"He told us it wasn't any place we know," the Ace Commander backed up.
"Easy," Dr. Walstab said again. A thought came to him. "Jaguers, I suggest you try the Odour Switch. Might be a clue there. A bare chance."
"But . . . would it work . . . I mean, if Chris isn't anywhere in our own galaxy . . ." the Spectrology Expert stammered.
"I said, try it. Doesn't it occur to you that nothing of all this is possible at all, unless worked from both ends. Not even the LG. . . . the Ideagraphometer, we're using. Sommers must have got hold of something similar . . ." Dr. Walstab' s voice was quietly triumphant. "I don't want to boast, Grant . . ."
"Boast all you like," the Professor smiled weakly. "I'm not sure, speaking for myself, that I can even boast of my own sanity. Do you suppose . . ." He broke off, to say, "Good God! that . . . smell frightens me. Jaguers . . .!"
Although the throw of the Odour Switch had been instantly cut again, the dull, musty odor that had crept into the room sickened them. There was about it something tomb-like and cankerous. Ace Peters said, in a strangled voice: "It's a dead world . . . dead. This is insane. I'm with you there. Professor."
The Cosmar Screen knew a sudden agitation and Dr. Walstab cried urgently: "Blank your minds . . . throttle back your own thinking . . . Sommers is coming back to consciousness."
He was lying on a couch in a room walled about with glass, or what seemed to be glass. It was transparent, anyhow, and through it he could make out a number of rounded domes, like beehives, and beyond them an immense aerodrome sprouting tall masts and parallel lines of narrow buildings, topped with gleaming antennae. He saw the yawning mouth of an enormous hangar, from which was slowly emerging a ship of greater proportions than he had ever seen, and of a design so fantastic that he could hardly believe his eyes. She was like an immense wheel on a horizontal plane, with eight or more spokes resembling elongated hutments, that ran in from the circumference of the wheels to join a great domed hub. She glowed with unnatural colors and brilliance, and now he made out several figures climbing over her, and on the ground about her. They were human figures, but with a difference. What the difference was, he could not determine, until a sound at his back made him turn.
Two men were in the room with him. Recognizably men, but men deformed and physically distorted to nightmarish proportions. Their thin, hairless faces were paper-white and ageless, and their bodies were sunk into long tunics of an indeterminate green. Ape-like arms hung almost to the floor . . .
