small room brilliant with amber light, on one wall of which
there was a circular area which contained a dozen or more instruments
and levers and wheels. As his eyes rested on them, one of the levers
moved, seemingly of itself, and the ramp came sliding into the ship
and the thick door slowly swung closed. Then they were conducted along
a short, narrow passageway into which opened, on the right, a small
dim room; and there the grip about their bodies loosened and they
slumped to the floor. The door whereby they had entered, closed.

A faint vibration became noticeable; they suddenly felt very heavy;
and to the accompaniment of a low but rising hum they saw one wall of
their room begin to glow with a beautiful cherry color. Although they
had been too stupefied to try to speak, this spurred their tired
bodies, and they dragged themselves over to it. They found the wall to
be of some kind of hard crystal; it was the outer shell of the sphere;
and it now gleamed redly transparent.

* * * * *

Far out and down the men saw a great convex surface on which lay
narrow ribbons of silver, winding veinlike through dark areas that
were in some places lit by little clusters of twinkling lights. As
they watched, the distances on the surface shrank in on themselves;
they could see the outline of a great circle. The sight stimulated the
exhausted men. In a hushed and awestruck voice, Jim Wilson broke the
silence.

"We've been kidnaped," he said. "Being taken God knows where, out
among the stars...."

He was getting the sky-ride he had asked for.

Clee smiled faintly, and was going to remind him of this; but he was
too tired to make the effort. He only looked at the tremendous scene
below: at the Earth they knew so well, with its familiar streets,
comfortable fireplaces, the faces of those they loved and those others
who were their friends....

The Earth soon became a ball--a globe such as he had used at school,
showing clearly the outline of the continents and oceans. And little
by little it dwindled, until it was only a ghostly shape far out in
nothingness....

A little later, had the two Earthlings not been deep in sleep, they
might have seen enter a strange-looking man clad in odd garments--a
man whose great, bulging head was quite bald, and whose wrinkled,
leprous-white face wore an expression of unutterable wisdom and
majesty. In his hands he carried a strange piece of apparatus which he
he