Then I asked, "Do you want to see how real kidney cells—yours—-are behaving? I have a projecting microscope in the basement. Do you want to see what's going on?"

"Not particularly. If you think you can cure me, go ahead and try."

"Are you willing to pray for your own recovery?"

"No!" He spat out the word with a ferocity that seemed to surprise even himself.

"Then I am going to sermonize indeed. And you are going to listen, my dear little kidney cell."

"Oh, go ahead. But I warn you that I know something that will cancel it all in advance." He had developed more force of personality than he had showed since I came in.

"Oh? Then suppose you tell me about that. I always do better in rebuttal."

And he blurted it out ... the whole story of the Phoenix Nebula expedition and its discovery of the memorials of that beautiful race which was destroyed utterly in the explosion of its star ... the supernova which was our own Star of Bethlehem. "So you see," he concluded, "we found out that ultimate dreadful secret of the cosmos, that there is no plan, no purpose, no good God who watches the fall of the sparrows with tender concern. To whom could I pray for my recovery? To the random spin of electrons or planets? To a petty tribal totem? To nothing!"

"We found out? You and the crew?"

"I gave them what answers I could."

"They asked you ... and for a fish you gave them a stone, is that it?"

"Scold away," he said tonelessly. "I would not lie to them."

"The poet Dante," I began.

"Spare me the poets," he said bitterly.

"The poet Dante," I repeated firmly, "in his recounting of the vision of Paradise, came at last to the Outside. He had pressed on just as you of the expedition had pressed on, ever outwards, looking for The Purpose. He was fortunate, of course, in not actually making his expedition physically, in spite of pretending that he did so. Because space seems to be too big for man to make anything of while he's in the flesh. Anyhow, when Dante got Outside, the whole universe did a strange flip-flop. If you can imagine a tennis ball really 

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