At the lens-window Lee stood gasping, his mind still confused and blurred, trying to encompass what was out there. This was a spaceship! A small globular thing of white metal. He could see a rim of it, like a flat ring some ten feet beneath him. A spaceship, and obviously it had left the Earth! There was a black firmament—dead-black monstrous abyss with white blazing points of stars. And then, down below and to one side there was just an edge of a great globe visible. The Earth, with the sunlight edging its sweeping crescent limb—the Earth, down there with a familiar coastline and a huge spread of ocean like a giant map in monochrome.
Back on the couch Lee sat numbed. There was the sound of scraping metal; a doorslide in the wall opened. A face was there—a man with a blur of opalescent light behind him.
"You are all right now?" a voice said.
"Yes. I guess so. Let me out of here—"
Let him out of here? To do what? To make them head this thing back to Earth.... To Lee Anthony as he sat confused, the very thoughts were a fantasy.... Off the Earth! Out in Space! So often he had read of it, as a future scientific possibility—but with this actuality now his mind seemed hardly to grasp it....
The man's voice said gently, "We cannot trust you. There must be no fighting—"
"I won't fight. What good could it do me?"
"You did fight. That was bad—that was frightening. We must not harm you—"
"Where are we going?" Lee murmured. "Why in the devil are you—"
"We think now it is best to say nothing. We will give you food through here. And over there—behind you—a little doorslide to another room. You and these other two can be comfortable—"