Theremon's lip curled. 'Well, if it comes to that, I guess I wouldn't have run if I had been there.'
The psychologist studied the young man with an annoyed frown.
'My, don't you talk big! I dare you to draw the curtain.'
Theremon looked his surprise and said, 'What for? If we had four or five suns out there, we might want to cut the light down a bit for comfort, but now we haven't enough light as it is.'
'That's the point. Just draw the curtain; then come here and sit down.'
'All right.' Theremon reached for the tasseled string and jerked. The red curtain slid across the wide window, the brass rings hissing their way along the crossbar, and a dusk-red shadow clamped down on the room.
Theremon's footsteps sounded hollowly in the silence as he made his way to the table, and then they stopped halfway. 'I can't see you, sir,' he whispered.
'Feel your way,' ordered Sheerin in a strained voice.
'But I can't see you, sir.' The newsman was breathing harshly. 'I can't see anything.'
'What did you expect?' came the grim reply. 'Come here and sit down!'
The footsteps sounded again, waveringly, approaching slowly. There was the sound of someone fumbling with a chair. Theremon's voice came thinly, 'Here I am. I feel . . . ulp . . . all right.'
'You like it, do you?'
'N -- no. It's pretty awful. The walls seem to be -- ' He paused. 'They seem to be closing in on me. I keep wanting to push them away. But I'm not going mad! In fact, the feeling isn't as bad as it was.'
'All right. Draw the curtain back again.'
There were cautious footsteps through the dark, the rustle of Theremon's body against the curtain as he felt for the tassel, and then the triumphant roo-osh of the curtain slithering back. Red light flooded the room, and with a cry of joy Theremon looked up at the sun.
Sheerin wiped the moistness off his forehead with the back of a hand and said shakily, 'And that was just a dark room.'
'It can be stood,' said Theremon lightly.
'Yes, a dark room can. But were you at the Jonglor Centennial Exposition two years ago?'
'No, it so happens I never got around to it. Six thousand miles was just a bit too much to travel, even for the exposition.'
'Well, I was there. You remember hearing about the "Tunnel of Mystery" that broke all records in the amusement area -- for the first month or so, anyway?'
'Yes. Wasn't there some fuss about it?'
'Very little. It was hushed up. You see, that Tunnel of Mystery was just a mile-long tunnel -- with no lights. You got into a little open car and jolted along through Darkness for fifteen minutes. It was very popular -- while it lasted.'
'Popular?'
'Certainly. There's a fascination in being frightened when it's part of a game. A baby is born with three instinctive fears: of loud noises, of falling, and of the absence of light. That's why it's considered so funny to jump at someone and shout "Boo!" That's why it's such fun to ride a roller coaster. And that's why that Tunnel of Mystery started cleaning up. People came out of that Darkness shaking, breathless, half dead with fear, but they kept on paying to get in.'
'Wait a while, I remember now. Some people came out dead, didn't they? There were rumors of that after it shut down.'
The psychologist snorted. 'Bah! Two or three died. That was nothing! They paid off the families of the dead ones and argued the Jonglor City Council into forgetting it. After all, they said, if people with weak hearts want to go through the tunnel, it was at their own risk -- and besides, it wouldn't happen again. So they put a doctor in the front office and had every customer go through a physical examination before getting into the car. That actually boosted ticket sales.'
'Well, then?'
'But you see, there was something else. People sometimes came out in perfect order, except that they refused to go into buildings -- any buildings; including palaces, mansions, apartment houses, tenements, cottages, huts, shacks, lean-tos, and tents.'
Theremon looked shocked. 'You mean they refused to come in out of the open? Where'd they sleep?'
'In the open.'
'They should have forced them inside.'
'Oh, they did, they did. Whereupon these people went into violent hysterics and did their best to bat their brains out against the nearest wall. Once you got them inside, you couldn't keep them there without a strait jacket or a heavy dose of tranquilizer.'
'They must have been crazy.'
'Which is exactly what they were. One person out of every ten who went into that tunnel came out that way. They called in the psychologists, and we did the only thing possible. We closed down the exhibit.' He spread his hands.
'What was the matter with these people?' asked Theremon finally.
'Essentially the same thing that was the matter with you when you thought the walls of the room were crushing in on you in the dark. There is a psychological term for mankind's instinctive fear of the absence of light. We call it "claustrophobia", because the lack of light is always tied up with enclosed places, so that fear of one is fear of the other. You see?'
'And those people of the tunnel?'
'Those people of the tunnel consisted of those unfortunates whose mentality did not quite possess the resiliency to overcome the claustrophobia that overtook them in the Darkness. Fifteen minutes without light is a long time; you only had two or three minutes, and I believe you were fairly upset.
'The people of the tunnel had what is called a "claustrophobic fixation". Their latent fear of Darkness and enclosed places had crystalized and become active, and, as far as we can tell, permanent. That's what fifteen minutes in the dark will do.'
There was a long silence, and Theremon's forehead wrinkled slowly into a frown. 'I don't believe it's that bad.'
'You mean you don't want to believe,' snapped Sheerin. 'You're afraid to believe. Look out the window!'
Theremon did so, and the psychologist continued without pausing. 'Imagine Darkness -- everywhere. No light, as far as you can see. The houses, the trees, the fields, the earth, the sky -- black! And Stars thrown in, for all I know -- whatever they are. Can you conceive it?'
'Yes, I can,' declared Theremon truculently.
And Sheerin slammed his fist down upon the table in sudden passion. 'You lie! You can't conceive that. Your brain wasn't built for the conception any more than it was built for the conception of infinity or of eternity. You can only talk about it. A fraction of the reality upsets you, and when the real thing comes, your brain is going to be presented with the phenomenon outside its limits of comprehension. You will go mad, completely and permanently! There is no question of it!'
He added sadly, 'And another couple of millennia of painful struggle comes to nothing. Tomorrow there won't be a city standing unharmed in all Lagash.'
Theremon recovered part of his mental equilibrium. 'That doesn't follow. I still don't see that I can go loony just because there isn't a sun in the sky -- but even if I did, and everyone else did, how does that harm the cities? Are we going to blow them down?'
But Sheerin was angry, too. 'If you were in Darkness, what would you want more than anything else; what would it be that every instinct would call for? Light, damn you, light!'
'Well?'
'And how would you get light?'