Garth leaped forward and just managed to pull his tail through the doorway as the door slid shut again.
Garth dropped his jaw in amazement. He stood in a long corridor that seemed to stretch to infinity in both directions. The light was bright, the walls featureless. The floor was smooth and unmarred. While Garth glanced unhappily behind himself to notice that there was no sign of the doorway through which he had entered, The Visitor’s wheelchair buzzed swiftly into the distance toward the left.
Garth was startled into action by a high-pitched voice beside him that said, “Well, get a move on! Do you think I want to wait for you all day?”
While Garth hustled toward the wheelchair, he noticed that The Visitor had stopped and was apparently chuckling to himself. He was hunched over, his shoulders were shaking, and his toothless mouth was split in what might have been intended for a grin.
“Fooled you that time, youngster,” he laughed as Garth drew up beside him. “Got speakers all over this ship. Now just duck through this door here and tell me what you think of what you see.”
A small door slid open and Garth followed the wheelchair through. At first he thought he had stepped through a teleportation system. He appeared to be out of doors, but not on Wrom. A cool breeze blew on his face from the ocean, which stretched mistily to a far horizon. He was standing on a sandy beach and waves rolled up to within a few yards of his feet. The beach appeared to be about five hundred yards long, carved out of a rocky seacoast; great rocks jutting into the ocean terminated it to left and right.
“Well, boy?” asked The Visitor.
“It’s amazing. Your voice even has that flat tone voices get in the open. I suppose it’s some sort of three-dimensional projection of a scene back on Earth? It sure looks real. I wonder how big this room really is and how far away the screen is.” Garth stuck out his hand and walked down toward the water. A large wave caught him, tripped him and rolled him out to sea.
Sculling with his tail, he soon swam back to shallow water and climbed back to the dry sand, puffing and coughing.