With the thought, Hip Barrows had a sudden flash of insight, completely intrusive in terms of his immediate problem; yet with it, a load of hostility and blind madness lifted away from him and left him light and confident. It was this:
Who am I to make positive conclusions about morality, and codes to serve all of humanity?
Why—I am the son of a doctor, a man who chose to serve mankind, and who was positive that this was right. And he tried to make me serve in the same way, because it was the only rightness he was sure of. And for this I have hated him all my life… I see now, Dad. I see!
He laughed as the weight of old fury left him forever, laughed in purest pleasure. And it was as if the focus was sharper, the light brighter, in all the world, and as his mind turned back to his immediate problem, his thought seemed to place its fingers better on the rising undersurface, slide upward towards the beginnings of a grip.
The door opened. Janie said, ‘Hip—‘
He rose slowly. His thought reeled on and on, close to something. If he could get a grip, get his fingers curled over it… ‘Coming.’
He stepped through the door and gasped. It was like a giant greenhouse, fifty yards wide, forty deep; the huge panes overhead curved down and down and met the open lawn—it was more a park—at the side away from the house. After the closeness and darkness of what he had already seen it was shocking but it built in him a great exhilaration. It rose up and up, and up rose his thought with it, pressing its fingertips just a bit higher…
He saw the man coming. He stepped quickly forward, not so much to meet him as to be away from Janie if there should be an explosion. There was going to be an explosion; he knew that.
‘Well, Lieutenant. I’ve been warned, but I can still say—this is a surprise.’
‘Not to me,’ said Hip. He quelled a surprise of a different nature; he had been convinced that his voice would fail him and it had not. ‘I’ve known for seven years that I’d find you.’