Was he in a base on some planet of one of those few stars of the "desert," or in some ship of unheard-of design? His weightlessness disposed of the first idea before it was formulated; and the doctor glanced at his belt. Through the glass window in its case, he could see the filament of his personal equalizer glowing faintly; he was in a ship, in second-order flight, and the little device had automatically taken on the task of balancing the drive forces which would, without it, act unequally on each element in his body. As a further check, he felt in his pocket and drew out two coins, one of copper and one of silver. He held them nearly together some distance from his body, released them carefully so as not to give them velocities of their own, and withdrew his hand. Deprived of the equalizer field, they began to drift slowly in a direction parallel to the corridor, the copper bit moving at a barely perceptible crawl, the silver rapidly gaining. The corridor, then, was parallel to the ship's line of flight; and the coins had fallen forward, since the silver was more susceptible to the driving field action. * * * * * Little pushed off from the ceiling and retrieved the coins, restoring them to his otherwise empty pocket. He had not been carrying instruments or weapons, and had no means of telling whether or not he had been searched while unconscious. Nothing was missing, but he had possessed nothing worth taking. The fact that he was locked in might be taken to indicate that he was a prisoner, and prisoners are customarily relieved of any possessions which prove helpful in an escape. Only beings who had had contact with humanity would logically be expected to identify which of the numerous gadgets carried by the average man are weapons; but the design of this craft bore no resemblance to that of any race with which Little was acquainted. He still possessed his wrist watch and mechanical pencil, so the doctor found himself unable to decide even the nature of his captors, far less their intentions. Possibly he would find out something when--and if--he was fed. He realized suddenly that he was both hungry and thirsty. He had been unconscious long enough for his watch to run down. Little's pulse had dropped to somewhere near normal, he noticed, as he drifted beside the hatch. He wondered again what had knocked him out without leaving any mark or causing some sensation; then gave up this line of speculation in favor of the more immediate one advocated by his empty stomach. He fell asleep again before he reached any solution. He dreamed that someone had moved Rigel to the other side of the Galaxy, and the navigator couldn't find his way home. Very silly, he thought, and went on dreaming it.