Futilely, he let go a clip from his carbine, trying to hit one of the
vision-slits; then rolled to one side, dropped out the clip, slapped in
another. There was a shimmering blue mist around him. If he only hadn't
used his last grenade, back there at the supply-dump....

The strange blue mist became a flickering radiance that ran through
all the colors of the spectrum and became an utter, impenetrable
blackness....

* * * * *

There were voices in the blackness, and a softness under him, but under
his back, when he had been lying on his stomach, as though he were now
on a comfortable bed. They got me alive, he thought; now comes the
brainwashing!

He cracked one eye open imperceptibly. Lights, white and glaring, from a
ceiling far above; walls as white as the lights. Without moving his
head, he opened both eyes and shifted them from right to left. Vaguely,
he could see people and, behind them, machines so simply designed that
their functions were unguessable. He sat up and looked around groggily.
The people, their costumes--definitely not Pan-Soviet uniforms--and the
room and its machines, told him nothing. The hardness under his right
hip was a welcome surprise; they hadn't taken his pistol from him!
Feigning even more puzzlement and weakness, he clutched his knees with
his elbows and leaned his head forward on them, trying to collect his
thoughts.

"We shall have to give up, Gregory," a voice trembled with
disappointment.