"You ... you startled me," Vee Vee whispered. She released the grip on his arm.
"But, didn't you see it?"
"See what?"
"The space ship!"
"No. No." She seemed startled and a little terrified and half asleep. "I ... I was watching something else. When you moved I broke contact with my dream."
"Your dream?"
He asked a question but she did not answer it. "Sit down, darling, and look at your damned space ship." Her voice was a taut whisper of sound in the darkened room. Johnson settled down. A glance to his left told him that Caldwell was still sitting like a chunk of stone.... The Venusians were quiet. The music had shifted. A slow languorous beat of hidden drums filled the room. There was another sound present, a high-speed whirring. It was, somehow, a familiar sound, but Johnson had not heard it before in this place.
He thought about the space ship he had seen.
The vision would not come.
He shook his head and tried again.