Page:Fantastic Universe (1956-10; vol. 8, no. 3).djvu/91

Rh It was then he remembered and looked at his own body, and was almost hysterically relieved to discover that it was all in place, and that he could see it as well as feel its reality; and that, apart from a sensation. of extraordinary lightness and unsubstantiality, there was nothing wrong with him physically, anyhow. He had been stripped of -his space suit—suddenly he saw it thrown over the back of another couch— but was otherwise as he would normally have expected, except that his right foot still tingled slightly.

One of the men said, in a flat voice: "That is something you will have to get used to You were right, Azard. An entirely successful experiment. The first of its kind. I congratulate you on obtaining a living specimen. It was the one thing needed. Nothing now stands in the path of our progress."

This was so much Greek to him.

"Who are you? How did I come here? What is this place?"

The second man, ignoring him, said, in a voice as emotionless as that of his companion: "I agree, Swat. Hitherto we have had to work on the dead' structure of the machines, and, although we have progressed over the infinities, countless more infinities would have been required before we could have effectively metamorphosed. The Sphere they call Earth and the Universe, the First Sphere, is at our mercy."

He told" himself: "I can be dead if that's what it is  but I'm still Chris Sommers. I'm still myself. These guys "

"So your name is Chris Sommers," Swat said. For the first time, they gave him their attention, and the stony and deadly apathy of their gaze brought him a chill of fear. He realized that what approach to his kind they had, was on the surface only. They were as unfeeling and heartless as machines. "A creature from the First Sphere. What else do you tell us?"

A second discovery took him by surprise. These men he didn't know yet what else to call them  were not speaking in the literal sense, had never actually reached his ears at all. They were merely sending him their thoughts, and were reading his. It was not what he had said, but the images prompting his words, that they were understanding. So he had no need to be vocal. He let his thoughts run now, but—because he was both afraid and angry—stubbornly held them from anything that he believed they wanted to know. So far, he made no sense of anything at all. Why, they were speaking—thinking, that was—in English, in his own language. That made it crazier than ever.

He had scarcely thought this, than he was answered. Swab's coldblooded tones came: "You are now in the Sphere of the Elemental. The elemental understands all languages, since the so-called differences in language are merely