Well, that settled it; the boy didn't know how to lie - wait, hold it! Jubal reminded himself of Mike's computer-like habit of answering exactly the question asked� and Mike had not known, or had not appeared to know, where that pesky box was, once it was gone. "Mike, when did you see him last?"

"I saw Duke go upstairs when Jill and I came downstairs, this morning when time to cook breakfast." Mike added proudly, "I helped cooking."

"That was the last time you saw Duke?"

"I am not see Duke since, Jubal. I proudly burned toast."

"I'll bet you did. You'll make some woman a fine husband yet, if you aren't careful."

"Oh, I burned it most carefully."

"Jubal-"

"Huh? Yes, Anne?"

"Duke grabbed an early breakfast and lit out for town. I thought you knew."

"Well," Jubal temporized, "he did say something about it. I thought he intended to leave after lunch today. No matter, it'll keep." Jubal realized suddenly that a great load had been lifted from his mind. Not that Duke meant anything to him, other than as an efficient handyman - no, of course not! For many years he had avoided letting any human being be important to him - but, just the same, he had to admit that it would have troubled him. A little, anyhow.

What statute was violated, if any, in turning a man exactly ninety degrees from everything else?

Not murder, not as long as the lad used it only in self-defense or in the proper defense of another, such as Jill. Possibly the supposedly obsolete Pennsylvania laws against witchcraft would apply� but it would be interesting to see how a prosecutor would manage to word an indictment.

A civil action might lie - could harboring the Man from Mars be construed as "maintaining an attractive nuisance?" Possibly. But it was more likely that radically new rules of law must evolve. Mike had already kicked the bottom out of both medicine and physics, even though the practitioners of such were still innocently unaware of the chaos facing them. Harshaw dug far back into his memory and recalled the personal tragedy that relativistic mechanics had proved to be for many distinguished scientists. Unable to digest it through long habit of mind, they had taken refuge in blind anger at Einstein himself and any who dared to take him seriously. But their refuge had been a dead end; all that inflexible old guard could do was to die and let younger minds, still limber, take over.

Harshaw recalled that his grandfather had told him of much the same thing happening in the field of medicine when the germ theory came along; many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse - and without examining evidence which their "common sense" told them was impossible.

Well, he could see that Mike was going to cause more hooraw than Pasteur and Einstein combined - squared and cubed. Which reminded him - "Larry! Where's Larry?"

"Here, Boss," the loudspeaker mounted under the eaves behind him announced. "Down in the shop."

"Got the panic button?"

"Sure thing. You said to sleep with it on me. I do. I did."

"Bounce up here to the house and let me have it. No, give it to Anne. Anne, you keep it with your robe."

She nodded. Larry's voice answered, "Right away, Boss. Count down coming up?"

"Just do it." Jubal looked up and was startled to find that the Man from Mars was still standing in front of him, quiet as a sculptured figure. Sculpture? Yes, he did remind one of sculpture� uh - Jubal searched his memory. Michelangelo's "David," that was it! Yes, even to the puppyish hands and feet, the serenely sensual face, the tousled, too-long hair. "That was all I wanted, Mike."

"Yes, Jubal."

But Mike continued to stand there. Jubal said, "Something on your mind?"

"About what I was seeing in that goddam-noisy-box. You said, 'All right, go ahead. But come talk to me about it later.'"

"Oh." Harshaw recalled the broadcast services of the Church of the New Revelation and winced. "Yes, we will talk. But first - Don't call that thing a goddam noisy box. It is a stereovision receiver. Call it that."

Mike looked puzzled. "It is not a goddam-noisy-box? I heard you not rightly?"

"You heard me rightly and it is indeed a goddam noisy box. You'll hear me call it that again. And other things. But you must call it a stereovision receiver."

"I will call it a 'stereovision receiver.' Why, Jubal? I do not grok."

Harshaw sighed, with a tired feeling that he had climbed these same stairs too many times. Any conversation with Smith turned up at least one bit of human behavior which could not be justified logically, at least in terms that Smith could understand, and attempts to do so were endlessly time-consuming. "I do not grok it myself, Mike," he admitted, "but Jill wants you to say it that way."

"I will do it, Jubal. Jill wants it."

"Now tell me what you saw and heard in that stereovision receiver - and what you grok of it."

The conversation that followed was even more lengthy, confused, and rambling than a usual talk with Smith. Mike recalled accurately every word and action he had heard and seen in the babble tank, including all commercials. Since he had almost completed reading the encyclopedia, he had read its article on "Religion," as well as ones on "Christianity," "Islam," "Judaism," "Confucianism," "Buddhism," and many others concerning religion and related subjects. But he had grokked none of this.

Jubal at last got certain ideas clear in his own mind: (a) Mike did not know that the Fosterite service was a religious one; (b) Mike remembered what he had read about religions but had filed such data for future contemplation, having recognized that he did not understand them; (c) in fact, Mike had only the most confused notion of what the word "religion" meant, even though he could quote all nine definitions for same as given in the unabridged dictionary; (d) the Martian language contained no word (and no concept) which Mike was able to equate with any of these nine definitions; (e) the customs which Jubal had described to Duke as Martian "religious ceremonies" were nothing of the sort to Mike; to Mike such matters were as matter-of-fact as grocery markets were to Jubal; (f) it was not possible to express as separate ideas in the Martian tongue the human concepts: "religion," "philosophy," and "science" - and, since Mike still thought in Martian even though he now spoke English fluently, it was not yet possible for him to distinguish any one such concept from the other two. All such matters were simply "learnings" which came from the "Old Ones." Doubt he had never heard of and research was unnecessary (no Martian word for either); the answer to any question should be obtained from the Old Ones, who were omniscient (at least within Mike's scope) and infallible, whether the subject be tomorrow's weather or cosmic teleology. (Mike had seen a weather forecast in the babble box and had assumed without question that this was a message from human "Old Ones" being passed around for the benefit of those still corporate. Further inquiry disclosed that he held a similar assumption concerning the authors of the Encyclopedia Britannica.)

But last, and worst to Jubal, causing him baffled consternation, Mike had grokked the Fosterite service as including (among things he had not grokked) an announcement of an impending discorporation of two humans who were about to join the human "Old Ones" - and Mike was tremendously excited at this news. Had he grokked it rightly? Mike knew that his comprehension of English was less than perfect; he continued to make mistakes through his ignorance, being "only an egg." But had he grokked this correctly? He had been waiting to meet the human "Old Ones," for he had many questions to ask. Was this an opportunity? Or did he require more learnings from his water brothers before he was ready?