 What feeling did McCray and Hatcher both feel at least once during this article?
Whatever it was, he had no business in it; for five minutes before he had been spaceborne, on the Long Jump from Earth to the thriving colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine. McCray was ship's navigator, plotting course corrections—not that there were any, ever; but the reason there were none was that the check-sightings were made every hour of the long flight. Item, a short time ago—subjectively it seemed to be minutes—he had been aboard the Jodrell Bank with nothing more on his mind than completing his check-sighting and meeting one of the female passengers for coffee. Someone was watching Herrell McCray, with the clinical fascination of a biochemist observing the wigglings of paramecia in a new antibiotic—and with the prayerful emotions of a starving, shipwrecked, sailor, watching the inward bobbing drift of a wave-born cask that may contain food. Hatcher did not in any way look like a human being, but they had features in common. If Hatcher and McCray had somehow managed to strike up an acquaintance, they might have got along very well. Hatcher, like McCray, was an adventurous soul, young, able, well-learned in the technical sciences of his culture. Both enjoyed games—McCray baseball, poker and three-dimensional chess; Hatcher a number of sports which defy human description. Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the "probe team" which had McCray under observation, and he was more than a little excited. "Paranormal powers," muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the specimen from Earth. Their job was to watch McCray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as Herrell McCray. Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report: "The subject recovered consciousness a short time ago and began to inspect his enclosure. Hatcher swung closer, his thick skin quivering slightly; he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture with. His chemistry is not ours, his processes of thought are not ours, his entire organism is closer to the inanimate rocks of a sea-bottom than to ourselves." Not even Hatcher had quite got over the revolting physical differences between the Earthman and his own people.
 Alarm
 Alarm  Excitement  Confidence  Rage