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Page 182
Commissioner has warned Gottstein that something might be going on that needed watching.
Denison tells Neville about himself and is told that he can work in the Lunarite laboratories. In the laboratories Denison is able to use a Pionizer, invented by the Lunarites, which does in a small space what the proton synchrotron does in a large one. With the Pionizer Denison gets results that he feels confirm the dangers he and Lamont have warned about: within a few years or a few decades, the growing strength of the nuclear force will lead to the explosion of the sun, perhaps even the entire arm of the Galaxy. Neville discounts Denison's findings, saying that they are within the limits of error of his process. Denison explains to Selene that people believe what they want to believe. Neville does not like to leave the tunnels in which he was born and raised (like the city-dwellers in The Caves of Steel, he suffers from agoraphobia). He wants the Electron Pump so badly because then the Moon will not be dependent upon solar batteries, for which people must go out on the surface. Denison suggests to Selene that Earth will not shut down the Electron Pump because it is dangerous; Earth must be offered something better. He offers a clue: the number two is ridiculous and cannot exist. Selene guesses what he means: if there are two alternate Universes, there must be an infinity of them.
The accuracy of Selene's guess surprises Denison. Selene reveals, in a conversation with Neville and later with Denison, that she is an Intuitionist. Genetic manipulation, some of which was aimed at producing more people with intuitional ability, was discredited on Earth after an (undescribed) time of troubles called the Great Crisis reduced Earth's population from six billion to two billion and left behind a permanent distrust of technology and a reluctance to risk change because of possible side effects. Although Selene is not the result of a genetic experiment, her ancestors might have been. Among other things, Selene's intuition led to the invention of the Pionizer. She functions as Neville's Intuitionist.
Selene speculates to Denison that the para-Universe might not care if the sun explodes, for then they might be able to get energy directly from Earth's Universe. Indeed, para-men might even prefer that the Galactic arm explode into a quasar and would like to keep Earth from stopping the Pump before that happens. In experiments on the surface of the Moon, Denison and Selene, who have grown more intimate, use the Pionizer to tap another Universe and succeed. Gottstein comes upon them while the experiment is going on. Later, Denison explains to Gottstein that they have tapped a Universe, which might be called an

 
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