“They’ve got us,” I said at last.
“It was that fungus.”
“Well—if I hadn’t taken it we should have fainted and starved.”
“We might have found the sphere.”
I lost my temper at his persistence, and swore to myself. For a time we hated one another in silence. I drummed with my fingers on the floor between my knees, and gritted the links of my fetters together. Presently I was forced to talk again.
“What do you make of it, anyhow?” I asked humbly.
“They are reasonable creatures—they can make things and do things—Those lights we saw....”
He stopped. It was clear he could make nothing of it.
When he spoke again it was to confess, “After all, they are more human than we had a right to expect. I suppose——”