“Now listen,” he said. “All right. You were in the direct path of some new radiations. These figures—” He rustled the paper in his hand. “They don’t check exactly. There was an untyped form of radiation in this area after the atomic blast. But—” He went off at a tangent. “It isn’t a porpoise? What is it, then?”

“I don’t know. It’s intelligent. It’s trying to communicate with me.”

“Good Heavens!” Black said, genuinely startled now. The look he bent upon Gresham was dubious.

“I know, I know.” Gresham must have sensed in the silence that doubtful glance. “Maybe I’m making it all up. I did spot the—porpoise—but maybe my hearing’s improved. The rest—well, I haven’t got any proof except what I know I’ve seen—and felt. I tell you, it’s something intelligent out there. It’s trying to communicate and it can’t.” He rubbed his forehead above the bandages, his face taking on the old look of strain. “I can’t make sense out of it. Too—alien, I guess. But it’s trying hard....” Suddenly he laughed. “I can imagine how you’re looking at me. Would you like to try some tests, Dr. Black? Knee-jerks, maybe?”

“Come on below with me,” Black said briefly. Gresham laughed again and got up....

An hour later they were back on deck. Black looked worried.

“Listen, Gresham,” he said earnestly. “I don’t know what’s happened to you. I admit that. The encephalogram was—puzzling. Your brain emits radiations that don’t check with anything we’ve seen before. Some peculiar things are possible, theoretically. For instance, a radio isn’t really likely to pick up transmitted waves, but it does. And telepathy’s theoretically possible. Suppose your brain has been altered a little by your exposure to the atomic blast. There are powers latent in the human mind, new senses that we know little about.”

“I suppose you have to find new words for it,” Gresham said as Black stumbled and paused. “But I don’t care what the scientific diagnosis is. I can see again. Not with my own eyes. But I can see.”

He was silent for a moment, and to Black it seemed that the blind man’s whole face looked rapt, as if he gazed upon things more beautiful than a man with eyes ever saw. When Gresham spoke, his voice was rapt, too.

“I can see!” he repeated, almost to himself. “I don’t care what else happens. Something alive and intelligent and—and desperate is near me. I see through its eyes. Its thoughts are too different to 

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