ver what had happened to that too.

Eyer suddenly slipped and fell, as though he had been walking on a
carpet which had been jerked from under his feet. From his almost prone
position he looked up at Jeter. Jeter dropped to his knees beside him.
Their covered hands played over the surface of their discovery, to find
it smooth as glass. As though with one thought they placed their heads
against it, right ears down, to listen. But the whole vast field seemed
to be dead, lifeless. And yet--a solid it was, floating here in
space--or just hanging. It seemed to be utterly motionless.

"There should be a way of discovering what this is, and why, and how it
is controlled if an intelligence is behind it." Jeter spelled out the
words in the sign language they had both learned as boys.

Eyer nodded.

* * * * *

They walked more warily when they had, traveling slowly and hesitantly,
gone more than a hundred feet from their plane. They kept it in sight by
constantly turning to look back. It was now several feet above them. No
telling what might happen to them at any moment, and the plane was an
avenue of escape.

They didn't wish to take a chance on stepping off into the
stratosphere--and eternity.

"It's like an iceberg of space," said the fingers of Jeter. "But let's
go back and look it over to the other side of the plane. We have to keep
the plane in sight and work from it as a base. And say, what sort of
sensations have you had about this surface we're standing on?"

Jeter could see Eyer's shudder as he asked the question. Slowly the
fingers of his partner spelled out the answer.

"I've a feeling of eyes boring into my back. I sense that the substance
under us is malignant, inimical. I have the same feeling with every step
I take, as though the unseen surface were endowed with arms capable of
reaching out and grabbing me."

"I feel it, too," said Jeter's fingers. "But I'm not afraid of fingers
in the usual sense. I don't think of hands strangling us, or ripping us
to shreds, but of questing--well, call them tentacles, which may clasp
us with gentleness even, and absorb us, and annihilate us!"

Now the two faced each other squarely. Now they did not try to hide that
their fear was an abysmal feeling, horrible and devastating.

"Let's get back to the plane and take off. We haven't a chance."

They clasped hands again and started running back, their plane their
goal. Before they reached