"For how long?" Lee demanded.
"It should not seem many days. Soon we shall go fast. Please watch it at the window—he would want that. You have been taught some science?"
"Yes. I guess so."
To Lee it was a weird, unnatural exchange between captor and captive. The voice, intoning the English words so slowly, so carefully, seemed gentle, concerned with his welfare ... and afraid of him.
Abruptly the doorslide closed again, and then at once it reopened.
"He would want you to understand what you see," the man said. "You will find it very wonderful—we did, coming down here. This was his room—so long ago when he used it. His dials are there—you can watch them and try to understand. Dials to mark our distance and our size. The size-change will start soon."
Size-change? Lee's numbed mind turned over the words and found them almost meaningless.
"From the window there—what you can see will be very wonderful," the man said again. "He would want you to study it. Please do that."
The doorslide closed....
What you can see from the window will be very wonderful. No one, during the days that followed could adequately describe what Lee Anthony and Thomas Franklin and Vivian saw through that lens-window. A vast panorama in monochrome ... a soundless drama of the stars, so immense, so awesome that the human mind could grasp only an infinitesimal fragment of its wonders....