The _Valkyrie_ reached hyperspace. It slowed down. The throbbing of its creaky engines ebbed to a hum. And it stopped and hung there in the quiet darkness of utterly alien time and place. Schiemann and Balas, expectedly, changed their appearance, but he had seen them in their monster guises before. The coal changed to something pale and glittering, but not diamonds. Everything remained quiet. The ship's instruments recorded no temperature change, but it seemed to grow colder and colder inside her. Suddenly, Mattern knew the truth. A trap had been laid for him, and he had tumbled neatly into it. And the most shameful part was that his own desires and yearnings--deliberately fostered by the xhindi--had been the bait. He wanted to turn to the horrible thing that Schiemann had become to scream, "Let's go back!" But he couldn't. Something held tight grip of his mind. And, looking out the portholes, he saw that the xhindi had begun to swarm. The flickering terror of their appearance became more awesome to him than it had been at the beginning, when he'd been only a transitory shadow in hyperspace. Now, although he had no doubt that they were friendly--indeed, almost ardent in their welcoming--horror chilled him all over again. He could almost feel the molecules inside his body slow down as his viscera quivered faintly and then froze into stillness. He looked at Schiemann and Balas. Neither of them could, he knew, see the hyperspacers. Their conditioning back on Earth's space schools had ensured this. That was the real reason for the schools; any actual training was incidental. But Schiemann knew the creatures were there, and so he could sense them. And Balas, too, certainly seemed to sense something as he stood there, tense and wary and almost _understanding_. It must be even worse, Len thought, to _know_ the hyperspacers were out there and not be able to see them. "We--we can still go back," Schiemann said in a cracked voice; apparently the minds outside had not touched his. "Please, Lennie...." "No, it's too late!" Mattern cried. Once he went back, he would never dare return, and all hope of--Lyddy would fade into fog. The thought of not being able to have her was unbearable. "We can't go back now!" The hideous mask that was Schiemann's hyperspace visage contorted, and drops of liquid flowed where his withered cheeks would have been in normspace. "Please, Lennie...." "I can't," Len said. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. It's too late, now that we've stopped." He forced out the words, against objections that seemed to come from outside him--not objections to Schiemann's knowing the truth, but to his own admission of it. "They're in control," he said. V "We bid you welcome to our universe, Mattern," the xhindi said in his mind. "Come, follow us. We will lead you to the port on Ferr that we have made ready for you." "Will the ship be safe there?" Mattern asked, remembering the further danger of touching alien substance.