For a time neither of us spoke. To focus together all the things we had
brought upon ourselves, seemed beyond my mental powers.
“They’ve got us,” I said at last.
“It was that fungus.”
“Well--if I hadn’t taken it we should have fainted and starved.”
“We might have found the sphere.”
I lost my temper at his persistence, and swore to myself. For a time
we hated one another in silence. I drummed with my fingers on the
floor between my knees, and gritted the links of my fetters together.
Presently I was forced to talk again.
“What do you make of it, anyhow?” I asked humbly.
“They are reasonable creatures--they can make things and do
things--Those lights we saw....”
He stopped. It was clear he could make nothing of it.
When he spoke again it was to confess, “After all, they are more human
than we had a right to expect. I suppose----”
He stopped irritatingly.
“Yes?”
“I suppose, anyhow--on any planet where there is an intelligent
animal--it will carry its brain case upward, and have hands, and walk
erect....”
Presently he broke away in another direction.
“We are some way in,” he said. “I mean--perhaps a couple of thousand
feet or more.”
“Why?”
“It’s cooler. And our voices are so much louder. That faded quality--it
has altogether gone. And the feeling in one’s ears and throat.”