He unsheathed the revolver, spun the cylinder to see that it was loaded, and with only a glimpse over his shoulder at the two spacemen silhouetted in the church doorway, he stepped through.
It was like stepping through fire—a fire that clawed and tore at the heart of him—but it lasted only a moment.
The hallway in which he found himself was of silver, tiny overlapping bits of silver plating that rippled and cast off flashes of light. He walked slowly ahead to the other doorway he saw before him.
Framed in the door, he looked above him, through a glass roof, up into a strange star-studded night sky.
Where is this world? Curt Wing wondered. Have I crossed a thousand, a million or a trillion light years to come here?
He looked down from the night sky and the vastness of the transparent roof reached as far his eyes could see.
It was only a whisper in his mind at first—then it grew stronger until it was as if his ears were hearing it.
"You're a man," the thought said. Curt Wing's dark eyes cast about for the source of it.
"You're a man," the emotionless thought repeated. "That is why we could not beat you. We are a dying race, trapped on a dying world. You are young and have your destiny still before you."