The worst that can happen, he thought, is the same thing.
He was wrong about that....
Approaching the alien ship, he braced himself. There was the light. Then the ship, with its metallic shimmer of reflected light dimmed by distance.
Again he circled, studying the contours of the immense fabrication. He remembered an old French proverb about the more a thing changes the more it remains the same. The ship was the same. It was the Venture IV. He would stake his life and his sanity on it.
No matter. In a way he was relieved. Once inside the ship, he would let the experts explain it to him. At least he had tried. Nobody could say this time that he funked the job. They would have had the scanners on him all the way. And this time he knew—somehow—that he had not turned around from any confusion. Also, with the lights on, he had watched the automatic pilot. There had been no trick turns. He had it on the flight-record tapes.
If the lifeboat had returned to its point of departure, the only possible explanation was that a space-warp or a flaw in the space-time continuum had turned it inside out.
"End of the line," Braun murmured contentedly. "End of the line again."
Skilfully he maneuvered the lifeboat up to the bulk of the Venture IV. He grappled it to the airlock valve and slipped it inside on the skids.
The outer doors closed. This time he was so sure of where he was that he did not bother with the spacesuit. He waited till the inner doors opened to matched pressures, then scuttled out of the lifeboat. The air was breathable, the usual hydroponic cycle stuff, just what he was used to. It smelled oddly of pumps as it always does, pump-packing and growing things. Air in the lifeboat had been too rich in ozone, and Braun was giddy with the sharp tang of it.