n going. If he met anybody they were going to go
down. But he didn't. He found a steel stairway and a pocket at its base
to hold his body. It wasn't a dark pocket. Light was everywhere. But the
stairway hid him and the pair passed by and went on down the corridor.

He realized his right hand was aching and relaxed his grip on the gun
butt he clutched. He straightened up and the tense little mirthless grin
played on his lips.

Okay. Now where was she and how did it work? Could he find her and haul
her off silly tilt-a-whirl? He thought not. Either his eyes were bad or
this thing had appeared from nowhere. Something inside snapped: Quit
thinking that way! Whatever it looked like--_think right_. Follow the
rules. Look for the dame. His grin deepened.

Sure.

He started walking. Around the eerie corridor in the direction opposite
that taken by Orin and Alma Dakin. He walked a long time and there were
no doors or anything else so the only thing to do was keep walking. He
thought: When I come to that stairway I'll be back where I started but
where's that? What good is a hall you keep going around and around in?

The ship lurched and threw him to the floor. It was going somewhere.

But it didn't go anywhere. Of that he was sure. Maybe he'd been fooled
but it seemed the ship settled back after that single lurch and lay
there like a choice segment out of someone's pet nightmare. Kirk got to
his feet and rubbed the place his leg had violently met the floor.

He walked on and there was the steel stairway again and it was all very
damned silly because he knew he'd circled the ship at least three times.

But lucky because the footsteps sounded again and as he dived toward the
pocket, the wall of the ship opened to form a doorway. They forgot
something, he thought. What kind of supermen are these? They can build a
ship that has a stairway every third trip around and still they go away
and forget things.

The grin was tighter than ever. Whistle in the dark, boy, but admit
it--you're scared. Sure, but what's that got to do with it?

Orin and Alma left the ship. Martin Kirk pushed his head around the
staircase. He crouched for sometime, staring through the open segment of
the hull at the outside world. And his poor stupid orthodox mind asked a
pitifully logical question:

How could it get light, with the sun at high noon, in fifteen minutes?

After a long, motionless time, the silence became such a roaring thing
in Kirk's e