o refuses to talk.

I became silent. Suddenly it had come to me clear and vivid that I was a
fool to be inside that sphere. Even now, I asked myself, is to too late to
withdraw? The world outside the sphere, I knew, would be cold and
inhospitable enough for me--for weeks I had been living on subsidies from
Cavor--but after all, would it be as cold as the infinite zero, as
inhospitable as empty space? If it had not been for the appearance of
cowardice, I believe that even then I should have made him let me out. But
I hesitated on that score, and hesitated, and grew fretful and angry, and
the time passed.

There came a little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in another
room, and a faint whistling sound. For just one instant I had a sense of
enormous tension, a transient conviction that my feet were pressing
downward with a force of countless tons. It lasted for an infinitesimal
time.

But it stirred me to action. "Cavor!" I said into the darkness, "my
nerve's in rags. I don't think--"

I stopped. He made no answer.

"Confound it!" I cried; "I'm a fool! What business have I here? I'm not
coming, Cavor. The thing's too risky. I'm getting out."

"You can't," he said.

"Can't! We'll soon see about that!"

He made no answer for ten seconds. "It's too late for us to quarrel now,
Bedford," he said. "That little jerk was the start. Already we are flying
as swiftly as a bullet up into the gulf of space."

"I--" I said, and then it didn't seem to matter what happened. For a time
I was, as it were, stunned; I had nothing to say. It was just as if I had
never heard of this idea of leaving the world before. Then I perceived an
unaccountable change in my bodily sensations. It was a feeling of
lightness, of unreality. Coupled with that was a queer sensation in the
head, an apoplectic effect almost, and a thumping of blood vessels at the
ears. Neither of these feelings diminished as time went on, but at last I
got so used to them that I experienced no inconvenience.

I heard a click, and a little glow lamp came into being.

I saw Cavor's face, as white as I felt my own to be. We regarded one
another in silence. The transparent blackness of the glass behind him made
him seem as though he floated in a void.

"Well, we're committed," I said at last.

"Yes," he said, "we're committed."

"Don't move," he exclaimed, at some suggestion of a gesture. "Let your
muscles keep quite lax--as if you were in bed. We are in a