2
's silence. He sat down in the single chair, his weight very slight in the feeble artificial gravity, and reviewed the known facts.
The bubble was a project of Earth's Galactic Observation Bureau, positioned there to gather data from observations that could not be made from within the galaxy. Since metallic mass affected the hypersensitive instruments the bubble had been made as small and light as possible. It was for that reason that it could accommodate only one attendant.
The Bureau had selected Horne as the bubble's first attendant and the cruiser left him there for his six months' period of duty. When it made its scheduled return with his replacement he was found dead from a tremendous overdose of sleeping pills. On the table was his daily-report log and his last entry, made three months before:
I haven't attended to the instruments for a long time because it hates us and doesn't want us here. It hates me the most of all and keeps trying to get into the bubble to kill me. I can hear it whenever I stop and listen and I know it won't be long. I'm afraid of it and I want to be asleep when it comes. But I'll have to make it soon because I have only twenty sleeping pills left and if--
The sentence was never finished. According to the temperature recording instruments in the bubble his body ceased radiating heat that same night.
* * * * *
The bubble was cleaned, fumigated, and inspected inside and out. No sign of any inimical entity or force could be found.
Silverman was Horne's replacement. When the cruiser returned six months later bringing him, Green, to be Silverman's replacement, Silverman was completely insane. He babbled about something that had been waiting outside the bubble to kill him but his nearest to a rational statement was to say once, when asked for the hundredth time what he had seen:
"Nothing--you can't really see it. But you feel it watching you and you hear it trying to get in to kill you. One time I bumped the wall and--for God'