It was evident that we could not escape them in the darkness, so we remained grouped at the corridor's end. We heard the flute-like voices of the things calling to one another through the cruiser, and in a moment or so more came the throbbing of its generators again and the hiss of air outside as it began to move. In awe we listened.
"What can they be?" whispered Korus Kan. "Creatures of darkness-creatures of the cosmic cloud who move in its darkness as though in light!"
"There must be a world here," I answered, "through whose atmosphere we're moving now. They've come up from it to capture our ship and must be taking us down to its surface now."
"But a world in this perpetual darkness? How are they able to live-to move?"
"Who can say? Whatever they are, it is clear that they have pulled the thousands of the galaxy's ships into the cloud as they did ours, for their own reasons. I wonder what fate the other ships met."
* * *
Minutes passed while the cruiser throbbed through the darkness; then its speed decreased quickly and with a slight jar landed upon a solid surface. At once the doors that had been closed were clanging open again and the flute-voiced creatures of darkness, using their pain-producing weapons to control us, were herding us out of the corridor and through the space-door to emerge upon a solid, smooth-paved surface. All about us was still darkness absolute but we felt ourselves in open air, on the surface of a world of unending darkness here at the cosmic cloud's heart.
Our captors began to march us forward. We moved blindly, controlled by their touches or pushes. We heard a great babel of flute-voices, of innumerable creatures coming and going around us. Reaching my hand forth occasionally I ascertained that we were marching along a series of smooth-walled and wide-doored buildings. From their doors came sometimes the clash and clang of machinery operating inside, while in and out of others were swarming hordes of flute-voiced creatures, their flopping steps sounding all around us.
It was evident that we were being taken through a city-a city of darkness absolute in which these creatures of darkness came and went as we of light would do in our own sunlit cities.
I began to understand, though, as we marched along, how these creatures could move so surely in darkness, and whispered to Korus Kan and Jhul Din that it was by their sense of hearing that they must do so, since it seemed to be entirely by the sound of our footsteps that they controlled and guided us. Yet was it possible that any race of beings could live and flourish thus and raise their cities in the cosmic cloud's darkness with only hearing to aid them?