The inner door of the airlock swung open.
Weaver marched into it, took one look through the viewport set in the outer door, and scrambled back out. He closed the airlock again, and thought a minute.
In the center of each horseshoe curve of the control board was a gray translucent disk, with six buttons under it. They might, Weaver thought, be television screens. He pressed the first button under one of them, and the screen lighted up. He pressed the second button, then all the others in turn.
They all showed him the same thing—the view he had seen from the viewport in the airlock: stars, and nothing but stars.
The Moon, incredibly, had disappeared. He was in space.
His first thought, when he was able to think connectedly again, was to find the Aurigean and make him put things right. He tried all the remaining knobs and levers and buttons on the control board, reckless of consequences, until the door slid open again. Then he went down the corridor and found the Aurigean.
The creature was lying on the floor, with a turnip-shaped thing over its head, tubes trailing from it to an opened cabinet in the wall. It was dead—dead and decaying.
He searched the ship. He found storerooms, with cylinders and bales of stuff that looked as if it might possibly be food; he found the engine room, with great piles of outlandishly sculptured metal and winking lights and swinging meter needles. But he was the only living thing on board.
The view from all six directions—in the control room telescreens, and in the ship's direct-view ports alike—was exactly the same. The stars, like dandruff on Weaver's blue serge suit. No one of them, apparently, any nearer than the others. No way to tell which, if any of them, was his own.