Aboard the "Zeus", Johnson and the other crew make the decision to push Orbital Object #7 out of orbit and towards Space Tunnel 438, in the hopes of breakthroughs during the five-day journey. She informs Bazargan of the action, including that, if necessary, they will destroy the artifact, possibly creating a destabilizing wave that could affect World. Bazargan goes to inform Voratur of this, only to have Voratur discover that Bazargan did not know that his mission was a cover story. This is binding proof: Terrans do not share reality. Their lives thus endangered, the Terrans, along with Enli, flee to the Neury Mountains, where no one will (or can) follow them. They are protected by environmental suits from the radiation, but they are still subject to a bizarre phenomenon: a slowing-down of the brain, a neurological phenomenon that only Enli remains unaffected by. Deep in the mountains, Gruber discovers a second alien artifact, similar to the one found in space but much smaller (perhaps 25 meters in diameter). It appears to have crash-landed on the planet millions of years ago (precipitating a mass extinction) and is putting out prodigious amounts of radiation. However, the radiation field is in the shape of a torus (a doughnut), and when the team moves into the "hole" of the field, Enli is not afflicted with the head-pains normally associated with unshared reality. Gruber theorizes that the field they passed through alters probability; this allows it to have an effect on human brain tissue because the release of neurotransmitters is a quantum-level event and thus susceptible to probability (indeed, nerve cells do not always release neurotransmitters, even when stimulated with exactly the same amount of voltage).