"Let us look around. We must arrive at the truth."
Stumbling along with heavy tread, the skags made their way from compartment to compartment until they found a ladder, by which they mounted. Only the faint throb of the auxiliary engines, now supplying the warpers, was to be heard. On the deck, K'Gol found two erect bodies in sculptured attitudes, the unconscious shapes of Second Officer Charles Guhn and a boatswain. All three skags halted, racked by uncontrollable revulsion at sight of the alien species.
K'Gol's limbs glowed with yellow light and he reached forth to death-shock the monsters. But the skag behind him warned: "They may be harmless. Perhaps, we should wait until they awaken."
They explored the ship from bow to stern, stopping only to wonder at the warper coils which they would have designed differently. "It is clear. We are prisoners in a vessel-between-the-stars."
Presently, they found a control that opened the starboard view ports. Their eyes were greeted by the wrenching chaos of hyperspace. "It is a new dimension. Our captors are highly advanced and their minds are impervious to our probing. We must take over, before they recover." The skags hurried through the freighter, gathering up all possible weapons and locking them in the hold. Then, K'Gol mounted the bridge and familiarized himself with the instruments and controls.
Mark Caldwell's mind snapped back into full consciousness. For a moment, he thought that waitress at Arcturus had followed him; then, the vision suddenly changed into something horrible and he found himself facing a living skag who stood watching him with curious eyes. Caldwell's skin crawled and he started to cry out. A muscle jerk caused his arms to fail and a yellow glow simultaneously exuded from the skag, bathing the astrogator in needle-like flame that paralyzed.
Skag and human studied each other, unable to communicate directly and each filled with horror and disgust at the other's sight. Then, having made his captive helpless, K'Gol examined the star charts on the desk, only to discover a million years had exploded the constellations like dust clouds, and the suns were unfamiliar. Again, man and skag faced each other. Without communication, the skags could not learn the ship's destination and so, although they were in power, they were as helpless as their captives.
Charlie Guhn had been thinking of Earth's green fields, a moment before the Star Rover entered minus point. Now, his mind was snapped back to terrifying reality with the knowledge that the starboard ports were unshuttered. No human found it easy to gaze at hyperspace and the officer rushed to close the ports, wondering who was responsible. He made his way to the hold and there discovered the collapsed envelopes of the skags.