I looked out. It was an old number of Titbits that one of the men must have brought. Further away in the corner I saw a torn Lloyd’s News . I scrambled back into the sphere with these things. “What have you got?” I said.

I took the book from his hand and read, “The Works of William Shakespeare.”

He coloured slightly. “My education has been so purely scientific⁠—” he said apologetically.

“Never read him?”

“Never.”

“He knew a little you know⁠—in an irregular sort of way.”

“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 shan’t need them.”

“Why not?”

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