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in August, and Stern dazed him with starry sweeps of science: the ideas of Hawking, Guth, Linde, himself. Howard liked the way such talk made him feel both small and large—dwarfed by the night sky and at the same time a part of it.
    Then, when the talk had begun to lull, his uncle turned to him and said, “Do you ever wonder, Howard, about the questions we can’t ask?”
    “Can’t answer, you mean?”
    “No. Can’t ask .”
    “I don’t understand.”
    Stern leaned back in his deck chair and folded his hands over his gaunt, ascetic frame. His glasses were opaque in the porch light. The crickets seemed suddenly loud.
    “Think about a dog,” he said. “Think about your dog—what’s his name?”
    “Albert.”
    “Yes. Think about Albert. He’s a healthy dog, is he not?”
    “Yes.”
    “Intelligent?”
    “Sure.”
    “He functions in every way normally, then, within the parameters of dogness. He’s an exemplar of his species. And he has the ability to learn, yes? He can do tricks? Learn from his experience? And he’s aware of his surroundings; he can distinguish between you and your mother, for instance? He’s not unconscious or impaired?”
    “Right.”
    “But despite all that, there’s a limit on his understanding. Obviously so. If we talk about gravitons or Fourier transforms, he can’t follow the conversation. We’re speaking a language he doesn’t know and cannot know. The concepts can’t be translated; his mental universe simply won’t contain them.”
    “Granted,” Howard said. “Am I missing the point?”
    “We’re sitting here,” Stern said, “asking spectacular questions, you and I. About the universe and how it began. About everything that exists. And if we can ask a question, probably, sooner or later, we can answer it. So we assume there’s no limit to knowledge. But maybe your dog makes the same mistake! He doesn’t know what lies beyond the neighborhood, but if he found himself in a strange place he would approach it with the tools of comprehension available to him, and soon he would understand it—dog-fashion, by sight and smell and so on. There are no limits to his comprehension, Howard, except the limits he does not and cannot ever experience. So how different are we? We’re mammals within the same broad compass of evolution, after all. Our forebrains are bigger, but the difference amounts to a few ounces. We can ask many, many more questions than your dog. And we can answer them. But if there are real limits on our comprehension, they would be as invisible to us as they are to Albert. So: Is there anything in the universe we simply cannot know ? Is there a question we can’t ask? And would we ever encounter some hint of it, some intimation of the mystery? Or is it permanently beyond our grasp?”
    His uncle stood and stretched, peered over the porch railing at the dark street and yawned. “It’s a question for philosophers, not physicists. But I confess, it interests me.”
    It interested Howard, too. It haunted him all that night. He lay in bed pondering the limits of human knowledge, while the stars burned in his window and a slow breeze cooled his forehead.
    He never forgot the conversation. Neither did his uncle. Stern mentioned it when he invited Howard to join him at the Two Rivers research facility.
    “It’s nepotism,” Howard said. “Besides—do I want this job? Everyone talks about you, you know. Alan Stern, disappeared into some government program, what a waste.”
    “You want this job,” his uncle told him. “Howard, you remember a conversation we once had?”
    And he had recalled it, almost word for word.
    Howard gave his uncle a long look. “You mean to say you’re pursuing this question?”
    “More. We’ve touched it. The Mystery.” Stern was grinning—a little wildly, Howard thought. “We’ve put our hands on it. That’s all I can say for now. Think about it. Call me if you’re interested.”
    Fascinated despite himself—and lacking a