“Ah, ah,” Haertel said. “A point worth considering though I doubt that it will make interstellar travel very popular!”
He dropped back into silence, his thin mouth pursed.
Garrard took a grateful pull at his drink.
At last Haertel said: “Why are you in trouble over these Centaurians? It seems to me that you have done a good job.
It was nothing that you were a heroany fool can be bravebut I see also that you thought, where Brown and Cellini evidently only reacted. Is there some secret about what you found when you reached those two stars?”
Garrard said, “Yes, there is. But I’ve already told you what it is. When I came out of the pseudo-death, I was just a sort of plastic palimpsest upon which anybody could have made a mark. My own environment, my ordinary Earth environment, was a hell of a long way off. My present surroundings were nearly as rigid as they had ever been.
When I met the Centauriansif I did, and I’m not at all sure of thatthey became the most important thing in my world, and my personality changed to accommodate and understand them. That was a change about which I couldn’t do a thing.
“Possibly I did understand them. But the man who understood them wasn’t the same man you’re talking to now, Adolph. Now that I’m back on Earth, I don’t understand that man. He even spoke English in a way that’s gibberish to me. If I can’t understand myself during that periodand I can’t; I don’t even believe that that man was the Garrard I knowwhat hope have I of telling you or the Project about the Centurians? They found me in a controlled environment, and they altered me by entering it. Now that they’re gone, nothing comes through; I don’t even understand why I think they spoke English!”