And what was he, Garrard, crying about? It didn’t make sense. He remembered dimly some kind of experience out there by the Centauri twins
the twin radioceles
There was another one of those words. It seemed to have Greek roots, but he knew no Greekand besides, why would Centaurians speak Greek?
He leaned forward and actuated the switch which would roll the shutter off the front port, actually a telescope with a translucent viewing screen. It showed a few stars, and a faint nimbus off on one edge which might be the Sun. At about one o’clock on the screen, was a planet about the size of a pea which bad tiny projections, like teacup handles, on each side. The DFC-3 hadn’t passed Saturn on its way out; at that time it had been on the other side of the Sun from the route the starship had had to follow. But the planet was certainly difficult to mistake.
Garrard was on his way homeand he was still alive.
and sane. Or was he still sane? These fantasies about Cen-taurianswhich still seemed to have such a profound emotional effect upon himdid not argue very well for the stabil-ity of his mind.
But they were fading rapidly. When he discovered, clutch-ing at the handiest fragments of the “memories,” that the plural of beademung was beademungen, he stopped taking the problem seriously. Obviously a race of Centaurians who spoke Greek wouldn’t also be forming weak German plurals.
The whole business had obviously been thrown up by his unconscious.
But what had he found by the Centaurus stars?
There was no answer to that question but that in-comprehensible garble about love, the All-Devouring, and beademungen. Possibly, he had never seen the Centaurus stars at all, but had been lying here, cold as a mackerel, for the entire twenty months.