Okay. Now where was she and how did it work? Could he find her and haul her off silly tilt-a-whirl? He thought not. Either his eyes were bad or this thing had appeared from nowhere. Something inside snapped: Quit thinking that way! Whatever it looked like--_think right_. Follow the rules. Look for the dame. His grin deepened. Sure. He started walking. Around the eerie corridor in the direction opposite that taken by Orin and Alma Dakin. He walked a long time and there were no doors or anything else so the only thing to do was keep walking. He thought: When I come to that stairway I'll be back where I started but where's that? What good is a hall you keep going around and around in? The ship lurched and threw him to the floor. It was going somewhere. But it didn't go anywhere. Of that he was sure. Maybe he'd been fooled but it seemed the ship settled back after that single lurch and lay there like a choice segment out of someone's pet nightmare. Kirk got to his feet and rubbed the place his leg had violently met the floor. He walked on and there was the steel stairway again and it was all very damned silly because he knew he'd circled the ship at least three times. But lucky because the footsteps sounded again and as he dived toward the pocket, the wall of the ship opened to form a doorway. They forgot something, he thought. What kind of supermen are these? They can build a ship that has a stairway every third trip around and still they go away and forget things. The grin was tighter than ever. Whistle in the dark, boy, but admit it--you're scared. Sure, but what's that got to do with it? Orin and Alma left the ship. Martin Kirk pushed his head around the staircase. He crouched for sometime, staring through the open segment of the hull at the outside world. And his poor stupid orthodox mind asked a pitifully logical question: How could it get light, with the sun at high noon, in fifteen minutes? After a long, motionless time, the silence became such a roaring thing in Kirk's ears he could stand it no longer. He got up and walked to the doorway. Something had gone somewhere; either the ship or the world he'd known, because out there was a different world and he knew damn well he'd never seen it before. Chapter VII Martin Kirk stepped out into a circle of lush vegetation. And in doing so, he learned something. He learned that the human mind is a far more adaptable mechanism than most people imagine; that they can pelt you with goof balls and you get sweat on your lip and have to talk to yourself to keep from sliding off your rocker, but after a while when your mind seems half-way over the edge, it straightens up suddenly and starts going along. A defense mechanism against insanity? He didn't know.