eep our eyes on the ceiling ports and see how this swallowing
job is really done."

They alternately looked through the floor ports and the ceiling ports.

Under them the gray mass was crawling backward off the floor ports,
leaving them clear. Now all of them were clear. Now the gray stuff began
to vanish from the lower ports on either side of the cabin.

"I feel as though we were being digested and cast forth," said Jeter.

The action of the stuff was something like that. It had swallowed them
in their entirety and now was disgorging them.

They watched the stuff move off the ports one by one, on either side.
The lower ones were free. Then those next above, the gray substance
retreating with what seemed to be pouting reluctance. Finally even the
topmost ports were clear.

"The drop comes soon," said Eyer.

"Wait, maybe not."

* * * * *

They concentrated on the ceiling ports for a moment, but the clinging
stuff did not vanish from them. They turned back to look through the
floor ports. Right under them was the milky globe whose surface could
easily accommodate their plane. If they had needed further proof of some
guiding intelligence behind all this, that cleared space was it. They
were being deliberately lowered to a landing place through a portion of
the "rind" made soft in some mechanical way to allow the weight of their
plane to sink through it.

They looked up again. Great masses of the gray substance still clung to
the top of their cabin, like sticky tar. The substance was rubbery and
lifelike in its resiliency, its tenacious grasp upon the Jeter-Eyer
plane. By this means the plane was lowered to the "ground." Jeter and
Eyer watched, fascinated, as the stuff slipped and lost its grip, and
slowly retracted to become part of the dome above.

The plane had come through this white roof, bearing its two passengers,
and now above them there was no slightest mark to show where they had
come forth.

They rested on even keel atop the inner globe which they now could see
was attached to the outer globe in countless places.

"I wonder if we dare risk getting out," said Eyer.

"I think so," said Jeter. "Look there!"

A trapdoor, shaped something like the profile of an ordinary milk
bottle, was opening in the white globe just outside their plane. Framed
in the door was a face. It was a dark face, but it was a human one--and
the man's body below that face was dressed as simply,