Wyatt said shrewdly, "They might not be as well able to fight back as Earth, though. We don't quite have space flight yet, but we do have nuclear weapons. Enough to give even your force a real jar. And that's what you want, isn't it?"
Her face changed slightly. He thought she almost smiled, in a wry unhumorous way.
"You're far too clever," she said. "Don't let your cleverness betray you."
"I'll watch it," he said, not feeling clever at all, feeling sick and agonized as the last thin rim of Earth dropped away out of sight and all of a sudden he knew that he was in space.
For one wild moment he thought, This whole thing is a dream, it happened too fast and it's all too crazy to be real, and pretty soon I'll wake up. But he knew it was not a dream. He was here, awake and substantial, and he was a captive, going with bound hands into an unknown void.
And going fast.
CHAPTER III
It had been night, and suddenly it was day.
There was no twilight zone, no period of transition. The craft shot out of the Earth's shadow into the full blaze of the sun, and it was like somebody turning on all the lights in the world in the middle of a dark room.