they
were able to hear one another's thoughts as words....

They'd never understand fully, Ramsey knew suddenly. Perhaps they could
grasp a little of the nature of this place, a shadow here, the
half-suggestion of the substance of reality there, a stillborn thought
here, a note of celestial music there, the timeless legacy of proto-man,
whatever proto-man was....

"The fog is lifting!" Vardin cried.

The fog was not lifting.

Then it was.

Ramsey would never forget that. Vardin had spoken while the dense gray
murk enveloped them completely.

Then it began to grow tenuous.

As if Vardin's words had made it so. Little Vardin, shy, frightened
Vardin, suddenly, inexplicably, the strongest, surest one among them....

The sky, white and dazzling, glistened. The gray murk glistened too, a
hundred yards off in all directions, like a wall of polished glass
surrounding them.

In the very middle of the bell-jar of visibility granted them all at
once, stood a black rectangular object.

"The teleporter!" Margot cried. "The matter-transmitter! I know it is. I
_know_ it is!"

Ramsey stood waiting breathlessly.

No, he realized abruptly, not breathlessly. You couldn't say
breathlessly.

For Ramsey had not breathed, not once, since they left the _Enterprise_.

You didn't breathe on a timeless world. You merely--somehow--existed.

"It's opening!" Margot cried.

The black rectangle, ominously coffin-shaped, was indeed opening.

"The matter transmitter," Margot said a second time. "The secret of
proto-man, of our ancestors who colonized all the worlds of space with
it, instantly, at the same cosmic moment. Think of what it means,
Ramsey, can you? Instantaneous travel, anywhere, without the need for
energy since energy cannot be used here, without the passage of time
since time does not exist here." She stood transfixed, looking at the
black box. The lid had lifted at right angles to the rest of the box.

* * * * *

Margot said, in the whisper of an awed thought: "Who controls it
controls the galaxy...."

And she walked toward the box.

At that moment Ramsey had a vision. He saw--or thought he saw--Margot
Dennison in the costume she had worn when they first met. She stood,
eyes wide, fearful, expectant, before a chess-board. The pieces seemed
to be spaceships. It was a perfectly clear vision, but it was the only
such vision Ramsey had ever been vouchsafed in his life. He was no
my