as such; it seemed instead that they were walking in a
gravitational field about a tenth that of the Earth.
“It’s terribly quiet,” Celia said.
The suit radios, Arpe noted, were not working. Luckily,
the thought-carrying properties of the medium around them
were unchanged.
“I’m not at all sure that this stuff would carry sound,” he
answered. “It isn’t a gas as we know it, anyhow. It’s simply
a manifestation of indefiniteness. The electron never knows
exactly where it is; it just trails off at its boundaries into
not being anywhere in particular.”
“Well, it’s eerie. How long do we have to stay here?”
“Not long. I just want to get some idea of what it’s like.”
He bent over. The surface, he saw, was covered with fine
detail, though again he was unable to make much sense of it.
Here and there he saw tiny, crooked rills of some brilliantly
shiny substance, rather like mercury, andyes, there was an
irregular puddle of it, and it showed a definite meniscus. When
he pushed his finger into it, the puddle dented deeply, but it
did not break and wet his glove. Its surface tension must be
enormous; he wondered if it were made entirely of identical
subfundamental particles. The whole globe seemed to be
covered by a network of these shiny threads.
Now that his eyes were becoming acclimated, he saw that
the “air,” too, was full of these shining veins, making it look
distinctly marbled. The veins offered no impediment to their
walking; somehow, there never seemed to be any in their
immediate vicinity, though there were always many of them