something then between.

His brain began identifying. The darkness; sky. The bright objects;
Diemos, Phobos.... And the something between--

It was a transparency of some sort; curved, or he would not have been
able to detect it at all. A vaulted ceiling through which he could
see....

His full consciousness came flooding back, then. He tried the muscles
in his neck, they hurt, but they worked, and he could move his head from
side to side. There was the same transparency, as though he were covered
by some huge, invisible bowl.

And there were men. Big, muscular creatures, yet thin, tall.... Not like
the others at all....

He sat bolt upright, and they did not move. It was not the same as
before. No small room. No voice that he could not see. They had not even
removed his suit or his helmet, and he was lying on a hard, cold
substance.

Then he saw what they were doing. There were two of them apart from the
others, working to bring a compact-looking machine into position near
him. A gleaming, short cylinder, swung on gymbals between slender forks,
mounted on a thin wheeled standard. They were aiming it at him.

"No! _No_--" He tried to get to his knees, but it was as though there
were no muscles in his body.

"Man of--Earth! We are friendly. Is that understood?"

The thought-words formed in his brain as the strange images had before,
and then he knew. _Should have guessed it_, part of his mind was telling
him in a fantastically detached way, _the dreams ... the compulsions
over which he had had no control in the ship.... This--thing. It
probably--_

"You are quite astute, Earthman. But it is not our technology which
created this device. To save you and the civilization which you
represent--and ultimately, our own--it was necessary for us to steal it.
It cost six lives."

"Steal...."

"From your former captors. It is their invention, as are so many things
with which they destroy. With this instrument, they have succeeded in
taking one of Nature's more subtle phenomenon--psychokinesis--and
amplifying its energies nearly a million-fold. Those stepped-up energies
can then be projected in a tight or fanned beam at will.

"They can make a man 'dream,' as you did--or they can destroy him
outright, depending on which of the 'psi' factors, ESP or PK, is given
dominance during projection. But we are not skilled in its
operation--they detected our use of it on you while you slept, and from
that moment on you were