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responded Kane. “You have merely failed to distinguish between the real and mental orders. Mentally-or theoretically-there isn’t any limit at all on how many times you can halve that skewer; but in the real order of things-or in other words, practically speaking-you would finally come to a point where, when you cut the skewer in half, the halves would convert themselves into energy.”
    “Foot, you are wise!” breathed the astronaut. Something gleamed in his eyes. He dropped to the floor with a rubbery thwack, went over to the desk and replaced the medal in front of Kane. “You pass,” he said. “Now can you prove that there is a Foot?”
    “I simply believe it,” said Kane.
    “Can you prove it?”
    “There are some arguments for reason.”
    “Oh, are those the same things that we used to justify dropping atomic bombs on Japan? If they are, fuck them!” Cutshaw leaned over and spread the contents of the bucket all over Kane’s desk. “Here, draw diagrams in the dirt.” He threw himself face down on the couch. “This had better be good,” he warned, a cushion muffling his voice.
    “There is a biochemical argument,” Kane said tentatively. “It isn’t a proof, exactly….”
    Cutshaw turned on his side, yawned elaborately and checked his watch. “In order for life to have appeared spontaneously on earth,” Kane resumed, “there first had to be in existence a protein molecule of a certain dyssymmetrical configuration, the configuration point nine. But according to the laws of probability, for one of these molecules to appear by chance alone would require a volume of matter of more than-well-many trillions and trillions of times that of the size of the entire known universe; and considered strictly from the angle of time—”
    “Timewise.”
    “Considered from the angle of time, and given a volume of matter equivalent to the earth’s, such a probability would require ten to the two hundred and something power billions of years- a number with so many zeros in it you couldn’t fit them into a book the size of The Brothers Karamazov. And that’s just one molecule. For life to appear, you would have to have millions in existence and at roughly the same time. Which I find more fantastic than simply believing in a God.”
    Cutshaw sat up. “Are you finished?”
    “Yes.”
    Cutshaw stood up and went to the door, where he turned and said cryptically, “Tawdry Groper eats unblessed venison.” Then he turned again and strode from view. The crash of a hammer pounding plaster resounded through the wall. Kane walked out of his office. To the right of the door he saw Fairbanks, wearing an Air Force high-altitude helmet. He was holding a short-handled sledgehammer and was glaring at a hole in the wall. Groper raced up to him, cursing. “I hid it, goddammit, I hid it!” He ripped the hammer from Fairbanks’ hand. “How the hell did you find it?” he yelled.
    “I wouldn’t dare tell you that, ” said Fairbanks. He whipped the hammer back out of Groper’s clutch and told him, “Kindly stand aside.”
    “You little—”
    Groper had lifted an arm as though to strike him, when Kane intervened.
    “Major Groper!”
    “Sir, he’s been—”
    “I don’t care what he’s done; you are not to lay hands on any of these men at any time for any reason.”
    “But, Colonel—”
    Groper was about to say more, but as his eyes looked into Kane’s, he broke off, took a step backward, saluted stiffly and retreated to his quarters.
    Kane regarded the inmate kindly. “You’re Captain Fairbanks,” he said.
    “Not today.”
    “I’m sorry. I was sure you were—”
    “Not today. Understand me? Multiple personality. ‘My house has many mansions. ’ ”
    “Yes.”
    “I am Dr. Franz von Pauli.”
    Kane put a fatherly arm around his shoulder. Far down the hall he caught a glimpse of Cutshaw staring at them from the dormitory door. Kane looked at the hole gouged out of the wall and said, “Why did you do