I saw the sun's rim at the edge of my world, rising, touching it. In the east there was dawn. It was the first dawn I had ever seen. It was not that I had not stayed up all night, even many times. It was only that I had never watched a sunrise.

"Farewell, Kajira," said the man.

I cried out and extended my arms. The steel ramp swung upward and locked in place, shutting me in the ship. A sealing door then slid across the closed ramp, it, too, locking in place. I pounded on its plates, wildly, sobbing. Strong hands seized me from behind, one of the men in a black tunic. There was a tiny, three-pronged scar on his right cheekbone. I was dragged weeping and kicking through the ship, between tiers of piping and plating.

Then I was in a curved area, where, fixed in racks on the wall, sloping to the floor, were several large, transparent cylinders, perhaps of heavy plastic. In these were the girls I had seen, those who had been taken from the truck.

One tube was empty.

Another man, clad as the first, unscrewed one end of the empty tube. I could see that there were two small hoses, one at each end, fixed in each tube. They led into a machine fixed in the wall.

I struggled wildly, but the two men, one at my ankles, the other holding me under the arms, forced me into the tube. My prison was perhaps eighteen inches in diameter. The lid to the tube was screwed shut. I screamed and screamed, pushing and kicking at the cylinder. I turned on my side. I pressed my hands against the walls of the tube. The men did not seem to notice me.

Then I began to feel faint. It was hard to breathe.

One of the men attached a small hose to a tiny opening in the tube, above my head.

I lifted my head.

Oxygen streamed into the tube.

Another hose was attached at the other end of the tube, above my feet. There was a tiny, almost inaudible noise, as of air being withdrawn.

I could breathe.

The two men then seemed to brace themselves, by holding onto some rails, part of the racking of the piping. I suddenly felt as though I were in an elevator, and for the moment could not breathe. I knew then we were ascending. From the feeling of my body, pressing against the tube, I thought we must be ascending vertically, or nearly vertically. There was no peculiarly, powerful stresses, and very little unpleasantness. It was swift, and frightening, but not painful. I heard no sound of motors, or engines.

After perhaps a minute the two men, holding to the railing, moved from the room. The strange sensation continued for some time. Then, after a time, I seemed pressed against the side of the tube, rather cruelly, for perhaps several minutes. Then, suddenly, no forces seemed to play upon me, and, to my horror, I drifted to the other side of the tube. Then, after a moment of this, a very gently force seemed to bring me back to the side of the tube on my right. Oddly enough, I now thought of this as down. Shortly thereafter one of the men in a black tunic, wearing sandals with metal plates on the bottoms, stepped carefully, step by step, across the steel plating. It had been the floor, but now it seemed as though it were a wall at my left, and he moved strangely on the wall.

He went to the machine into which the hoses from the tubes led, and moved a small dial.

In a moment I sensed something different in the air being conducted into my tube.

There were several similar dials, beneath various switches, doubtless one for each of the containers.

I tried to attract his attention. I called out. Apparently he could not hear me. Or was not interested in doing so.

I was vaguely aware that now the gentle force seemed to draw my body against the tube differently. I was vaguely aware that now the ceiling and floor seemed as they should be. I saw, not fully conscious of it, the man leave the room. I looked out through the plastic. I pressed my hands against the heavy, curved, transparent walls of my small prison.

The proud Elinor Brinton had not escaped.

She was a prisoner.

I fell unconscious.

5 Three Moons

It is difficult for me to conjecture what happened.

I did not know how long I was unconscious.

I know only that I awakened, stunned, bewildered, lying on my stomach, head turned to the side, on grass. My fingers tore down at the roots. I wanted to scream. But I did not move. The events of the August afternoon and night flashed through my memory. I shut my eyes. I must go back to sleep. I must awaken again, between the white satin sheets in my penthouse. But the pressing of fresh grass against my cheek told me I was no longer in the penthouse, in surroundings with which I was familiar.

I got up to my hands and knees.

I squinted toward the sun. Somehow it seemed not the same to me. I moved my hand. I pressed my foot against the earth.

I threw up with horror.

I knew I was no longer on my world, on the world I knew. It was another world, a different world, one I did not know, one strange to me.

And yet the air seemed beautifully clear and clean. I could not remember such air. The grass was wet with dew, and rich and green. I was in a field of some sort, but there were trees, tall and dark, in the distance. A small yellow flower grew near me. I looked at it, puzzled. I had never seen such a flower before. In the distance, away from the forest, I could see a yellowish thicket, it, too, of trees, but not green, but bright and yellow. I heard a brook nearby. I was afraid. I cried out as I saw a bird, tiny and purple, flash past overhead. In the distance, near the yellowish thicket, I saw a small, yellowish animal moving, delicately. It was far off and I could not see it well. I thought it might be a deer or gazelle. It disappeared into the thicket.

I looked about myself.

Some hundred yards or so from me I saw a mass of torn metal, a ruptured structure of black steel, half buried in the grass.

It was the ship.

I noted that I no longer wore the anklet on my left ankle. It had been removed. I still wore the clothing in which I had been captured, the tan slacks, the black, bare-midriff blouse. My sandals I had lost in the woods on Earth, while fleeing from the ship.

I felt like running from the ship, as far as I might. But there seemed to be no sign of life about it.

I was terribly hungry.

I crawled in the direction of the brook, and, lying on my stomach before it, scooped water into my mouth.

What I thought was a petaled flower underneath the swift, cold surface of the brook suddenly broke apart, becoming a school of tiny yellow fish.

I was startled.

I slaked my thirst.

I wanted to run from the ship. Somewhere there might be the men.

But the ship seemed still. I saw some small birds flying about it.

There might be food on the ship.

Slowly, frightened, I approached the ship, step by step.

I heard a singing bird.

At last, about twenty yards from the ship, I circled I fearfully.

It was torn open, the steel plating split and bent, scorched and blistered. There was no sign of life.

I then approached the ship, half buried in the grass. I looked inside, trough one of the great rents in the steel. Its edges seemed to have melted and hardened. In places there were frozen rivulets of steel, as though heavy trickles of paint had run from a brush and then hardened. The inside of the ship was black and scorched. The piping, in several places, was ruptured. Panels were split apart, revealing a complex, blackened circuitry within. The heavy glass, or quartz or plastic, in the ports was, in many places, broken through. Barefoot, on the steel plating, buckled under my feet, the bolts broken, I entered the ship, holding my breath.

There seemed no one there.

The interior of the ship was compactly organized, with often only small spaces between tiers of tubing, piping and meters. Sometimes these small passages were half closed with bent pipes and tangles of wire erupted from the sides, but I managed to crawl where I wished to.