"It—That's silly. One thing can't be anywhere!" I said. "It'd just be floating in a void." Trying to picture such a void made my brain whirl. I gave it up.
"I'm glad you understand," said the Martian. "Very well, then. We, your Ancients, are existing in a perfect here-ness, of which you can have no concept at all. We are living in not a location, but in location itself."
"It's no use," I said. "I can't even picture it."
"You're not supposed to," said the Martian, with a mechanical smile of contempt. "Even your mind, Jery Delvin, cannot fathom the magnitude of our being."
"Hold on a minute!" I said, changing the subject. "Clatclit told me that you expected to compel my cooperation by keeping the Space Scouts your prisoners unless I obeyed you."
"That is correct, Jery Delvin. And so, our desire is that you—"
"Damn it!" I exploded. "Stop taking so much for granted! Before I even scratch where it itches to please you guys, I want to see those kids! And in damned good shape, too!"
Snow held onto my arm and trembled. This was it. Now we'd know for sure if the boys were all right.
The Martian looked exasperated, but then he reached an arm out from himself—I couldn't tell exactly, without getting a blinding headache, just which way his arm went, left, right, up or down. But he reached away from himself in some direction or other, and the next moment, the shimmering blur of metallic flooring between him and us gave way to a red-bronze platform of parabolite which rose like a sluggish elevator on close-intervalled narrow rods of the same mineral. Then, as the apparatus halted, I realized that these rods were more than just supports for that slab of rock. They were bars.
And huddled together in this escape-free cage, I saw the fifteen missing Space Scouts.