CHAPTER VIIHe saw the light-shafts first—two glowing cones of color that speared down from a single halo-source high in this vastest of all the bubble-chambers. The beam on the left shone rich with hues of deepest purple. The other, the one on the right, shimmered golden as Earth’s September sun.
Numb, wordless, Boone moved forward with unsteady steps.
Now he saw the cones’ bases as well as source; and all at once his heart was pounding, pounding, till he thought that it must surely burst.
For each light played on a separate transparent sphere that floated, somehow invisibly suspended, at eye-level in the bubble-room.
A nude human body lay within each sphere.
Shaking, Boone made his way to the gold-bathed globe.
But the figure inside was that of a man, a stranger, with a calm, vaguel
