Ted looked at the squirrel, who was looking at him. Ted sat down again in the deck chair. He asked, "What good's a dream?"

"What good's reality?" No movement of the squirrel's mouth, but a certain intentness in its gaze. "And how can you tell which is the dream? How will you ever know? How much do you know, anyway?"

"More than a squirrel. You don't even know how far it is from home plate to first base."

"Ninety feet. How far is it to Mars, Brain?"

"Thirty-five million miles—and more."

A silence. The squirrel walked around the base of the tree and came into view on the other side. It moved cautiously toward the porch, its bushy tail alert as a guidon. About halfway between the porch and the tree, it paused, sitting up on its haunches.

"Thirty-five million miles to Mars. Close your eyes, Truesdale!"

Ted obediently closed his eyes and saw a film of red. It could have been the sun through his eye-lids! Then the redness faded and against a pink background a figure appeared.

It was the figure of a bearded, three-armed man, nailing some boards on what appeared to be a sluice. Beyond and above the bent figure, a green mountain towered, its peak topped with a polar cap. At the horizon end of the sluice, water was visible, flowing this way.

The man was big, with an enormous chest. Ted's own chest gasped for oxygen, and he had a sense of lightness, physical lightness.

The man drove in the last nail, and sat on a hummock, above the sluice, watching the water slowly work his way. Then he reached into a container at his side and pulled out—

Pulled out what could be nothing other than a skinned rat. Ted gagged, and the man looked up. He had a knife in one of his other hands now.

"Lunch?"

"Not a rat. I'll be hanged if I'll eat a rat."

"Who in the world asked you to eat a rat?"

Ted opened his eyes to see his wife standing in the doorway. He smiled at her, and turned to look at the squirrel. The squirrel was just disappearing up the nutmeg tree.

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