Jon Saxon couldn't have been unconscious but a fraction of a second
because he didn't have time to fall. He came to himself swaying
dizzily, nauseated as if with space sickness.
He opened his eyes. He was blind!
The shock left him numb. Then gradually, like a flower unfolding its
petals to the light, he felt his extra-human sixth sense assume control.
He became aware of the grass and the sun and the distant hills.
Everything registered in varying degrees of grayness. It wasn't
grayness exactly, but the word came as near to describing the peculiar
impressions that external objects were registering on his sixth sense
as his vocabulary could supply.
He didn't picture his environment; he realized it. The burned circle of
grass, the naked alien....
A second shock rocked Saxon to his heels. The Alien!
Tentatively, almost timidly, he examined the strange figure confronting
him. The man, for man he appeared to be, stood quietly several paces,
sizing up Saxon with an equal degree of caution. The analogy to two
strange dogs eyeing each other belligerently, but each afraid to make
the first move, was so ludicrous that Saxon chuckled although no sound
issued from his lips.
He sensed his opponent relax. The fellow was big the way Saxon was big,
and the same virility radiated from him like a physical force.
The impressions received via his sixth sense were gaining in vividness.
Saxon had never fully appreciated its scope before.
Then with the force of a blow, Ileth's terrified thoughts penetrated
sharply to his mind.
"_I must be dead! Oh God, I'm dead!_"
Saxon could perceive the girl cowering above a small pile of clothes,
frightened, helpless, blind. She didn't have his extra-human sixth
sense to substitute for sight. She was trembling violently, a
slim-naked wraith without substance.
The little pile of clothes at her feet made it suddenly clear what had
befallen Mercedes and the crew, what had happened to Ileth and himself.
In some fashion, the Aliens had transmuted them into a space where
their three-dimensional organs of perception no longer registered.
He moved to the girl, touched her arm.
Saxon was not conscious of a sense of contact, but a vague shock like a
weak electric current ran up his arm to his brain. Ileth flinched back
in terror.
Again he touched her arm, thinking, "_Ileth, am I getting through?
Ileth, am I getting through?_" over and over again.
"_Yes_," came the unexpected answer. "_Yes. Yes. Is it you, Jon? We're
dead, you know, Jon._"
"_No_," he thought. "_We're not dead. We've been transmuted but we're
not dead._"
A command rang sharply in his disembodied mind. "_Lead the girl and
follow me!_"
Saxon's attention swung back to the Alien, perceived the man
threatening him with the cylinder which had blasted them into this
indeterminate dimension.
"_Suppose I refuse?_" he thought.
"_I'm afraid that you underestimate the range of effect of this
weapon._" The Alien brandished the cylinder again. "_Follow me._"
Saxon capitulated, touched Ileth. "_Keep in contact with me. I'll
guide you._" He began to move after the stranger who was already at a
distance.
He didn't know how long they walked. Time had no expression in this
state. Alpha Centauri A hung always in the same spot just above the
horizon. He thought of Villainowski's inverted formula--"To travel
through time during a passage of space." The Little Death must be like
this, if one were conscious.
He was still turning it over in his mind when he perceived the station.
The station appeared to be a cubical structure like a large plastic
block, except that the matter of which it was formed wasn't matter at
all. It was energy, Saxon sensed, pulsating sheets of energy that must
not be visible in the normal, three-dimensional world.
The Alien stood to one side, motioned them through the shimmering walls.
Saxon was conscious of a throbbing rhythm which swept through him like
the hum of a dynamo. He experienced the eerie giddiness for the second
time and groped for Ileth before he blanked out.
* * * * *
This time Saxon was longer regaining consciousness. He came out from
under the effects of the pulsation, feeling his flesh solid again. Air
warmed and caressed his skin. He was materialized, he saw, as he leaped
to his feet and opened his eyes.
He felt vaguely overwhelmed by the return of his senses. He had never
before appreciated their infinite variety. The walls were yellow, lemon
yellow; the floor cool and firm underfoot; the air had a faint odor of
bitter almonds; and Ileth....