I'd better check with Base, Pete thought, and tell them I've gone off
my rocker, that I'm suffering hallucinations.
But he did nothing except cling shaking to the panel, watching the
distorted stars in the screen. They were blurring now, streaks of light
that seemed to be very close to the ship.
* * * * *
And then came the moon. It came and went very quickly, pocked and
scarred and with only one face. And _small_. Very small and very close.
Pete felt closed in, suffocated. The radar alarm was screaming at him
that something was near, too near.
He clamped down savagely on himself. There was an explanation
somewhere. He had to find it! He had to think!
Item. The stars. Distorted. Blurred.
Item. Saturn. A hundred yards across.
Item. A tiny replica of the moon, like a pimple on the inside of an egg.
Replica? No. _The_ moon. The only moon. Reality.
Hypothesis. Say that space is not as men imagined it. Say that it is an
illusion, without lightyears, without great suns, without huge planets.
Say for the sake of argument that it is a shell with holes in it, and
light outside, and the Sun itself an illusion of heat and power, and--
Say that this hollow shell is man's new frontier; a fraud, a toy for
things outside--
The alarm screamed at him. The ship was plunging toward the blurry
light of the stars.
With an icy hand on his heart, Pete Moore turned to look at the
telescreen behind him. A misty blue ball swam in musty darkness. The
oceans gleamed in the light of the sun, cloud masses whitened it, the
wrinkled face of the land looked unreal--
He began to laugh. Tears streaked his cheeks as he pounded his bloody
fists against the instrument panel in time to the clanging of the alarm.