Lee said nothing. But there was a little truth in what Franklin was saying, of course.... Those things that the dying old Anna Green had told him--surely this weird voyage had some connection. He turned away; went back to the window. There was a sheen now. A vague outline of something vast, as though the darkness were ending at a great wall that glowed a little. It seemed, during the next time-interval, as though the globe might have turned over, so that now it was dropping down upon something tangible. Dropping--floating down--with steadily decreasing velocity, descending to a Surface. The sheen of glow had expanded until now it filled all the lower hemisphere of darkness--a great spread of surface visually coming up. Then there were things to see, illumined by a faint half-light to which color was coming; a faint, pastel color that seemed a rose-glow. "Why--why," Vivian murmured, "say, it's beautiful, ain't it? It looks like fairyland--or Heaven. It does--don't it, Lee?" "Yes," Lee murmured. "Like--like--" The wall-slide rasped. The voice of one of their captors said, "We will arrive soon. We can trust you--there must be no fighting?" "You can trust us," Lee said. It was dark in the little curving corridor of the globe, where with silent robed figures around them, they stood while the globe gently landed. Then they were pushed forward, out through the exit port. The new realm. The World Beyond. What was it? To Lee Anthony then came the feeling that there was a precise scientific explanation of it, of course. And yet, beyond all that pedantry of science, he seemed to know that it was something else, perhaps a place that a man might mould by his dreams. A place that would be what a man made of it, from that which was within himself. Solemn with awe he went with his companions slowly down the incline. CHAPTER III _Realm of Mystery_ "We wish nothing of you," the man said, "save that you accept from us what we have to offer. You are hungry. You will let us bring you food." It was a simple rustic room to which they had been brought--a room in a house seemingly of plaited straw. Crude furnishings were here--table and chairs of Earth fashion, padded with stuffed mats. Woven matting was on the floor. Through a broad latticed window the faint rose-light outside--like a soft pastel twilight--filtered in, tinting the room with a gentle glow. Thin drapes at the window stirred in a breath of breeze--a warm wind from the hills, scented with the vivid blooms which were everywhere. It had been a brief walk from the space-globe. Lee had seen what seemed a little village stretching off among the trees. There had been people crowding to see the strangers--men, women and children, in simple crude peasant garb--brief garments that revealed their pink-white bodies. They babbled with strange unintelligible words, crowding forward until the robed men from the globe shoved them away.