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one hand.
    Numbly I turned and preceded him to the ship. At the foot of the ramp I
    trembled.
    “Hurry, Kajira,” said he, gently.
    I ascended the steel ramp. I turned. He was standing back on the grass.
    “In your time,” he said, “dawn occurs at this meridian and latitude, on this
    day, at six sixteen.”
    I saw the sun’s rim at the edge of my world, rising, touching it. In the east
    there was dawn. It was the first dawn I had ever seen. It was not that I had not
    stayed up all night, even many times. It was only that I had never watched a
    sunrise.
    “Farewell, Kajira,” said the man.
    I cried out and extended my arms. The steel ramp swung upward and locked in
    place, shutting me in the ship. A sealing door then slid across the closed ramp,
    it, too, locking in place. I pounded on its plates, wildly, sobbing.
    Strong hands seized me from behind, one of the men in a black tunic. There was a
    tiny, three-pronged scar on his right cheekbone. I was dragged weeping and
    kicking through the ship, between tiers of piping and plating.
    Then I was in a curved area, where, fixed in racks on the wall, sloping to the
    floor, were several large, transparent (pg. 33) cylinders, perhaps of heavy
    plastic. In these were the girls I had seen, those who had been taken from the
    truck.
    One tube was empty.
    Another man, clad as the first, unscrewed one end of the empty tube.
    I could see that there were two small hoses, one at each end, fixed in each
    tube. They led into a machine fixed in the wall.
    I struggled wildly, but the two men, one at my ankles, the other holding me
    under the arms, forced me into the tube. My prison was perhaps eighteen inches
    in diameter. The lid to the tube was screwed shut. I screamed and screamed,
    pushing and kicking at the cylinder. I turned on my side. I pressed my hands
    against the walls of the tube. The men did not seem to notice me.
    Then I began to feel faint. It was hard to breathe.
    One of the men attached a small hose to a tiny opening in the tube, above my
    head.
    I lifted my head.
    Oxygen streamed into the tube.
    Another hose was attached at the other end of the tube, above my feet. There was
    a tiny, almost inaudible noise, as of air being withdrawn.
    I could breathe.
    The two men then seemed to brace themselves, by holding onto some rails, part of
    the racking of the piping. I suddenly felt as though I were in an elevator, and
    for the moment could not breathe. I knew then we were ascending. From the
    feeling of my body, pressing against the tube, I thought we must be ascending
    vertically, or nearly vertically. There was no peculiarly, powerful stresses,
    and very little unpleasantness. It was swift, and frightening, but not painful.
    I heard no sound of motors, or engines.
    After perhaps a minute the two men, holding to the railing, moved from the room.
    The strange sensation continued for some time. Then, after a time, I seemed
    pressed against the side of the tube, rather cruelly, for perhaps several
    minutes. Then, suddenly, no forces seemed to play upon me, and, to my horror, I
    (pg. 34) drifted to the other side of the tube. Then, after a moment of this, a
    very gently force seemed to bring me back to the side of the tube on my right.
    Oddly enough, I now thought of this as down. Shortly thereafter one of the men
    in a black tunic, wearing sandals with metal plates on the bottoms, stepped
    carefully, step by step, across the steel plating. It had been the floor, but
    now it seemed as though it were a wall at my left, and he moved strangely on the
    wall.
    He went to the machine into which the hoses from the tubes led, and moved a
    small dial.
    In a moment I sensed something different in the air being conducted into my
    tube.
    There were several similar dials, beneath various switches, doubtless one for
    each of the containers.
    I tried to attract his attention. I called out. Apparently he could not hear me.
    Or was not interested in doing so.
    I was vaguely aware that now the