From his location he could see that the two small aliens forward had redoubled their activity. The light in the chamber dimmed slightly. Leaning forward, he looked to where Vantolos reposed, his anaconda-like appendages relaxed around him.

“When do we lift off?”

“‘Lift off’?” Olonean eyes peered back at him. One tentacle rose from its position of rest to point at the floor. The tip proceeded to transcribe a series of small, tight movements in seemingly empty air. In response, the floor suddenly vanished—or appeared to.

Pavesi gasped, Reed uttered a startled curse, and Dev felt suddenly queasy. In contrast, the two elders among them, the Zimmers, simply clasped hands and stared, their expressions beatific.

To all intents and purposes, the floor at their feet had simply dissolved. Dev found himself gazing down at the Texas coast. As if someone had wielded a narrow paintbrush, white storm streaks spread across lower Louisiana and on into Mississippi. Thin as individual hairs, a few white lines in the water sketched the trails of huge oil tankers. Most of what he could see of the land was green, the result of good spring rains across the breadth of the American south. It was beautiful, spectacular, awe-inspiring. His world, his home.

The floor, or more appropriately, deck, had of course not melted away. It had simply been rendered breathtakingly transparent. Vantolos moved his tentacle tip again. In an upward arc this time, as if directing the beam of a flashlight. The solidity that was the deck returned even as the ceiling turned into a giant port. While darkness dominated the fringes, the center was filled with a massive, looming shape that was coming toward them. No, he corrected himself. They were rising toward it: the alien mothership. As he and his companions stared, an opening appeared in the side facing them. Far larger than the one they had used to enter the shuttle craft, it was more than expansive enough to accommodate the entirety of the craft they were now aboard.

“Soon,” Vantolos told them, “you will encounter technology beyond all your imaginings. For an hour or so of your time you will be made to feel small and insignificant, but you will return to your people with tales and images of wonder. Be respectful, observe, and learn.”

“What about the unloading of the organic and other materials we’ve provided to you?” Feisty as ever, Katou-Zimmer was not about to submit to casual alien admonitions.

Vantolos uttered a short, low-pitched whistle. “What a foolish thing to wonder. The materials are transferred from another of our smaller subsidiary craft to the main ship. With all the wonders that are available for you to witness, that is your first thought?”

“All right then,” her husband countered. “What about the food synthesizing equipment that will turn our organics into your nutriments? Can we see that?”

“Certainly.” The Olone could be contemptuous one moment, magnanimous the next. “A much more thoughtful request.”