The ship surged, ever so gently. Keller had turned on an infinitesimal trace of drive. The walls of the bore floated past on the television screens. There was mist in the air outside. It seemed to clear as the ship moved.
Keller made a gratified small sound. They could see the end of the tunnel. There was a platform there. Stairs went to it from the side of the bore. There was a door with rounded corners in the end wall. That wall was metal.
Keller carefully turned the ship until the stairway was in proper position for a landing, if there had been gravitation to make the stairs usable. Very, very gently, he lowered the ship upon the platform.
There was a singular tugging sensation which ceased, came again, ceased, and gradually built up to a perfectly normal feeling of weight. They stood upon the floor of the control-room with every physical sensation they'd felt during one-gravity acceleration on the way out here, and which they'd have felt if the ship were aground on Earth.
"Artificial gravity! Whoever made this knew something!" Burke said.
Pam swallowed and spoke with an apparent attempt at nonchalance.
"Now what do we do?"
"We—look for the people," said Sandy in a queer tone.
"There's nobody here, Sandy!" Burke said irritably. "Can't you see? There can't be anybody here! They'd have signaled us what to do if there had been! This is machinery working. We do something and it operates. But then it waits for us to do something else. It's like—like a self-service elevator!"
"We didn't come here for an elevator ride," said Sandy.