Then my eyes were dazzled by the blaze of light that suddenly materialized all around us, and my stomach turned over sickeningly as I realized that the converse was probably true: We had just materialized inside the dazzling light! We were, all three of us, within the metallic-shimmering chamber of the ancient Martians. "Well done, Jery Delvin," said a familiar voice, and then the light before us trembled and warped, and I was looking into the disconcerting triple face of the Ancient again. I was not, however, in the mood for compliments. "Where is my woman?" I said peremptorily. "On your departure, she expressed a desire to inquire further into the health of her sibling," said the Martian. "She is even now with him and his companions." "In that cage?" I cried angrily. "I assure you she is--" "Kindly forego the lecture on metabolic stasis and raise the damned thing, will you?" I interrupted. The Martian warped and sparkled in a dizzying movement that I could only interpret as a shrug, and then the huge parabolite cage came rising up from that not-quite-there flooring. "Jery!" "Snow, baby!" We clung to each other awkwardly, and our lips met between the columnar bars. I pulled back and called, "Can't you open this thing up, now?" "Your mission is not quite accomplished, Jery Delvin," said the Martian. "The man Philip Baxter is within our realm, but as yet undestroyed." "You mean I've still got to--" "As told you repeatedly: Physical contact between our races is impossible, Jery Delvin." "Hey, what about that?" I said. "After I left here, I got to wondering how, if what you just said is true, you people were able to manipulate the Brain to select me." "The Brain of which you speak works on a principle of force-fields, generated by induction coils. We simply placed the right counterforces in the right places. No actual contact was necessary." "Well, damn it," I said, after a glance back at Baxter and Clatclit, who were staring bewilderedly toward the source of the voice, "can't you just keep him here? He's bound to perish from lack of food, or water, or--" "Jery Delvin, the metabolic stasis which I have already mentioned to you is not something we used specially for these boys. It is a necessary contingent of our world. Where there is absolute Location, there is absolutely no change of the sort you mentioned." I gave up. "All right, all right. I won't argue the point. If you could get at him, I guess you would. Not a chance of dropping him down a hole, or something, though?" "By the very nature of our world, hazardous localizing is an impossibility. Our universe possesses a self-regulatory locale-control that obviates the contingency of perilous placement of an individual." "Their universe has what?" Snow asked me, her blue-violet eyes wide.