"What can you see through that thing?" she asked.
"Take a look," he invited. "It's terrifying, but inspiring too—when you reflect that mortal eyes never looked upon it before."
She studied the awesome prospect for a minute, then drew away, shivering as if with cold.
"Give it to me straight," she demanded. "What's the payoff? Here we are in a thin-shelled bubble floating through a tumble of jagged rocks and icebergs. They're drawing closer all the time, aren't they?"
He temporized. "My biggest worry right now is that the dust fragments, settling down on us, will bury the periscope head. That will be the last of our observations."
"I said give it to me straight," she retorted.
"All right. Your guess is as good as mine. Frankly, it looks like the end. But it looked like the end when we shot off into space. Somehow we've existed up to now." He spoke impersonally, trying to keep the sympathy he felt out of his voice: "Come to think, Norma, I'm puzzled—"
He stopped, but she finished for him.
"You can't understand why a person who's been through what I have should get the willies now. I'm not afraid of something I can fight. I'm not afraid of dying. It's eerie things you can't fight that get me. Hearing that girl Pearl talk gives me the creeps. She calls this a 'little world.' What does she mean?"
Marlin started. He had used the term himself; probably that was how it came to fall from Pearl's lips.