“I’m frightened sick,” whispered ArDell. “Sick-frightened of the universe. What do you know about the mathematics of social dynamics?”

“It’s a predicative system of mathematics, isn’t it?” said Donal. “My education didn’t lie in that direction.”

“No, no!” said ArDell, almost fretfully. “I’m talking about the statistics of social analysis, and their extrapolation along lines of population increase and development.” He lowered his voice even further. “They approach a parallel with the statistics of random chance!”

“I’m sorry,” said Donal. “That means nothing to me.”

ArDell gripped Donal’s arm suddenly with one surprisingly strong hand.

“Don’t you understand?” he murmured. “Random chance provides for every possibility—including dissolution. It must come, because the chance is there. As our social statistics grow into larger figures, we, too, entertain the possibility. In the end, it must come. We must destroy ourselves. There is no other alternative. And all because the universe is too big a suit of clothes for us to wear. It gives us room to grow too much, too fast. We will reach a statistically critical mass—and then,” he snapped his fingers, “the end!”

“Well, that’s a problem for the future,” said Donal. But then, because he could not help reacting to the way the other man was feeling, he added, more gently, “Why does it bother you, so much?”

“Why, don’t you see?” said ArDell. “If it’s all to go—just like that —as if it never has been, then what was the use of it all? What’s to show for our existence? I don’t mean things we built—they decay fast enough. Or knowledge. That’s just a copying down from an open book into our own language. It has to be those things that the universe didn’t have to begin with and that we brought to it. Things like love, and kindness—and courage.”

“If that’s the way you feel,” said Donal, gently withdrawing his arm from the other’s grasp, “why drink this way?”

“Because I am a coward,” said ArDell. “I feel it out there, all the time, this enormousness that is the universe. Drinking helps me shut it out-—that God-awful knowledge of what it can do to us. That’s why I drink. To take the courage I need out of a bottle, to do the little things like passing through phase shift without medication.”

“Why,” said Donal, almost tempted to smile. “What good would that do?”

“It’s facing it, in a little way,” ArDell fixed him with his dark and pleading eyes. “It’s saying, in one little instance—go ahead, rip me to the smallest shreds you can manage, spread me over your widest limits. I can take it.”

Donal shook his head.