Snow and I stepped into the great gleaming chamber. I was very much disconcerted when the wall behind us contracted suddenly back into place. Wherever we were, we were there until the Ancients decided to let us out.

"Who is the person with you?" said a voice. It had a frowning note to it, but I could not discern the source of the words anywhere in that silver-white blur of metal universe that spread away from us in all directions.

"She—" I said as boldly as possible, feeling like an escapee from Fenimore Cooper "—she is my woman!"

Silence. Then, "She will be allowed."

"Allowed to what?" I demanded.

"Allowed to be," said the voice, without emotion.

Snow's fingers nearly went through my hand.

"Well, thanks," I said, figuring politeness wouldn't hurt. I held tight to Snow, supplementing our hand grip with an arm-in-arm lock. We took another step forward. "Where are you?" I asked.

"You must come forward," said the voice.

I took another step, then another, then came to a startled halt.

As if materializing out of the air, the Martian was before me. I stared at him, stupified.

"What's the matter, Jery? What is it?" Snow said. Then she looked where I was looking, giving a little scream.

"It's all right, honey," I said, with hollow courage. "He's a little impressionistic, but—"

"He?" she cried, clinging to me. "That—that thing?"

I looked at her, mystified, then back at the sort-of man I was standing before. He made my head spin a bit, what with apparently seeing him from front view and both profiles simultaneously, but he was mannish looking.

"This guy, the Martian, honey," I said. "Maybe you didn't take enough steps forward."

"She cannot see me as you see me, Jery Delvin," said the Martian. "Her eyes only convey to her a fantastic whirl of hideous light and dark shapes. She, along with most others of your race, cannot apprehend my form as you can. This is why you were chosen, Jery Delvin."

"That's crazy," I protested. "You're there, aren't you? You reflect light into the eyes, right? Why can't she see you?"

"The human eye is not the animal eye," said the Martian. "An animal eye sees only meaningless shapes; animals use all their senses to identify objects. But the human eye sees concepts, Jery Delvin. Where an animal merely discerns eyes, feeding apparatus and breathing vents, the human eye sees a face. Actually, there is no such thing as a face."

It was true enough, in a way, that the human eye tended to group otherwise unrelated objects into concepts of non-actual reality.

"So how come I can see you, and she can't?" I reiterated.

"You are gifted to see true," said the Martian. "Your mind apprehends concepts where it has previously expected to find none. You relate what you see, and correctly. As in the case of your deriving so much information from your conversation with Clatclit. Another man would not have succeeded in that."

I shook my head, confused. "But I—I see you!"

"No, Jery Delvin. Your mind sees me. Your eyes alone could not possibly view me since I am never entirely here to be viewed. Your eyes see one part of me, then another, then another and another. But your mind rejects the idea that I am four separate entities, and sees me as I am, a unit."

"You're here, you say, but you're not here, too?" I choked, feeling positively giddy.

"I am not a three-dimensional creature," said the Martian. "We whom you call the Ancients are existing in four dimensions."

"I thought Einsteinian physics says that time is the fourth dimension," I said slowly.

"It is not time," said the Martian. "It is place that is the fourth dimension. What is here, Jery Delvin? Or there? Remember, there is no here or there except in relationship to something else. If only one small globe of rock comprised existing matter, Jery Delvin, where would it be?"

"It—That's silly. One thing can't be anywhere!" I said. "It'd just be floating in a void." Trying to picture such a void made my brain whirl. I gave it up.

"I'm glad you understand," said the Martian. "Very well, then. We, your Ancients, are existing in a perfect here-ness, of which you can have no concept at all. We are living in not a location, but in location itself."

"It's no use," I said. "I can't even picture it."

"You're not supposed to," said the Martian, with a mechanical smile of contempt. "Even your mind, Jery Delvin, cannot fathom the magnitude of our being."

"Hold on a minute!" I said, changing the subject. "Clatclit told me that you expected to compel my cooperation by keeping the Space Scouts your prisoners unless I obeyed you."

"That is correct, Jery Delvin. And so, our desire is that you—"

"Damn it!" I exploded. "Stop taking so much for granted! Before I even scratch where it itches to please you guys, I want to see those kids! And in damned good shape, too!"

Snow held onto my arm and trembled. This was it. Now we'd know for sure if the boys were all right.

The Martian looked exasperated, but then he reached an arm out from himself—I couldn't tell exactly, without getting a blinding headache, just which way his arm went, left, right, up or down. But he reached away from himself in some direction or other, and the next moment, the shimmering blur of metallic flooring between him and us gave way to a red-bronze platform of parabolite which rose like a sluggish elevator on close-intervalled narrow rods of the same mineral. Then, as the apparatus halted, I realized that these rods were more than just supports for that slab of rock. They were bars.

And huddled together in this escape-free cage, I saw the fifteen missing Space Scouts.

"Snow!"

One of the boys, his hair as raven as Snow's was blonde, tore away from the group and rushed over to the bars, jamming his arms between them to reach out for her.

"Ted!" Snow cried, and rushed over to him. It was kind of awkward, embracing with the bars in the way, but they did it anyhow.

"Ted, dear Ted! Are you all right?"

"Yeah," he said, with a note of uncertainty. "Yeah, I guess we are. Only, I was almost giving up on you."

"Have you," the Martian's icy voice cut into the reunion, "seen quite enough?"

"Hold your horses!" I hollered at him through the cage. "She hasn't checked him for broken bones, yet!"

The Martian, whether out of patience or alien incomprehension of my sarcasm, left the cage where it was, and stood waiting.

"I knew you'd get my message, Snow!" said Ted eagerly, quite forgetting his doubts of a few seconds before. "I just knew it. When do we get out of here, hey? We want to go home!"

Apparently adventure lost its tang when the cage had first been lowered into the—the whatever it was that served us as a floor. The other boys had come up to the bars, now, all of them looking at Snow with longing, as the next best thing to a human-type mother.

"Oh, you poor kids," Snow sobbed suddenly. "Have they been feeding you? When did you last wash your face, Ted?"

"They don't feed us at all!" Ted said sorrowfully. "It's been weeks now since we ran out of candy, and—"

"Jery Delvin!" the Martian's voice interrupted imperiously. "Before that look on your woman's face erupts into some more of her tiresome vituperation, will you explain to her what a metabolic stasis is?"

"Sure," I said, folding my arms. "As soon as you explain it to me!"

The Martian seemed to be gathering himself for a cry of utter exasperation. Then he caught hold of himself and said with rigid calm, "We merely have held the children within a field of radiation that obviates the necessity of their taking alimental nourishment."

Snow looked over her shoulder at me, wonderingly.

"He means, honey, that they fixed it somehow so the kids didn't need to eat. I guess it was simpler than running a catering service."

"Didn't need to eat!" she exploded. "Doesn't that blob of black sparklers know that growing boys need food to grow!"

"There's no need to be redundant!" said the Martian.

"To what?" she cried, standing back from the cage to glare at him the better, with arms akimbo. The Martian took this golden opportunity to let the cage drop suddenly back out of our ken. The shimmering blur of metallic luster was once more at our feet.

"Oh!" she cried, stepping forward and staring down. "Ted! Teddy!"

"Jery, Jery, Jery," Snow murmured tearfully, turning about and burrowing her nose into my chest, while I held her helplessly. "He looked s-so hungry!"

I decided to let her sob. Neither I nor the Martian, no matter what our brain power, could drive this fixed notion out of her pretty little head.

"Now that you have seen them," said the Martian, "perhaps we can get to the business at hand?"

I seemed to be out of dilatory alibis.

"Okay," I said. "What do you want from me?"

"We want you to destroy Philip Baxter," said the Martian.

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