The scene outside was wholly changed. Beneath us, to the sides and ahead, a grayness stretched, a continuous solid grayness. Elusive, formless, colorless; I could not guess how distant it might be save that it stretched beyond the limits of my vision. But ahead and above us, the scene was not gray. A vague, luminous quality tinged the blackness up there. Luminous, as though a vague light were reflected.
There was no visible movement anywhere. But presently, as one staring at a great motionless cloud will see its shape is changing, I began to see changes. The flat gray solidity was not flat, but hugely convex. And it was slowly turning. Huge convolutions of it were, slowly as a cloud bank, taking new forms. And all of it was slowly moving backward.
Then we came to the end of it. Black emptiness ahead. Behind us was a gray-massed, globular cloud. Then another, its twin fellow, came rolling up beneath us in front, spread to the sides, shrank again behind us.
“Molecules,” said Dr. Weatherby. “See how they’re dwindling!”
I saw presently, swarms of them, always smaller. And ahead of us they seemed congealed into a gray solidity—a substance, it was passing beneath us, and to the sides.
Again quite unexpectedly, my viewpoint changed. I saw our vehicle plunging upward, its pointed bow held upward at an angle. A solidity was around us; to the sides, gray, smooth curtains; overhead a glow of white in a dead black void.
A black void? My heart leaped. That was not blackness up there above our bow! It was blue! Color! The first sight of color. A blue vista of distance, with light up there. Light and air!
Beside us the smooth gray walls were smooth no longer. Huge jagged rocks and boulders, a precipice! We seemed in some immense canyon, slowly floating upward. But it was a dwindling canyon. And then abruptly we emerged from it.
I saw its walls close together beneath us. An area of gray was down there; gray with a white light on it. The light made sharp inky shadows on a tumbling naked waste of rock.