e to the bulkhead
where there had been the outline of the closed port, and beside it the
hole which had held the axle of the manual wheel, and which now was a
smooth, seamless curtain of impenetrable black. But Hoskins looked at
the Captain first of all, and he said "_Now_ it's our move," and only
then did he turn with them to look at the darkness.

III

_The unfamiliar, you say, is the unseen, the completely new and
strange? Not so. The epitome of the unfamiliar is the familiar
inverted, the familiar turned on its head. View a familiar place
under new conditions--a deserted and darkened theater, an empty
night club by day--and you will find yourself more influenced by
the emotion of strangeness than by any number of unseen places.
Go back to your old neighborhood and find everything changed.
Come into your own home when everyone is gone, when the lights
are out and the furniture rearranged--there I will show you the
strange and frightening ghosts that are the shapes left over
when reality superimposes itself upon the images of memory. The
goblins lurk in the shadows of your own room...._
Owen Miller
Essays on Night and the Unfamiliar

For one heart-stopping moment the darkness had seemed to swoop in upon
them like the clutching hand of death. Instinctively they had huddled
together in the center of the room. But when the second look, and the
third, gave them reassurance that the effect was really there, though
the cause was still a mystery, then half the mystery was gone, and they
began to drift apart. Each felt on trial, and held tight to himself and
the picture of himself he empathized in the others' eyes.

The Captain said quietly, "It's just ... there. It doesn't seem to be
spreading."

Hoskins gazed at it critically. "About half a meter deep," he murmured.
"What do you suppose it's made of?"

"Not a gas," said Paresi. "It has a--a sort of surface."

Ives, who had frozen to the spot when first he saw the blackness on his
way to the port, took another two steps. The hand which had been half
lifted to touch the control continued upward relievedly, as if glad to
have a continuous function even though its purpose had changed.

"Don't touch it!" rapped the Captain.

Ives turned his head to look at the Captain, then faltered and let the
hand drop. "Why not?"

"Certainly not a liquid," Paresi mused, as if there had bee