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Vivian was beside him. “Lee, what’s gonna happen to us? Won’t this come to an end some time? Lee–you won’t let anybody hurt me?”

She was like a child, almost always clinging to him now. And suddenly she said a very strange thing. “Lee, I been thinkin’–back there on Earth I was doin’ a lot of things that maybe were pretty rotten–anglin’ for his money for instance–an’ not carin’ much what I had to do to get it.” She gestured at the sullen Franklin who was sitting on the couch. “You know–things like that. An’ I been thinkin’–you suppose, when we get where we’re goin’ now, that’ll be held against me?”

What a queer thing to say! She was like a child–and so often a child has an insight into that which is hidden from those more mature!

“I–don’t know,” Lee muttered.

From the couch, Franklin looked up moodily. “Whispering about me again? I know you are–damn you both. You and everybody else here.”

“We’re not interested in you,” Vivian said.

“Oh, you’re not? Well you were, back on Earth. I’m not good enough for you now, eh? He’s better–because he’s big–big and strong–that the idea? Well if I ever had the chance–“

“Don’t be silly,” Lee said.

* * * * *

The sullen Franklin was working himself into a rage. Lee seemed to understand Franklin better now. A weakling. Inherently, with a complex of inferiority, the vague consciousness of it lashing him into baffled anger.

“You, Anthony,” Franklin burst out, “don’t think you’ve been fooling me. You can put it over that fool girl, but not me. I’m onto you.”

“Put what over?” Lee said mildly.

“That you don’t know anything about this affair or these men who’ve got us–you don’t know who they are, do you?”

“No. Do you?” Lee asked.

Franklin jumped to his feet. “Don’t fence with me. By God, if I was bigger I’d smash your head in. They abducted us, because they wanted you. That fellow said as much near the start of this damned trip. They won’t talk–afraid I’ll find out. And you can’t guess what it’s all about! The hell you can’t.”

Lee said nothing. But there was a little truth in what Franklin was saying, of course…. Those things that the dying old Anna Green had told him–surely this weird voyage had some connection.

He turned away; went back to the window. There was a sheen now. A vague outline of something vast, as though the darkness were ending at a great wall that glowed a little.

It seemed, during the next time-interval, as though the globe might have turned over, so that now it was dropping down upon something tangible. Dropping–floating down–with steadily decreasing velocity, descending to a Surface. The sheen of glow had expanded until now it filled all the lower hemisphere of darkness–a great spread of surface visually coming up. Then there were things to see, illumined by a faint half-light to which color was coming; a faint, pastel color that seemed a rose-glow.

“Why–why,” Vivian murmured, “say, it’s beautiful, ain’t it? It looks like fairyland–or Heaven. It does–don’t it, Lee?”

“Yes,” Lee murmured. “Like–like–“

The wall-slide rasped. The voice of one of their captors said, “We will arrive soon. We can trust you–there must be no fighting?”

“You can trust us,” Lee said.

It was dark in the little curving corridor of the globe, where with silent robed figures around them, they stood while the globe gently landed. Then they were pushed forward, out through the exit port.

The new realm. The World Beyond. What was it? To Lee Anthony then came the feeling that there was a precise scientific explanation of it, of course. And yet, beyond all that pedantry of science, he seemed to know that it was something else, perhaps a place that a man might mould by his dreams. A place that would be what a man made of it, from that which was within himself.