"Precisely what I am told," said Cavor.

I assisted him to screw in the glass cover of the manhole, and then he
pressed a stud to close the corresponding blind in the outer case. The
little oblong of twilight vanished. We were in darkness. For a time
neither of us spoke. Although our case would not be impervious to sound,
everything was very still. I perceived there was nothing to grip when the
shock of our start should come, and I realised that I should be
uncomfortable for want of a chair.

"Why have we no chairs?" I asked.

"I've settled all that," said Cavor. "We won't need them."

"Why not?"

"You will see," he said, in the tone of a man who refuses to talk.

I became silent. Suddenly it had come to me clear and vivid that I was a
fool to be inside that sphere. Even now, I asked myself, is to too late to
withdraw? The world outside the sphere, I knew, would be cold and
inhospitable enough for me--for weeks I had been living on subsidies from
Cavor--but after all, would it be as cold as the infinite zero, as
inhospitable as empty space? If it had not been for the appearance of
cowardice, I believe that even then I should have made him let me out. But
I hesitated on that score, and hesitated, and grew fretful and angry, and
the time passed.

There came a little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in another