"It just can't be," Groves said. "How could it be?"

"And if we leave, we'll never know. We'll never be sure. It'll haunt us all our lives. Were we really—here? Does this place really exist? And is this place really—"

"There was a second place," Carmichel said abruptly.

"A second place?"

"In the story. A place where the people were big."

Basset nodded. "Yes. It was called—What?"

"Brobdingnag."

"Brobdingnag. Maybe it exists, too."

"Then you really think this is—"

"Doesn't it fit his description?" Basset waved toward the port. "Isn't that what he described? Everything small, tiny soldiers, little walled cities, oxen, horses, knights, kings, pennants. Draw-bridge. Moat. And their damn towers. Always building towers—and shooting arrows."

"Doc," Siller said. "Whose description?"

No answer.

"Could—could you whisper it to me?"

"I don't see how it can be," Carmichel said flatly. "I remember the book, of course. I read it when I was a child, as we all did. Later on I realized it was a satire of the manners of the times. But good Lord, it's either one or the other! Not a real place!"

"Maybe he had a sixth sense. Maybe he really was there. Here. In a vision. Maybe he had a vision. They say that he was supposed to have been psychotic, toward the end."

"Brobdingnag. The other place." Carmichel pondered. "If this exists, maybe that exists. It might tell us.... We might know, for sure. Some sort of verification."

"Yes, our theory. Hypothesis. We predict that it should exist, too. Its existence would be a kind of proof."

"The L theory, which predicts the existence of B."

"We've got to be sure," Basset said. "If we go back without being sure, we'll always wonder. When we're fighting the Ganymedeans we'll stop suddenly and wonder—was I really 

 Prev. P 17/23 next