An odd, cold feeling swept over Hawes. Oxygen was sucked from his lungs. He gasped for breath, wondering if this was the end of everything. As the light of day faded from his eyes he felt convinced that it must be. A world of silence closed in about him. As the chill of the stratosphere seemed to freeze the pilot's veins, he recognized the familiar odor he had smelled on the plane. It was ozone, oxygen exposed to the influence of electrical discharge, an allotropy of oxygen known to exist in the stratosphere. For a time, all that remained of Captain Hawes' consciousness was a dim sense of awareness. From this tiny spark something grew. It enlarged until it swept over and mastered his entire being. Suddenly Captain Hawes saw, but not through his eyes. He heard gentle whisperings about him, but not through his ears. The soft velvet of the green cloud pressed against his body, buoying it in the air, but he did not actually feel it. His nose no longer scented ozone, yet he was aware of the odor. His senses were gone; in their place was a single, all-inclusive sense--an awareness of things first hand. The limits of his weak, fallacious human signal system of neurones had been pushed aside and Captain Hawes and his companion stood in direct contact with the external world--possibly the first human beings ever to do so.[1] [Footnote 1: Philosophers have pointed out emphatically--and it is hardly necessary for me to repeat it--that man can know the world only "second hand." Man's consciousness perceives nothing directly, but through the medium of the senses. The translations of our sensory impulses in the brain could easily be--and often are--distorted. Artificial stimuli can affect the senses so that things can be perceived that do not actually exist. Like the blind men and the elephant, man is limited in his perceptions to what he can perceive, and therefore what we know may only be a small parcel of our surroundings. The stripping of Hawes and Duerkes of their senses and the placing of their consciousness in direct contact with the world allowed them to see things ordinary men do not behold--R. R. W.] No longer did Captain Hawes have to touch a thing to feel it. He knew the nature of the rocks on the moon as well as he knew the texture of his clothing. Without looking, he could tell Dr. Duerkes' movements as he opened his eyes and he knew that his own countenance was in no less degree bewildered and amazed. Captain Hawes did not seem to exist within his body, but on the outside of it. His body was there, but it existed purely as a power plant for his omnipotent self. "It's a man!" said something excitedly. It was not exactly a voice Hawes heard. Instead, it was a thought, not expressed in words, but in translatable impulses. "They're both men," came another impulse.