faintly humanoid, if at all.
And all the time this space-world, this star-world, got clearer and sharper and more real. It almost got to the point where he lived in its reality rather than in the reality of the here and now.
The realization that someone else had joined him, that he had picked up from somewhere a collaborator in his fantasies, began first as a suspicion, finally solidified into certainty. The fantasies got into the habit of not going as he himself was imagining them; they were modified, and added to, and changed in other ways. Cooper didn't mind though, for generally they were better than anything he could think up by himself—and finally he had grown to know his collaborators —not one of them alone, but three of them, each a separate entity. After the first shocks of recognition, the four them got along just swell.
"You mean he knows these others—these helpers?"
"He knows them all right," said Doc. "Which doesn't mean, of course, that he has ever seen them or will ever see them."
"You believe this, Doc?"
"I don't know. I don't know. But I do know Coop, and I know that he got up and walked. There is no medical science . . . no human medical science . . . that would have made him walk."
"You think these helpers, these collaborators of his, might somehow have cured him?"
"Something did."
"One thing haunts me," said Charley. "Is Cooper Jackson sane?"