perception with the hope of learning how it operated. She was probably sorry she hadn't been contacted telepathically.

"Yeah," Kane replied. "I saw all sorts of mental pictures and they explained what they did to us. Those damned aliens want us for their zoo!"

"Start at the beginning," I suggested.

He flashed an angry glance at me, but seemed to calm somewhat. "This ship was made by a race from another galaxy. Thousands of years ago, they came to Earth in their spaceships when men were primitives living in caves. They wanted to know what our civilization would be like when we developed space flight. So they put this ship on the Moon as a sort of booby-trap. They put it there with the idea that when we made spaceships and went to the Moon, sooner or later, we'd find the ship and enter it—like rabbits in a snare!"

"And now the booby-trap is on its way home," I guessed.

"Yeah, this ship is taking us to their planet and they're going to keep us there while they study us."

"How long will the trip take?" I asked.

"Six months. We'll be bottled up in this crate for six whole damned months! And when we get there, we'll be prisoners!"

Marie's hypnotic spell was fading and once more her face showed the terror inside her.

"Don't feel so bad," I told Kane. "It could be worse. It should be interesting to see an alien race. We'll have our wives with us—"

"Maybe they'll dissect us!" Marie gasped.

Verana scoffed. "A race intelligent enough to build a ship like this? A race that was traveling between the stars when we were living in caves? Dissection is primitive. They won't have to dissect us in order to study us. They'll have more advanced methods."

"Maybe we can reach the ship's controls somehow," Kane said excitedly. "We've got to try to change the ship's course and get back to the Moon!"

"It's impossible. Don't waste your time." The voice had no visible source and seemed to fill the room.

Verana snapped her fingers. "So that's why the aliens read Marie's mind! They wanted to learn our language so they could talk to us!"

Kane whirled in a complete circle, glaring at each of the four walls. "Where are you? Who are you?"

"I'm located in a part of the ship you can't reach. I'm a machine."

"Is anyone else aboard besides ourselves?"

"No. I control the ship." Although the voice spoke without stilted phrases, the tone was cold and mechanical.

"What are your—your masters going to do with us?" Marie asked anxiously.

"You won't be harmed. My masters merely wish to question and examine you. Thousands of years ago, they wondered what your race would be like when it developed to the space-flight stage. They left this ship on your Moon only because they were curious. My masters have no animosity toward your race, only compassion and curiosity."

I remembered the way antigravity rays had shoved Miller from the ship and asked the machine, "Why didn't you let our fifth member board the ship?"

"The trip to my makers' planet will take six months. There are food, oxygen and living facilities for four only of your race. I had to prevent the fifth from entering the ship."

"Come on," Kane ordered. "We'll search this ship room by room and we'll find some way to make it take us back to Earth."

"It's useless," the ship warned us.

For five hours, we minutely examined every room. We had no tools to force our way through solid metal walls to the engine or control rooms. The only things in the ship that could be lifted and carried about were the containers of food and alien games. None were sufficiently heavy or hard enough to put even a scratch in the heavy metal.

Six rooms were open to our use. The two rooms in which the Kanes had been imprisoned were locked and there were no controls or locks to work on.

The rooms that we could enter were without doors, except the ones that opened into the corridor.

After