“Long? That is difficult to say. Have you not noticed that time in my world has little to do with yours?”
“How long will it seem?” I persisted.
He shrugged. “That is according to your mood. We shall eat once or twice, and get a little sleep.”
One of the window openings was beside us with a loosely woven mesh of wires across it. Outside I could see the shifting lights. Men were embarking in the other vehicles; and the blended noise from them floated in to us.
Questions flooded me. This strange journey, what would it be like? I could envisage the invisible little Bermuda in the void of darkness over us now; or here in this same space around us. No, we had climbed from where we landed in the space close under the Paget hilltop. And we had walked forward for perhaps an hour. The space of Bermuda would be behind us and lower down. This then was the open ocean. I gazed at the solid rocky surface outside our window. Nearly seven hundred miles away must be New York City. We were going there. How? Would it be called flying? Or following this rocky surface?
As though to answer my thoughts Tako gestured to the window. “See. The first carrier starts away.”
The carrier lay like a stiff white reptile on the ground. Its doors were closed, and watching men stood back from it.
Don gasped, “Why—it’s fading! A transition!”
IT glowed along all its length and grew tenuous of aspect, until in a moment that solid thing which had been solidly resting there on a rock was a wraith of vehicle. A great oblong apparition—the ghost of a reptile with round green spots on its sides. A fading wraith. But it did not quite disappear. Hovering just within visibility, it slowly, silently slid forward. It seemed, without changing its level, to pass partly through an upstanding crag which stood in its path. Distance dimmed it, dwindled it; and in a moment it was gone into the night.
“We will start,” said Tako abruptly. “Sit where you are. There will be a little shock, much like the transition coming in from your world.” He called, “Tolla, we start.”