“What are you getting at?” I could hardly recognize the sound of my own voice.
“We’re not on Earth, you know.”
“A Polytherian form?” I shouted. “There’s nothing human about them!”
I was about to rush at him, to drag him out of the trance, prompted, apparently, by his crazy theories, when he murmured:
“That’s why they’re so dangerous. Remember what I’ve told you, and be on your guard!”
“What happened to Gibarian?”
He did not answer.
“What is Sartorius doing?”
“Come back in an hour.”
I turned and went out. As I closed the door behind me, I took a last look at him. Tiny, shrunken, his head in his hands and his elbows resting on his stained knees, he sat there, motionless. It was only then that I noticed the dried bloodstains on the backs of his hands.
2 THE SOLARISTS
In the empty corridor I stood for a moment in front of the closed door. I noticed a strip of plaster carelessly stuck on one of the panels. Pencilled on it was the word “Man!” At the sight of this faintly scribbled word, I had a sudden longing to return to Snow for company; but I thought better of it.
His crazy warnings still ringing in my ears, I started off down the narrow, tubular passage which was filled with the moaning of the wind, my shoulders bowed under the weight of the spacesuit. On tip-toe, half-consciously fleeing from some invisible watcher, I found two doors on my left and two more on my right. I read the occupants’ names: Dr. Gibarian, Dr. Snow, Dr. Sartorius. On the fourth, there was no nameplate. I hesitated, then pressed the handle down gently and slowly opened the door. As I did so, I had a premonition, amounting almost to a certainty, that there was someone inside. I went in.
There was no one. Another wide panoramic window, almost as large as the one in the cabin where I had found Snow, overhung the ocean, which, sunlit on this side, shone with an oleaginous gleam, as though the waves secreted a reddish oil.