One of the pouches on Steve’s belt held a camera. He took it out and started using it. How come I didn’t get one? Jerry wondered. But that was another easy question, wasn’t it? The first redshirt down on some new planet didn’t have a prayer of lasting long enough to collect residuals.

He took three or four steps down the corridor. It felt as real and unreal at the same time under his feet as the outside of the entranceway had to his knuckles. If this was an airlock, its inner door had disappeared at the same time as the outer one, and as completely.

Steve followed his lead. Stowing the camera, he wrote, Wonder what the atmosphere is. Not too different from ours?

Pressure seems close to the same, anyway, Jerry answered. There hadn’t been any big whoosh of air in or out when the door vanished. Then again, who could say anything for sure about how Humpty Dumpty worked?

If the air the aliens who’d built the starship liked wasn’t too different from Earth’s, why not take off the masks, breathe it, and talk instead of writing? Why not? Jerry imagined spores, bacteria, and viruses, all waiting to chow down on a tasty human after going hungry for Lord only knew how many years. He left his mask on.

A glance at his watch told him he’d been breathing from the tank for six minutes. It only felt like six months. How brave do you want to be? he asked Steve.

I don’t want to lose sight of the way out, the older man wrote.

Jerry nodded. Sounds like a plan.

We should’ve grabbed some bread crumbs from the galley so we could leave a trail, he thought, remembering “Hansel and Gretel” from some long-vanished kids’ book of fairy tales. What would eat the crumbs in these corridors? Do I really want to find out?

Instead of bread crumbs, the next time they came in they’d bring a roll of nylon twine or something that they could unspool behind them as they went. That had worked for good old What’s-his-name in the Minotaur’s Labyrinth. It ought to do the trick here, too.

Down the passageway they went, Jerry leading, Steve a pace behind. He hoped they would find more writing, if the stuff on the outside was writing. No such luck. For all Jerry knew, the stuff on the outside was an advertisement. If buses had them, why not spaceships?