"You could say that," VISAR answered. "It’s about as near as we’re likely to get. A small extension is there. The rest is scattered all over Thurien plus a whole list of other planets and places. You’ve got a link into the net."

"Are you saying this ship isn’t operating autonomously?" Hunt asked. "You’re interacting between here and Thurien in realtime?"

"Sure. How else could we have turned around the messages from Jupiter?"

Hunt was astounded. VISAR’S statement implied a communications network distributed across star systems and operating with negligible delays. It meant that the point-to-point transfers, at least of energy, that he had often talked about with Paul Shelling at Navcomms were not only proved in principle, but up and running. No wonder Caldwell was looking stunned; it put Navcomms back in the Stone Age.

Hunt realized that Danchekker was now immediately behind him, peering curiously around, with Heller and Packard just inside the door. Where was Lyn? As if to answer his unvoiced question, her voice spoke from inside one of the cubicles. "Say, it feels great. I could stand this for a week or two, maybe." He turned and saw that she was already lying back in one of the recliners and apparently enjoying it. He looked at Caldwell, hesitated for a moment, then moved into the adjacent cubicle, turned, and sat down, allowing his body to sink back into the redliner’s yielding contours. It felt right for human rather than Ganymean proportions, he noted with interest. Had they built the whole craft in a week specifically for the occasion? That would have been typical of Ganymeans too.

A warm, pleasant feeling swept over him again and made him feel drowsy, causing his head to drop back automatically into the concave rest provided. He felt more relaxed than he could ever remember and suddenly didn’t care if he never had to get up again. There was a vague impression of the woman-he couldn’t recall her name-and the Secretary of something-or-other from Washington floating in front of him as if in a dream and gazing down at him curiously. "Try it. You’ll like it," he heard himself murmuring distantly.

Some part of his mind was aware that he had been thinking clearly only moments before, but he was unable to remember what or really to care why. His mind had stopped functioning as a coherent entity and seemed to have disassembled into separate functions that he could observe in a detached kind of way as they continued to operate as isolated units instead of in concert. It should be troubling him, part of himself told the rest casually, and the rest agreed. . . . but it wasn’t.

Something was happening to his vision. The view of the upper part of the cubicle collapsed suddenly into meaningless blurs and smears, and then almost as quickly reassembled itself into an image that swelled, shrank, then faded and finally brightened once again. When it stabilized all the colors were wrong, like those of a false-color, computer-generated display. The colors reversed into complementary tones for a few insane seconds, overcorrected, and then suddenly were normal.

"Excuse these preliminaries," VISAR’s voice said from somewhere. At least Hunt thought it was VISAR’s; it was barely comprehensible, with the pitch sliding from a shrill whine through several octaves to finish in an almost inaudible rumble. "This process . . ." something completely unintelligible followed, ". . . one time, and after that there will be no . . ." a confusion of telescoped syllables, ". . . will be explained shortly." The last part was free from distortion.

And then Hunt became acutely conscious of the pressure of the recliner against his body, of the touch of his clothes against his skin, and even of the sensation of air flowing through his nostrils as he breathed. His body started to convulse, and he felt a sudden spasm of alarm. Then he realized that he was not moving at all; the impression was due to rapid variations in sensitivity taking place all over his skin. He felt hot all over, then cold, itchy for a moment, prickly for a moment, and then completely numb-and then suddenly normal once more.

Everything was normal. His mind had reintegrated itself, and all his faculties were in order. He wriggled his fingers and found that the invisible gel that had been immersing him was gone. He tried moving an arm, then the other arm; everything was fine.

"Feel free to get up," VISAR said. Hunt climbed slowly to his feet and stepped back into the corridor to find the others emerging and looking as bewildered as he felt. He looked past them at the door blocking the far end, but it was still closed.

"What do you suppose may have been the object of that exercise?" Danchekker asked, for once looking at a loss. Hunt could only shake his head.

And then Lyn’s voice sounded from behind him. "Vic." It was just one word, but its ominous tone of warning spun him around instantly. She was staring wide-eyed along the corridor toward the door through which they had entered. He turned his head farther to follow her gaze.

Filling the doorway was the huge frame of a Ganymean, clad in a silvery garment that was hallway between a short cape and a loose jacket, worn over a trousered tunic of dark green. The deep, liquid violet, alien eyes surveyed them for a few seconds from the elongated, protruding face while they watched silently, waiting for a first move. Then the Ganymean announced, "I am Bryom Calazar. You are the people we have been expecting, I see. Please step this way. It’s a little too crowded in here for introductions." With that he moved out of sight toward the outer door. Danchekker thrust out his jaw, drew himself up to his full height, and went back into the antechamber after him. After a moment’s hesitation Lyn followed.

"This is absurd." Danchekker’s voice reached Hunt just as he was stepping through behind Lyn. The statement was uttered in the tone of somebody clinging obstinately to reason and flatly denying that what his senses were reporting could be real. A split second later Lyn gasped, and an instant after that Hunt could see why. He had assumed that Calazar had come from another cornpartment leading forward from the antechamber, but there was no such compartment. There didn’t need to be. The other Ganymeans were outside.

For McClusky Air Force Base, Alaska, and the Arctic had all gone. Instead he was looking out at a completely different world.

The plane, starship, or whatever the vessel was no longer stood in the open at all. Hunt found himself staring out at the interior of an enormous enclosed concourse formed by a mind-defying interpenetration of angled planes and flowing surfaces of glowing amber and shades of green. It seemed to be the hub of an intricate, three-dimensional dovetailing of thoroughfares, galleries, and shafts extending away up, down, and at all angles through a conjunction of variously oriented spaces that baffled the senses. He felt as if he had stepped into an Escher drawing as he fought to extract some shred of sense from the contradictions of the same surfaces serving as floors here, walls there, and transforming into roofs overhead elsewhere, while all over the scene dozens of Ganymean figures went unconcernedly about their business, some in inverted subsets of the whole, others perpendicular, with one merging somehow into the other until it was impossible to tell which direction was what. His brain balked and gave up. He couldn’t take in any more of it.

A group of about a dozen Ganymeans was standing a short distance back from the doorway with the one who had introduced himself as Calazar positioned a few feet ahead. They seemed to be waiting. After a few seconds Calazar beckoned. In a complete daze and with his mind only barely able to register what was happening, Hunt felt himself being pulled almost hypnotically through the door and was aware only vaguely that he was stepping out at floor level.