"This is a ladder?" I asked incredulously, but he had shut the door in my face.
I slipped the cellophane off and unrolled it. It seemed to unroll endlessly. When it was ten feet long and four feet wide, I stopped unrolling. Sure enough, it hardened into a ladder in about ten minutes. It was so strong I couldn't begin to bend it over my knee.
I set it against the side of the ship and began to investigate the view ports. The first two were sealed tight as a drum.
The third slipped off in my hands and clattered over the side of the ship onto the rocks.
I was almost afraid to look through the "glass" beneath. I needn't have been. I could see absolutely nothing. It was space-black inside.
I went back to Rene's ship for a flashlight. He was unimpressed by my discovery.
"Even if you could break the glass, which you can't," he said, "you still couldn't get through that little porthole. Here's the flash. You won't be able to see anything."
He came with me this time. Not because he was interested, but because he wanted another cigarette and never smoked in the ship.
He was right. I couldn't see a darned thing in the ship with the flashlight. But I found something—a little lead object that looked like a coin. It had rolled into a corner of the port.
Now I don't like adventure. I don't like strange planets. All I've ever asked of life was my little four-by-six cubby in the Brooklyn Bloc and my job. A job I know inside out. It's a comfortable, happy, harmless way to live and I test 10:9 on job adjustment.