"We will not go there," Ala murmured. She seemed to shudder. "That is the Realm of Disease. I hope never to go there."
Endless Time passing. Or perhaps, as Will was thinking, Time was in abeyance, standing still, non-existent.
And Will saw other far-off gleaming patches, like faint drifting star-dust. Soon they were gone. He did not ask what they might be.
Ala still felt Bee's thoughts. Then they ceased. Will became aware of a confusion; a fluttering; as though now the flight had lost direction. He gazed around intently, searchingly, but the space at that moment was wholly empty.
"Where are we?" he asked.
Thone and Ala were exchanging thoughts. Thone said:
"Where are we? There is no answer, Will. There is nothing here. We are nowhere."
A confusion. It seemed that Ala and Thone felt that Brutar's self-created world might be found by approaching the Realm of Disease. Will waited, listening silently while they talked of it....
Abruptly Will saw something. A blur—a vague luminosity beneath them. It was moving. Suddenly he knew it was not large and far-away, but small and very close. It mounted; broke visually apart, resolved itself into two dark blobs. Shapes. The moving shapes of a man and a woman.
They came nearer. The woman was Bee! It was Bee and the youthful Eo. He was clinging to her; she seemed helping him struggle upward.