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.