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From: Peter.Monta@cmu-cs-g.arpa
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Do you recognize this story?
Message-ID: <12440@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Sep-84 22:20:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12440
Posted: Thu Sep 27 22:20:04 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Sep-84 04:45:20 EDT
Lines: 16

I'm sure this mailing list gets a lot of this, but I'd really appreciate
a pointer to a short story with the following rough plot:

A young alien boy lives on Earth, and he is unaware of his origins.
Apparently he has a sense of ``winding number'', in that if he were to walk
around the block, he would feel a desire to turn once in the opposite
direction, to regain his equilibrium.  Naturally, he attempts to suppress
this strange behavior, and as he gets older he is able to tolerate larger
winding numbers---at the end of the day he stands on his bed turning and
doing backflips.  The purpose of the sense is to orient him with respect to
his home, which is a distant star.

This summary may be considerably distorted, since it is second- or third-hand.

Thanks much,
Peter.Monta@cmu-cs-g.arpa