turned up in the macrocosm would be traces only, a leakage
or residuum, fleeting and wayward, beyond all hope of
control. .. .
Oestreicher, he noticed, was following his reasoning with
considerable interest. “I’m not used to thinking of electrons
as having any fine structure,” he said.
“Well, all the atomic particles have spin, and to measure
that, you have to have some kind of point on the particle
being translated from one position in space to anotherat
least by analogy. I would say that the analogy’s established
now; all we have to do is look out the port.”
“You mean we might land on one of those things, sir?”
Stauffer asked.
“I should think so,” Arpe said, “if we think there’s some-
thing to be gained by it. I’ll leave that up to Mr. Oestreicher.”
“Why not?” Oestreicher said, adding, to Arpe’s surprise,
“The research chance alone oughtn’t to be passed up.”
Suddenly, the background of fear, which Arpe had more
and more become able to ignore, began to swell ominously;
huge combers of pure panic were beginning to race over it.
“Oof,” Oestreicher said. “We weren’t covering enoughwe
forgot that they could pick up every unguarded word we
said. And they don’t like the idea.”
They didn’t. Individual thoughts were hard to catch, but
the main tenor was plain. These people had signed up to go
to Centaunis, and that was where they wanted to go. The
good possibility that they were trapped on the atomic-
size level was terrifying enough, but talong the further risk
of landing on an electron . . .
Abruptly Arpe felt, almost without any words to go with