Professor Sykes’ eyes showed his appreciation of a spirit that could still dare to hope, but he asked dejectedly: “Escape? Good idea. But where to?”
“I have an idea,” the flyer said slowly. “An idea about an island.” He told the professor what he had observed—the fact that there was one spot of land on this globe from which the traffic of these monsters of Venus steered clear. This, he explained, must have some significance.
“Whatever is there, God only knows,” he admitted, “but it is something these devils don’t like a little bit. It might be interesting to learn more. We’ll make a break for it; find a boat. No, we probably can’t do it, but we can make a try. Now what is our first step, I wonder.”
“Our first step,” said Professor Sykes, measuring his words as if he might be working out some astronomical calculation, “is into the inverted shower-bath, if you feel as hot as I do. And our next step, when all is quiet for the night, is through the window I see beyond. I can see the branches of one of those undernourished trees from here.”
“Last one in is a lop-eared Venusian!” said McGuire, throwing off his jacket. And in that strange room in a strange world, under the shadow of death and of tortures unknown, the two men stripped with all the care-free abandon of a couple of schoolboys racing to be first in the old swimming hole.
It was some time later when the door opened and a long red hand pushed a tray of food into the room. The tray was of unbreakable crystal—he rattled it heedlessly upon the floor—and it held crystal dishes of unknown foods.
They were sampling them all when Sykes remarked plaintively, “I would like to know what under heaven I am eating.”
“I’ve wished to know that in lots of restaurants,” McGuire replied. “I remember a place down on—” He stopped abruptly, then chewed in silence upon a fruit like a striped pepper that stung his mouth and tongue while he scarcely felt it. References to Earth things plainly were to be avoided: the visions they brought before one’s eyes were unnerving.