Out upon the margin at last, they found that they could make good time, and they set out downstream at a fast but effortless pace. Mile after mile they traveled, until, suddenly, as though some universal switch had been opened, the ghostly radiance of all the vegetation of the countryside disappeared in an instant, and utter and unimaginable darkness descended as a pall. It was not the ordinary darkness of an Earthly night, nor yet the darkness of even an Earthly dark room; it was indescribably, completely, perfect darkness of the total absence of every ray of light, unknown upon Earth and unknowable to Earthly eyes.
"Dick!" shrieked Margaret. "Where are you?"
"Right here, Peg—take it easy," he advised, and groping fingers touched and clung. "They'll probably light up again. Maybe this is their way of having night. We can't do much, anyway, until it gets light again. We couldn't possibly find the Skylark in this darkness; and even if we could feel our way downriver we'd miss the island that marks our turning-off point. Here, I feel a nice soft rock. I'll sit down with my back against it and you can lie down, with my lap for a pillow, and we'll take us a nap. Wasn't it Porthos, or some other one of Dumas' characters that said, 'He who sleeps, eats'?"
"Dick, you're a perfect peach to take things the way you do." Margaret's voice was broken. "I know what you're thinking of, too. Oh, I do hope that nothing has become of them!" For she well knew that, true and loyal friend though Seaton was, yet his every thought was for his beloved Dorothy, presumably still in Skylark Two—just as Martin Crane came first with her in everything.
"Sure they're all right, Peg." An instantly suppressed tremor shook his giant frame. "They're figuring on keeping them in the Lark until they raise her, I imagine. If I had known as much then as I know now they'd never have got away with any of this stuff—but it can't be helped now. I wish I could do something, because if we don't get back to Two pretty quick it seems as though we may snap back into our own three dimensions and land in empty space. Or would we, necessarily? The time coördinates would change, too, of course, and that change might very well make it obligatory for us to be back in our exact original locations in the Lark at the instant of transfer, no matter where we happen to be in this hyperspace-hypertime continuum. Too deep for me—I can't figure it. Wish Mart was here, maybe he could see through it."
"You don't wish so half as much as I do!" Margaret exclaimed feelingly.
"Well, anyway, we'll pretend that Two can't run off and leave us here. That certainly is a possibility, and it's a cheerful thought to dwell on while we can't do anything else."
They fell silent. Now and again Margaret dozed, only to start awake at the coughing grunt of some near-by prowling hyperdenizen of that unknown jungle, but Seaton did not sleep. He did not even half believe in his own hypothesis of their automatic return to their space ship; and his vivid imagination insisted upon dwelling lingeringly upon every hideous possibility of their return to three-dimensional space outside their vessel's sheltering walls. And that same imagination continually conjured up visions of what might be happening to Dorothy—to the beloved bride who, since their marriage upon far distant Osnome, had never before been separated from him for so long a time. He had to struggle against an insane urge to do something, anything; even to dash madly about in the absolute blackness of hyperspace in a mad attempt—doomed to certain failure before it was begun—to reach Skylark Two before she should vanish from four-dimensional space.
Thus, while Seaton grew more and more tense momently, more and ever more desperately frustrate, the abysmally oppressive hypernight wore illimitably on. Creeping—plodding—d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g endlessly along; extending itself fantastically into the infinite reaches of all eternity.