THE FIVE HELLS OF ORION
 

 BY FREDERICK POHL
 

 Out in the great gas cloud of the Orion Nebula McCray found an ally—and a foe!
 
 [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
 
 
 
 His name was Herrell McCray and he was scared.
 
 As best he could tell, he was in a sort of room no bigger than a prison cell. Perhaps it was a prison cell. Whatever it was, he had no business in it; for five minutes before he had been spaceborne, on the Long Jump from Earth to the thriving colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine. McCray was ship's navigator, plotting course corrections—not that there were any, ever; but the reason there were none was that the check-sightings were made every hour of the long flight. He had read off the azimuth angles from the computer sights, automatically locked on their beacon stars, and found them correct; then out of long habit confirmed the locking mechanism visually. It was only a personal quaintness; he had done it a thousand times. And while he was looking at Betelgeuse, Rigel and Saiph ... it happened.
 
 The room was totally dark, and it seemed to be furnished with a collection of hard, sharp, sticky and knobby objects of various shapes and a number of inconvenient sizes. McCray tripped over something that rocked under his feet and fell against something that clattered hollowly. He picked himself up, braced against something that smelled dangerously of halogen compounds, and scratched his shoulder, right through his space-tunic, against something that vibrated as he touched it.
 
 McCray had no idea where he was, and no way to find out.
 
 Not only was he in darkness, but in utter silence as well. No. Not quite utter silence.
 
 Somewhere, just at the threshold of his senses, there was something like a voice. He could not quite hear it, but it was there. He sat as still as he could, listening; it remained elusive.
 
 Probably it was only an illusion.
 
 But the room itself was hard fact. McCray swore violently and out loud.
 
 It was crazy and impossible. There simply was no way for him to get from a warm, bright navigator's cubicle on Starship Jodrell Bank to this damned, dark, dismal hole of a place where everything was out to hurt him and nothing explained what was going on. He cried aloud in exasperation: "If I could only see !"
 
 He tripped and fell against something that was soft, slimy and, like baker's dough, not at all resilient.
 
 A flickering halo of pinkish light appeared. He sat up, startled. He was looking at something that resembled a suit of medieval armor.
 
 

 
 It was, he saw in a moment, not armor but a spacesuit. But what was the light? And what were these other things in the room?
 
 Wherever he looked, the light danced along with his eyes. It was like having tunnel vision or wearing blinders. He could see what he was looking at, but he could see nothing else. And the things he could see made no sense. A spacesuit, yes; he knew that he could construct a logical explanation for that with no trouble—maybe a subspace meteorite striking the Jodrell Bank , an explosion, himself knocked out, brought here in a suit ... well, it was an explanation with more holes than fabric, like a fisherman's net, but at least it was rational.
 
 How to explain a set of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? A space-ax? Or the old-fashioned child's rocking-chair, the chemistry set—or, most of all, the scrap of gaily printed fabric that, when he picked it up, turned out to be a girl's scanty bathing suit? It was slightly reassuring, McCray thought, to find that most of the objects were more or less familiar. Even the child's chair—why, he'd had one more or less like that himself, long before he was old enough to go to school. But what were they doing here?
 
 Not everything he saw was familiar. The walls of the room itself were strange. They were not metal or plaster or knotty pine; they were not papered, painted or overlaid with stucco. They seemed to be made of some sort of hard organic compound, perhaps a sort of plastic or processed cellulose. It was hard to tell colors in the pinkish light. But they seemed to have none. They were "neutral"—the color of aged driftwood or unbleached cloth.
 
 Three of the walls were that way, and the floor and ceiling. The fourth wall was something else. Areas in it had the appearance of gratings; from them issued the pungent, distasteful halogen odor. They might be ventilators, he thought; but if so the air they brought in was worse than what he already had.
 
 McCray was beginning to feel more confident. It was astonishing how a little light made an impossible situation bearable, how quickly his courage flowed back when he could see again.
 
 He stood still, thinking. Item, a short time ago—subjectively it seemed to be minutes—he had been aboard the Jodrell Bank with nothing more on his mind than completing his check-sighting and meeting one of the female passengers for coffee. Item, apart from being shaken up and—he admitted it—scared damn near witless, he did not seem to be hurt. Item, wherever he was now, it became, not so much what had happened to him, but what had happened to the ship?
 
 He allowed that thought to seep into his mind. Suppose there had been an accident to the Jodrell Bank .
 
 He could, of course, be dead. All this could be the fantasies of a cooling brain.
 
 McCray grinned into the pink-lit darkness. The thought had somehow refreshed him, like icewater between rounds, and with a clearing head he remembered what a spacesuit was good for.
 
 It held a radio.
 
 He pressed the unsealing tabs, slipped his hand into the vacant chest of the suit and pulled out the hand mike. "This is Herrell McCray," he said, "calling the Jodrell Bank ."
 
 No response. He frowned. "This is Herrell McCray, calling Jodrell Bank .
 
 "Herrell McCray, calling anybody, come in, please."
 
 But there was no answer.
 
 Thoughtfully he replaced the microphone. This was ultrawave radio, something more than a million times faster than light, with a range measured, at least, in hundreds of light-years. If there was no answer, he was a good long way from anywhere.
 
 Of course, the thing might not be operating.
 
 He reached for the microphone again—
 
 He cried aloud.
 
 The pinkish lights went out. He was in the dark again, worse dark than before.
 
 For before the light had gone, McCray had seen what had escaped his eyes before. The suit and the microphone were clear enough in the pinkish glimmer; but the hand—his own hand, cupped to hold the microphone—he had not seen at all. Nor his arm. Nor, in one fleeting moment of study, his chest.
 
 McCray could not see any part of his own body at all.
 
 

 II
 
 Someone else could.
 
 Someone was watching Herrell McCray, with the clinical fascination of a biochemist observing the wigglings of paramecia in a new antibiotic—and with the prayerful emotions of a starving, shipwrecked, sailor, watching the inward bobbing drift of a wave-born cask that may contain food.
 
 Suppose you call him "Hatcher" (and suppose you call it a "him.") Hatcher was not exactly male, because his race had no true males; but it did have females and he was certainly not that. Hatcher did not in any way look like a human being, but they had features in common.
 
 If Hatcher and McCray had somehow managed to strike up an acquaintance, they might have got along very well. Hatcher, like McCray, was an adventurous soul, young, able, well-learned in the technical sciences of his culture. Both enjoyed games—McCray baseball, poker and three-dimensional chess; Hatcher a number of sports which defy human description. Both held positions of some importance—considering their ages—in the affairs of their respective worlds.
 
 Physically they were nothing alike. Hatcher was a three-foot, hard-shelled sphere of jelly. He had "arms" and "legs," but they were not organically attached to "himself." They were snakelike things which obeyed the orders of his brain as well as your mind can make your toes curl; but they did not touch him directly. Indeed, they worked as well a yard or a quarter-mile away as they did when, rarely, they rested in the crevices they had been formed from in his "skin." At greater distances they worked less well, for reasons irrelevant to the Law of Inverse Squares.
 
 Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the "probe team" which had McCray under observation, and he was more than a little excited. His members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on various errands, quivered and shook a little; yet they were the calmest limbs in the room; the members of the other team workers were in a state of violent commotion.
 
 The probe team had had a shock.
 
 "Paranormal powers," muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the specimen from Earth.
 
 After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman.
"Incredible—but it's true enough," he said. "I'd better report. Watch him," he added, but that was surely unnecessary. Their job was to watch McCray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as Herrell McCray.
 
 

 
 Hatcher hurried through the halls of the great buried structure in which he worked, toward the place where the supervising council of all probes would be in permanent session. They admitted him at once.
 
 Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report:
 
 "The subject recovered consciousness a short time ago and began to inspect his enclosure. His method of doing so was to put his own members in physical contact with the various objects in the enclosure. After observing him do this for a time we concluded he might be unable to see and so we illuminated his field of vision for him.
 
 "This appeared to work well for a time. He seemed relatively undisturbed. However, he then reverted to physical-contact, manipulating certain appurtenances of an artificial skin we had provided for him.
 
 "He then began to vibrate the atmosphere by means of resonating organs in his breathing passage.
 
 "Simultaneously, the object he was holding, attached to the artificial skin, was discovered to be generating paranormal forces."
 
 The supervising council rocked with excitement. "You're sure?" demanded one of the councilmen.
 
 "Yes, sir. The staff is preparing a technical description of the forces now, but I can say that they are electromagnetic vibrations modulating a carrier wave of very high speed, and in turn modulated by the vibrations of the atmosphere caused by the subject's own breathing."
 
 "Fantastic," breathed the councillor, in a tone of dawning hope. "How about communicating with him, Hatcher? Any progress?"
 
 "Well ... not much, sir. He suddenly panicked. We don't know why; but we thought we'd better pull back and let him recover for a while."
 
 The council conferred among itself for a moment, Hatcher waiting. It was not really a waste of time for him; with the organs he had left in the probe-team room, he was in fairly close touch with what was going on—knew that McCray was once again fumbling among the objects in the dark, knew that the team-members had tried illuminating the room for him briefly and again produced the rising panic.
 
 Still, Hatcher fretted. He wanted to get back.
 
 "Stop fidgeting," commanded the council leader abruptly. "Hatcher, you are to establish communication at once."
 
 "But, sir...." Hatcher swung closer, his thick skin quivering slightly; he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture with. "We've done everything we dare. We've made the place homey for him—" actually, what he said was more like, we've warmed the biophysical nuances of his enclosure —"and tried to guess his needs; and we're frightening him half to death. We can't go faster. This creature is in no way similar to us, you know. He relies on paranormal forces—heat, light, kinetic energy—for his life. His chemistry is not ours, his processes of thought are not ours, his entire organism is closer to the inanimate rocks of a sea-bottom than to ourselves."
 
 "Understood, Hatcher. In your first report you stated these creatures were intelligent."
 
 "Yes, sir. But not in our way."
 
 "But in a way, and you must learn that way. I know." One lobster-claw shaped member drifted close to the councillor's body and raised itself in an admonitory gesture. "You want time. But we don't have time, Hatcher. Yours is not the only probe team working. The Central Masses team has just turned in a most alarming report."
 
 "Have they secured a subject?" Hatcher demanded jealously.
 
 The councillor paused. "Worse than that, Hatcher. I am afraid their subjects have secured one of them. One of them is missing."
 
 There was a moment's silence. Frozen, Hatcher could only wait. The council room was like a tableau in a museum until the councillor spoke again, each council member poised over his locus-point, his members drifting about him.
 
 Finally the councillor said, "I speak for all of us, I think. If the Old Ones have seized one of our probers our time margin is considerably narrowed. Indeed, we may not have any time at all. You must do everything you can to establish communication with your subject."
 
 "But the danger to the specimen—" Hatcher protested automatically.
 
 "—is no greater," said the councillor, "than the danger to every one of us if we do not find allies now ."
 
 

 
 Hatcher returned to his laboratory gloomily.
 
 It was just like the council to put the screws on; they had a reputation for demanding results at any cost—even at the cost of destroying the only thing you had that would make results possible.
 
 Hatcher did not like the idea of endangering the Earthman. It cannot be said that he was emotionally involved; it was not pity or sympathy that caused him to regret the dangers in moving too fast toward communication. Not even Hatcher had quite got over the revolting physical differences between the Earthman and his own people. But Hatcher did not want him destroyed. It had been difficult enough getting him here.
 
 Hatcher checked through the members that he had left with the rest of his team and discovered that there were no immediate emergencies, so he took time to eat. In Hatcher's race this was accomplished in ways not entirely pleasant to Earthmen. A slit in the lower hemisphere of his body opened, like a purse, emitting a thin, pussy, fetid fluid which Hatcher caught and poured into a disposal trough at the side of the eating room. He then stuffed the slit with pulpy vegetation the texture of kelp; it closed, and his body was supplied with nourishment for another day.
 
 He returned quickly to the room.
 
 His second in command was busy, but one of the other team workers reported—nothing new—and asked about Hatcher's appearance before the council. Hatcher passed the question off. He considered telling his staff about the disappearance of the Central Masses team member, but decided against it. He had not been told it was secret. On the other hand, he had not been told it was not. Something of this importance was not lightly to be gossiped about. For endless generations the threat of the Old Ones had hung over his race, those queer, almost mythical beings from the Central Masses of the galaxy. One brush with them, in ages past, had almost destroyed Hatcher's people. Only by running and hiding, bearing one of their planets with them and abandoning it—with its population—as a decoy, had they arrived at all.
 
 Now they had detected mapping parties of the Old Ones dangerously near the spiral arm of the galaxy in which their planet was located, they had begun the Probe Teams to find some way of combating them, or of fleeing again.
 
 But it seemed that the Probe Teams themselves might be betraying their existence to their enemies—
 
 "Hatcher!"
 
 The call was urgent; he hurried to see what it was about. It was his second in command, very excited. "What is it?" Hatcher demanded.
 
 "Wait...."
 
 Hatcher was patient; he knew his assistant well. Obviously something was about to happen. He took the moment to call his members back to him for feeding; they dodged back to their niches on his skin, fitted themselves into their vestigial slots, poured back their wastes into his own circulation and ingested what they needed from the meal he had just taken.... "Now!" cried the assistant. "Look!"
 
 At what passed among Hatcher's people for a viewing console an image was forming. Actually it was the assistant himself who formed it, not a cathode trace or projected shadow; but it showed what it was meant to show.
 
 Hatcher was startled. "Another one! And—is it a different species? Or merely a different sex?"
 
 "Study the probe for yourself," the assistant invited.
 
 Hatcher studied him frostily; his patience was not, after all, endless.
"No matter," he said at last. "Bring the other one in."
 
 And then, in a completely different mood, "We may need him badly. We may be in the process of killing our first one now."
 
 "Killing him, Hatcher?"
 
 Hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like puppies dislodged from suck. "Council's orders," he said. "We've got to go into Stage Two of the project at once."
 
 

 III
 
 Before Stage Two began, or before Herrell McCray realized it had begun, he had an inspiration.
 
 The dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been and groped his way to it and, yes, it had what all spacesuits had to have. It had a light. He found the toggle that turned it on and pressed it.
 
 Light. White, flaring, Earthly light, that showed everything—even himself.
 
 "God bless," he said, almost beside himself with joy. Whatever that pinkish, dancing halo had been, it had thrown him into a panic; now that he could see his own hand again, he could blame the weird effects on some strange property of the light.
 
 At the moment he heard the click that was the beginning of Stage Two.
 
 He switched off the light and stood for a moment, listening.
 
 For a second he thought he heard the far-off voice, quiet, calm and almost hopeless, that he had sensed hours before; but then that was gone. Something else was gone. Some faint mechanical sound that had hardly registered at the time, but was not missing. And there was, perhaps, a nice new sound that had not been there before; a very faint, an almost inaudible elfin hiss.
 
 McCray switched the light on and looked around. There seemed to be no change.
 
 And yet, surely, it was warmer in here.
 
 He could see no difference; but perhaps, he thought, he could smell one. The unpleasant halogen odor from the grating was surely stronger now. He stood there, perplexed.
 
 A tinny little voice from the helmet of the space suit said sharply, amazement in its tone, "McCray, is that you? Where the devil are you calling from?"
 
 He forgot smell, sound and temperature and leaped for the suit. "This is Herrell McCray," he cried. "I'm in a room of some sort, apparently on a planet of approximate Earth mass. I don't know—"
 
 "McCray!" cried the tiny voice in his ear. "Where are you? This is Jodrell Bank calling. Answer, please!"
 
 "I am answering, damn it," he roared. "What took you so long?"
 
 "Herrell McCray," droned the tiny voice in his ear, "Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is Jodrell Bank responding to your message, acknowledge please. Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray...."
 
 It kept on, and on.
 
 McCray took a deep breath and thought. Something was wrong. Either they didn't hear him, which meant the radio wasn't transmitting, or—no. That was not it; they had heard him, because they were responding. But it seemed to take them so long....
 
 Abruptly his face went white. Took them so long! He cast back in his mind, questing for a fact, unable to face its implications. When was it he called them? Two hours ago? Three?
 
 Did that mean—did it possibly mean—that there was a lag of an hour or two each way? Did it, for example, mean that at the speed of his suit's pararadio, millions of times faster than light, it took hours to get a message to the ship and back?
 
 And if so ... where in the name of heaven was he?
 
 

 
 Herrell McCray was a navigator, which is to say, a man who has learned to trust the evidence of mathematics and instrument readings beyond the guesses of his "common sense." When Jodrell Bank , hurtling faster than light in its voyage between stars, made its regular position check, common sense was a liar. Light bore false witness. The line of sight was trustworthy directly forward and directly after—sometimes not even then—and it took computers, sensing their data through instruments, to comprehend a star bearing and convert three fixes into a position.
 
 If the evidence of his radio contradicted common sense, common sense was wrong. Perhaps it was impossible to believe what the radio's message implied; but it was not necessary to "believe," only to act.
 
 McCray thumbed down the transmitter button and gave a concise report of his situation and his guesses. "I don't know how I got here. I don't know how long I've been gone, since I was unconscious for a time. However, if the transmission lag is a reliable indication—" he swallowed and went on—"I'd estimate I am something more than five hundred light-years away from you at this moment. That's all I have to say, except for one more word: Help."
 
 He grinned sourly and released the button. The message was on its way, and it would be hours before he could have a reply. Therefore he had to consider what to do next.
 
 He mopped his brow. With the droning, repetitious call from the ship finally quiet, the room was quiet again. And warm.
 
 Very warm, he thought tardily; and more than that. The halogen stench was strong in his nostrils again.
 
 Hurriedly McCray scrambled into the suit. By the time he was sealed down he was coughing from the bottom of his lungs, deep, tearing rasps that pained him, uncontrollable. Chlorine or fluorine, one of them was in the air he had been breathing. He could not guess where it had come from; but it was ripping his lungs out.
 
 He flushed the interior of the suit out with a reckless disregard for the wastage of his air reserve, holding his breath as much as he could, daring only shallow gasps that made him retch and gag. After a long time he could breathe, though his eyes were spilling tears.
 
 He could see the fumes in the room now. The heat was building up.
 
 Automatically—now that he had put it on and so started its servo-circuits operating—the suit was cooling him. This was a deep-space suit, regulation garb when going outside the pressure hull of an FTL ship. It was good up to at least five hundred degrees in thin air, perhaps three or four hundred in dense. In thin air or in space it was the elastic joints and couplings that depolymerized when the heat grew too great; in dense air, with conduction pouring energy in faster than the cooling coils could suck it out and hurl it away, it was the refrigerating equipment that broke down.
 
 McCray had no way of knowing just how hot it was going to get. Nor, for that matter, had the suit been designed to operate in a corrosive medium.
 
 All in all it was time for him to do something.
 
 

 
 Among the debris on the floor, he remembered, was a five-foot space-ax, tungsten-steel blade and springy aluminum shaft.
 
 McCray caught it up and headed for the door. It felt good in his gauntlets, a rewarding weight; any weapon straightens the back of the man who holds it, and McCray was grateful for this one. With something concrete to do he could postpone questioning. Never mind why he had been brought here; never mind how. Never mind what he would, or could, do next; all those questions could recede into the background of his mind while he swung the ax and battered his way out of this poisoned oven.
 
 

 Crash-clang! The double jolt ran up the shaft of the ax, through his gauntlets and into his arm; but he was making progress, he could see the plastic—or whatever it was—of the door. It was chipping out. Not easily, very reluctantly; but flaking out in chips that left a white powdery residue.
 
 At this rate, he thought grimly, he would be an hour getting through it. Did he have an hour?
 
 But it did not take an hour. One blow was luckier than the rest; it must have snapped the lock mechanism. The door shook and slid ajar. McCray got the thin of the blade into the crack and pried it wide.
 
 He was in another room, maybe a hall, large and bare.
 
 McCray put the broad of his back against the broken door and pressed it as nearly closed as he could; it might not keep the gas and heat out, but it would retard them.
 
 The room was again unlighted—at least to McCray's eyes. There was not even that pink pseudo-light that had baffled him; here was nothing but the beam of his suit lamp. What it showed was cryptic. There were evidences of use: shelves, boxy contraptions that might have been cupboards, crude level surfaces attached to the walls that might have been workbenches. Yet they were queerly contrived, for it was not possible to guess from them much about the creatures who used them. Some were near the floor, some at waist height, some even suspended from the ceiling itself. A man would need a ladder to work at these benches and McCray, staring, thought briefly of many-armed blind giants or shapeless huge intelligent amoebae, and felt the skin prickle at the back of his neck.
 
 He tapped half-heartedly at one of the closed cupboards, and was not surprised when it proved as refractory as the door. Undoubtedly he could batter it open, but it was not likely that much would be left of its contents when he was through; and there was the question of time.
 
 But his attention was diverted by a gleam from one of the benches. Metallic parts lay heaped in a pile. He poked at them with a stiff-fingered gauntlet; they were oddly familiar. They were, he thought, very much like the parts of a bullet-gun.
 
 In fact, they were. He could recognize barrel, chamber, trigger, even a couple of cartridges, neatly opened and the grains of powder stacked beside them. It was an older, clumsier model than the kind he had seen in survival locker, on the Jodrell Bank —and abruptly wished he were carrying now—but it was a pistol. Another trophy, like the strange assortment in the other room? He could not guess. But the others had been more familiar; they all have come from his own ship. He was prepared to swear that nothing like this antique had been aboard.
 
 The drone began again in his ear, as it had at five-minute intervals all along:
 
 "Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is Jodrell Bank calling Herrell McCray...."
 
 And louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the AVC circuits toned the signal down, another voice. A woman's voice, crying out in panic and fear: " Jodrell Bank! Where are you? Help!"
 
 

 IV
 
 Hatcher's second in command said: "He has got through the first survival test. In fact, he broke his way out! What next?"
 
 "Wait!" Hatcher ordered sharply. He was watching the new specimen and a troublesome thought had occurred to him. The new one was female and seemed to be in pain; but it was not the pain that disturbed Hatcher, it was something far more immediate to his interests.
 
 "I think," he said slowly, "that they are in contact."
 
 His assistant vibrated startlement.
 
 "I know," Hatcher said, "but watch. Do you see? He is going straight toward her."
 
 Hatcher, who was not human, did not possess truly human emotions; but he did feel amazement when he was amazed, and fear when there was cause to be afraid. These specimens, obtained with so much difficulty, needed so badly, were his responsibility. He knew the issues involved much better than any of his helpers. They could only be surprised at the queer antics of the aliens with attached limbs and strange powers. Hatcher knew that this was not a freak show, but a matter of life and death. He said, musing:
 
 "This new one, I cannot communicate with her, but I get—almost—a whisper, now and then. The first one, the male, nothing. But this female is perhaps not quite mute."
 
 "Then shall we abandon him and work with her, forgetting the first one?"
 
 Hatcher hesitated. "No," he said at last. "The male is responding well. Remember that when last this experiment was done every subject died; he is alive at least. But I am wondering. We can't quite communicate with the female—"
 
 "But?"
 
 "But I'm not sure that others can't."
 
 

 
 The woman's voice was at such close range that McCray's suit radio made a useful RDF set. He located her direction easily enough, shielding the tiny built-in antenna with the tungsten-steel blade of the ax, while she begged him to hurry. Her voice was heavily accented, with some words in a language he did not recognize. She seemed to be in shock.
 
 McCray was hardly surprised at that; he had been close enough to shock himself. He tried to reassure her as he searched for a way out of the hall, but in the middle of a word her voice stopped.
 
 He hesitated, hefting the ax, glancing back at the way he had come. There had to be a way out, even if it meant chopping through a wall.
 
 When he turned around again there was a door. It was oddly shaped and unlike the door he had hewn through, but clearly a door all the same, and it was open.
 
 McCray regarded it grimly. He went back in his memory with meticulous care. Had he not looked at, this very spot a matter of moments before? He had. And had there been an open door then? There had not. There hadn't been even a shadowy outline of the three-sided, uneven opening that stood there now.
 
 Still, it led in the proper direction. McCray added one more inexplicable fact to his file and walked through. He was in another hall—or tunnel—rising quite steeply to the right. By his reckoning it was the proper direction. He labored up it, sweating under the weight of the suit, and found another open door, this one round, and behind it—
 
 Yes, there was the woman whose voice he had heard.
 
 It was a woman, all right. The voice had been so strained that he hadn't been positive. Even now, short black hair might not have proved it, and she was lying face down but the waist and hips were a woman's, even though she wore a bulky, quilted suit of coveralls.
 
 He knelt beside her and gently turned her face.
 
 She was unconscious. Broad, dark face, with no make-up; she was apparently in her late thirties. She appeared to be Chinese.
 
 She breathed, a little raggedly but without visible discomfort; her face was relaxed as though she were sleeping. She did not rouse as he moved her.
 
 He realized she was breathing the air of the room they were in.
 
 His instant first thought was that she was in danger of asphyxiation;
What is the plot of the story?
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c1a34c92350d4698856691522c2e20d6
Herrell McCray is a navigator on the Starship Jodrell Bank heading for the colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine when he is inexplicably abducted from his ship. He finds himself staring around a dark, silent room full of indeterminate objects. He believes he hears a faint voice in the distance, and suddenly a pinkish light illuminates his path of vision. He sees many familiar objects including a spacesuit, a child's rocking chair, a girl's bathing suit, and more; he wonders how he got there and why such objects are there with him. Three of the room's walls are made of a hard, organic compound, and from grates comprising the fourth wall pours a pungent air. As McCray's confidence returns, he wonders what happened to the Starship Jodrell Bank and begins to wonder if he is dead. When he remembers spacesuits come with radios, he tries contacting the ship to no avail and realizes he must be many lightyears away. Then, with sudden horror, he realizes that he cannot see his own body, and the room goes dark again. Outside the room, an alien named "Hatcher" runs a probe team tasked with observing McCray and running experiments on him in order to develop an understanding of the human species. Their "probes" are mandibles that can attach and detach from their round, jelly-like bodies and run errands and conduct scientific research. Hatcher makes his way to the supervising council of all probes to report the team's findings that McCray displayed "paranormal powers" when using his radio to establish contact with his ship. The council urges Hatcher to continue his studies with haste because a member of The Central Masses probe team has been captured by the Old Ones, an ancient species hostile to Hatcher's people. His team must put McCray through a series of tests in order to help them potentially discover a way to defend themselves against the Old Ones. As Hatcher considers the best way to establish communication with McCray without causing him harm, his assistant alerts him to the presence of a female human on the viewing console. Hatcher orders the assistant to bring her in as they may need another human in case McCray dies. Hours after his initial transmission was sent to the ship, McCray receives a response from the ship. He dispatches another transmission and begins to notice the room getting hotter as the air grows more toxic. Hatcher has started the survival portion of the test. McCray uses an ax to break his way out of the room and enters another dark room full of desks he assumes are some kind of workspaces for his captors. Suddenly, he hears a woman's voice crying out for the Jodrell Bank and makes his way toward her. Hatcher and his assistant discuss whether to abandon McCray and focus on the female since she appears to be more susceptible to communication, but they ultimately decide against it. McCray eventually finds the woman through a series of doors and hallways.
10
8a8a1777b6b3420bade200c50cd02a39
Herrell McCray is the navigator on Starship Jodrell Bank on a long haul flight from Earth to the colonies of Betelgeuse Nine. During a routine course check, he suddenly teleports into a dark and scary room filled with a strange melange of objects - from a spacesuit to a woman’s bathing suit. Some he recognizes from his early life, like a childhood rocking chair. He calls for help on the ultrawave radio of the spacesuit, but there is no answer, telling him he is a long way from anything since the range of the radio is hundreds of light-years. McCray is being observed from another room by an alien Probe Team led by Hatcher. They are watching McCray’s every action with fascination. They think he has paranormal powers when he operates the radio and they detect electromagnetic vibrations that are modified by his voice. Hatcher rushes to tell a councillor from the supervising council of all the alien probes about the discovery and he is ordered to establish contact with McCray immediately because they need allies in the race of Old Ones (their word for humans). Hatcher defends going at a slow pace since they have frightened McCray so deeply already, but the concillor does not budge since there has been an incident of one of their staff on the Central Masses probe team getting captured by their human subject. Hatcher’s people are capturing humans from Jodrell Bank because they detected it near their territory and were almost completely destroyed when they last encountered humans. They are now desperate to find ways to fight or escape them.
Back in McCray’s observation room, he hears a faint voice responding from his ship via the spacesuit radio. This gives him hope, but also panic because he calculates that he must be more than five hundred light-years away from his ship for such a long lag. He radios back, but knows there will be no response for several more hours. The room suddenly gets very hot and a chlorine-like gas is being pumped in that burns his lungs. He quickly puts on the spacesuit which will keep him cool and filter the air, then picks up an axe and breaks out of the room into a hallway. He finds the parts of an antique bullet gun on a bench outside, and then hears a woman scream out to Jodrell Bank for help on his radio.
The heat and chlorine gas are a survival test, and McCray passes. McCray uses his radio to locate the woman. He notices that there is a new door where there was not one before. Hatcher has engineered this so that McCray will find the woman and they can study them communicating with each other. Hatcher thinks this is a step toward successful contact with humans. McCray finds the woman face down on the floor. She wears coveralls and he believes she may be Chinese. McCray wonders if she has asphyxiated by breathing the air in the room.

2
92eed7ebda2746e9865c62ed7a23992d
An unnamed alien race has abducted the navigator, Herrell McCray, from a ship to use him to help save their race. They plan to test his intelligence and then communicate with him, making him an ally to perhaps work as an intermediary between their race and the Old Ones. They call the human race the Old Ones, and many years ago, they had an encounter with them that left the aliens fleeing for their survival and ending up having to abandon their populated planet. The problem now is that the humans are sending out mapping parties that are getting dangerously close to where the aliens live now. The probe team observing McCray is led by Hatcher; his team observes everything McCray does and reports significant findings to the supervising council overall probe teams.
	Another one of their probe teams has lost a member of their team to the Old Ones, and now the aliens are worried about what the Old Ones will learn and what they will do. For this reason, they are having to step up the pace of their work with McCray, even though Hatcher is worried about somehow harming him. They have tried working with other humans in the past, but they have all died during the stages of their tests.
	The probe team acquires another test subject, a female, who begins calling out for help. McCray hears her and begins making his way to her. She is unconscious when he finds her, and he suspects that it is from breathing the air in the building. The aliens have not communicated with her either, yet, but believe they are beginning to establish the start of communication. They believe McCray and the female will communicate with each other, which might help them establish communication with McCray.

6
a73da7f8b2f74dbc93bd5bc6b52dab29
Herrel McCray, the navigator on the Jodrell Bank, wakes up to find himself in a dark room. He stumbles around for a bit before a pink glow lights up parts of the room. He sifts through the items on the floor, objects from Earth mostly, and looks at the metal walls. One of the three walls is made up of an organic plastic compound, but the rest are impenetrable. He sees a spacesuit and uses its microphone to emit a distress signal to Jodrell Bank. He hears nothing in response, meaning he must be hundreds of light-years away from them. Suddenly, the light goes out, but not before he realized he couldn’t see his reflection in the spacesuit. As he freaks out, the reader is introduced to Hatcher, the lead alien probe of the team observing Herrel. He and his probe team believe that Hatcher has paranormal powers because he differs so greatly from their blob-like race. Hatcher reports back to the supervising council and informs them of the Earthman’s doings, specifically his ability to speak through his throat. They order him to establish communication quickly, since the Central Masses Team just sent out the message that one of their probes is missing, presumably killed by their test subject. Hatcher thinks they’re moving too fast since their previous subjects didn’t survive. He goes to the eating room, removes his previous day’s digested food from his slit, and puts in new vegetation. His assistant sends him an image telepathically of another human, this time a woman, that they had just captured. Hatcher informs his team they must move into Stage Two. Herrell hears a click, feels the room get warmer, and smells something unpleasant. He turns on the light in the spacesuit and is relieved to see his body. Jodrell Bank calls him back, so he sends in a long message explaining his situation. He hears nothing back. He climbs into the spacesuit, realizing the air is toxic, and lets the spacesuit provide fresh air. He grabs an ax off the floor and uses it to break out of the poisonous room. Once out, he tries to open a cupboard in the new area but is unable to. He sees a pistol that had been taken apart before. Jodrell Bank calls back in, but this time a woman responds, calling for help. McCray communicates with her and tracks her using her descriptions. He runs around the compound, trying to find her, and eventually goes through a door that was previously unopened. He finally finds her, unconscious on the floor. 
What is the setting of the story?
8
c1a34c92350d4698856691522c2e20d6
The story begins sometime during the Starship Jodrell Bank's Long Jump from Earth to the colonies surrounding Betegeuses Nine as it passes by Betelgeuse, Rigel, and Saiph. The rest of the action takes place in an unknown area of space within a "great buried structure" that is a massive labyrinth of dark rooms and hallways with unusual doors that seem to shift and change after passing through them. This is where Hatcher and his probe team observe McCray in his enclosure, which is no bigger than a prison cell, dark, and full of vaguely familiar objects: a spacesuit, a child's rocking chair, a chemistry set, a girl's bathing suit, an ax. Three of the walls are made of a hard, organic compound and the fourth is covered in grates from which a halogen-smelling air pours out into the room. Although everything is dark, Hatcher occasionally triggers a pinkish, halo-like light that allows McCray to examine his surroundings. Elsewhere in the structure is a place where the supervising council of all probes stays in permanent session, monitoring the work of all probe teams including the team at The Central Masses. When McCray breaks out of his initial enclosure, he finds himself in another dark room, large and bare. Using the beam from his suit lamp, he sees shelves, cupboard-like contraptions, and level surfaces that appeared to be waist-high workbenches attached to the walls and ceiling. He finds a gun on one of the benches. After finding the gun, he realizes the door he came through is gone; instead, there is an uneven, three-sided door he enters to find the unconscious woman on the other side.
10
8a8a1777b6b3420bade200c50cd02a39
The story is set in a time when humans have interstellar travel and are mapping new galaxies. They are feared by at least some of the aliens they have encountered, such as Hatcher’s people who were almost completely wiped out after their last human contact. The aliens are so fearful now that they have abandoned a planet as a decoy for the humans and are capturing humans off the Starship Jodrell Bank that they’ve detected in their galaxy to probe them and find out ways to fight or escape humans for good.
When McCray is captured, he awakes in a strange room with three walls made of a hard organic compound, and one wall made of grates that a pungent halogen smell came out of. There is a dim pink light in the room, and it is filled with meaningful objects from McCray’s past and present that he thinks of like a creepy trophy room of his life. Importantly there is a modern spacesuit that saves his life when the aliens administer a survival test that heats the room and pumps in chlorine gas through the grates. Directly outside of this room is a sterile hallway and the rest of the testing facilities of the aliens. There are other rooms similar to his where other humans are being probed by the aliens, such as the woman he hears screaming through the radio of his space suit who is in a nearby room.
Hatcher, the alien in charge of conducting the Probe Team to make contact with the humans, observes them with his team of scientists and they take detailed notes on their actions that are reported to the supervisory council of probes in another nearby room.

2
92eed7ebda2746e9865c62ed7a23992d
The story is set in the spiral arm of the galaxy where the aliens who abduct McCray are living. McCray is abducted from the Starship Jodrell Bank where he is navigator as the ship is on a trip from Earth to the colonies in Betelgeuse Nine. McCray is on the ship one minute, and the next, he is in a completely dark room full of unidentifiable objects. Unknown to him, the objects have been selected by the aliens as ones that are on McCray’s ship to give him a homey setting. McCray has been trying to feel the objects and his surroundings to determine where he is. When he calls out in frustration because he can’t see, they light up a spacesuit that gives him enough illumination to see the objects that include a set of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a space-ax, an old fashioned children’s rocking chair, a chemistry set, and a girl’s bathing suit. Three of the walls, the floor, and the room's ceiling are an unusual substance, possibly cellulose. The fourth wall is grated like a ventilation system, and there is a faint smell of halogen gases lingering in the room. The spacesuit has a radio which McCray uses to contact his ship, but it doesn’t respond immediately. 
	From another room, McCray is being observed by Hatcher and his probe team. Hatcher isn’t exactly male; his race doesn’t have them, but he isn’t female either. He is a three-foot sphere-shaped glob of jelly covered with a hard shell. His arms and legs are not attached but rather are snakelike structures that obey his brain. They work best close to the body but can work up to a fourth of a mile from it. Hatcher’s appendages are the calmest ones in the room.
	The building where all this takes place is located underground. The supervising council is located in the same building, and Hatcher can move from his observation room to the council’s room in a matter of minutes. Due to the lag in transmission time and message reception, McCray believes he is somewhere around five hundred light-years away from his ship.

6
a73da7f8b2f74dbc93bd5bc6b52dab29
The Five Hells of Orion by Frederick Pohl takes place on an unknown planet light-years away from the realm of human discovery. The probes, a blob-like alien race, have captured two humans and brought them back to their home to study and observe them. Herrel McCray wakes up to a dark prison cell filled with Earthly items, such as a book or a bathing suit. This tiny cell has three impenetrable walls, and then the fourth is made of something similar to plastic. He cuts into the fourth wall with an ax and escapes the room only to arrive in a new one. This one features cupboards with the same impenetrable surfaces and an antique pistol that had been previously taken apart. As Herrel makes his way through the story, the reader sees very little of the compound they’re keeping him in, as there is presumably not a lot of light. However, we do know the probes eat in an eating room that features a trough where they can dispose of their bodily fluids. 
Who is Hatcher and what is his role in the story?
8
c1a34c92350d4698856691522c2e20d6
Hatcher is an alien of an unnamed race. He cannot be described as male because his race "had no true males." He is three feet tall with a hard-shelled, circular body of jelly. His arms and legs are snakelike mandibles that can detach from his body, and he can control them with his brain from vast distances, although their effectiveness diminishes the further they travel from Hatcher's body. When they return to Hatcher's body, they rest in crevices in his skin. When he feeds, a slit appears at the bottom of his body and emits a thin, fetid fluid Hatcher throws away; he then places a nutrient-filled, kelp-like vegetable in the slit for sustenance. Hatcher is young, adventurous, scientifically gifted, knowledgeable, and enjoys playing sports. Although he does not feel the equivalent of human empathy, he also doesn't want harm to befall McCray and feels responsible for his proper care. Hatcher manages the probe team that observes McCray throughout the story, and he reports on McCray's behavior and his use of "paranormal powers" to the supervising council. Hatcher worries about hurrying to establish communication with McCray because he believes it will harm and perhaps even kill him, and later he wonders if communication is even possible at all with humans (later, he notes he is able to establish a minor level of communication with the female but wonders if others might be able to communicate with her). When Hatcher makes his report to the supervising council, they inform him of the return of the Old Ones, who have captured a member of The Central Masses Probe Team. He questions whether or not to tell his crew considering he was never explicitly told not to by the council. In many ways, Hatcher and McCray are similar although Hatcher is generally disgusted by the human body.
10
8a8a1777b6b3420bade200c50cd02a39
Hatcher is an alien from a race that was once nearly completely destroyed by humans (they call Old Ones) before. They are now probing humans from McCray’s ship, Starship Jodrell Bank, because they have detected the human mapping mission in the spiral arm of their galaxy and are afraid of another encounter. They are looking for ways to fight or to escape humans for good, and have abandoned one of their planets as a precautionary decoy to avoid an encounter.
Hatcher runs one of the alien Probe Teams, and McCray is one of his human subjects. Hatcher is an adventurous, young scientist who enjoys games and sports, and he is in a position of importance - reporting only to a Councillor of the supervising council of all probes. Hatcher is a three foot diameter sphere with a hard shell and jelly interior. He possesses arms and legs but they are not attached to the sphere of his body. He controls those appendages with his brain telepathically, such that they can be operating in one room when he is in another. He doesn’t want to harm his subjects, including McCray, because they are difficult to acquire. Hatcher doesn’t necessarily have emotions, but he can comprehend human feelings and knows when McCray is in distress during the experiments. Hatcher’s role is essential to his people making contact with humans and finding ways to deal with them so that they don’t have to continue living through generations of fear about being wiped out by them. 
2
92eed7ebda2746e9865c62ed7a23992d
Hatcher leads the probe team observing Herrell McCray and testing him when he discovers that McCray has paranormal powers (which are actually his voice and the radio microphone). Once he realizes this, he immediately takes the news to the supervising council. After discussing the new information, the council orders Hatcher to establish communication with McCray immediately. They explain that the Central Masses team has just lost one of their probe team to the Old Ones, so the danger is even greater than before, and time is running out. Hatcher is reluctant to push McCray for fear of causing harm to him, but the council lets him know they are facing an emergency. Hatcher informs his team the council is ordering them to move to Stage Two. They increase the heat and pour a halogen gas into the room and watch as McCray uses the spacesuit for protection and breaks out of the room using the space-ax. This means that McCray has passed the first survival test. When the female subject cries out in pain, Hatcher watches with interest as McCray makes his way to her. He thinks that the female and McCray are communicating with each other. Hatcher’s team adds a door to the room McCray is in so that he can find the female, and Hatcher is pleased that McCray has made it this far in their test.

6
a73da7f8b2f74dbc93bd5bc6b52dab29
Hatcher is one of the probes and the leader of his particular study group. He is a three-foot-tall blob with detachable limbs. He eats through a slit lower on his body, which processes vegetation and then essentially pees it out. He is fairly young, but also very intelligent and capable. Hatcher acts as the commander over the team of probes that are testing and observing Herrel McCray. He, of course, reports to the Council who oversee several different probe operations. Hatcher does not want to kill the Earthmen and believes they are moving too fast with their tests. 
What is the significance of the probes in the story?
8
c1a34c92350d4698856691522c2e20d6
Physically speaking, the probes refer to the snakelike mandibles that form the arms and legs of the alien race to which Hatcher belongs. These mandibles are able to detach themselves and travel vast distances away from the body, conducting experiments and running errands controlled remotely by the brain. When they return to the body, they settle into little grooves formed in the skin at the base of the globular host body. Hatcher manages the probe team responsible for observing McCray and running him through a series of tests. The supervising council oversees operations of all the various Probe Teams throughout the universe; the ultimate goal of all Probe Teams is to discover a way in which to defend their race against the hostile Old Ones who have recently resurfaced and captured a team member from The Central Masses Probe Team.
10
8a8a1777b6b3420bade200c50cd02a39
The probes are significant because they are being conducted by an alien race in order to find a way to fight humans or to escape them. The threat of the humans (called Old Ones by the aliens) has loomed over the aliens for generations, and Hatcher describes that one encounter with them in the past had nearly completely destroyed their people. The only way they were able to escape was by abandoning one of their planets as a decoy and running away. When Hatcher’s people once again detected that there were humans on a mapping mission in their spiral arm of the galaxy, they formed Probe Teams to capture and study the humans. The success of the probes in establishing contact with the humans is essential to them understanding how to protect their people from the fear they live under.

2
92eed7ebda2746e9865c62ed7a23992d
The probes are being carried out in an effort to find an ally among the Old Ones (humans) in order to save the beings of Orion. They had an encounter with the Old Ones years ago, and their race had almost been destroyed. They had to run and hide, take a populated planet with them, and then abandon it. Now the Old Ones are sending out mapping teams near their planet, and they are running out of time. The Probe Teams are trying to find a way to combat the Old Ones or else run from them again. Time is growing shorter because now the Central Masses have taken someone from one of their probe teams, so they might be getting the information to destroy them. 
6
a73da7f8b2f74dbc93bd5bc6b52dab29
The probes cause the main conflict in this story: the kidnapping and testing of two humans. The probes are worried that human domination will occur again and their species will be murdered or forced out of their homes. They plan to learn more about these humans, so they can destroy them, know their plans, or know when to run. The probes kidnap Herrel McCray from the Jodrell Bank and put him through a series of tests to better understand his race. Evidently, they have done this before, for Hatcher speaks of previous test subjects who all died during the first test. 
Who is Herrell McCray and what happens to him in the story?
8
c1a34c92350d4698856691522c2e20d6
Herrell McCray is the navigator for the Starship Jodrell Bank whose mission is to reach the colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine. He is young, adventurous, gifted in science and technology, and enjoys playing baseball, poker, and 3D chess. When McCray finds himself inexplicably abducted and transported to a dark room in an unknown location, he is confused about how he ended up in that location and why he is surrounded by items that vaguely remind him of his childhood. He is grateful when a pinkish light offers some illumination, and he attempts to contact his ship using the radio on a spacesuit he finds in the room. Before the light goes out, he panics when he is not able to see any part of his body; he later realizes this was a trick of the light. McCray continues to attempt to make contact with the ship and hours go by before he receives a reply, which makes him realize he is possibly millions of lightyears away from it. As McCray realizes his room is slowly filling with toxic fumes, he uses an ax he finds to break free and tries to find a way to escape his unknown prison. As he navigates the unusual building, he finds a gun and eventually hears a transmission from an unknown woman who is also calling out for the ship. He makes his way through bizarre doors until he finds her face down on the ground. 
10
8a8a1777b6b3420bade200c50cd02a39
Herrell McCray is a navigator on the interstellar mapping vessel Jodrell Bank. He is a logical, mathematical thinker. During a routine course check on his way from Earth to the colonies of Betelgeuse Nine, he suddenly is no longer at his navigation station, but instead in a dark room that stinks of halogen compounds. The room is like a dark, scary, trophy room full of meaningful objects from McCray’s past and present. He has been captured by an alien race that is studying humans to try to make contact with them to determine how to fight or escape them, and they’ve put him in this room with artificial objects to try to make McCray calm so they can run tests. He tries the radio on a spacesuit in the room several times. He receives a message from his ship several hours later that gives him a glimmer of hope for rescue, but he calculates that he must be five hundred light years away from them to account for the hours-long lag between messages. When the room begins heating up and chlorine gas begins burning his lungs as the aliens administer a survival test, he quickly gets into the spacesuit and breaks out of the room with a large space axe. He passes the survival test without knowing it. He hears a woman scream for help on his radio and he realizes she is also in the facility and goes to her. He finds her unconscious, face down on the floor from possible asphyxiation.

2
92eed7ebda2746e9865c62ed7a23992d
Herrell McCray is the ship’s navigator on the Starship Jodrell Bank. On a routine mission from Earth to the colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine, he visually confirms the navigation's locking mechanism when he suddenly finds himself in a completely dark room filled with various objects. He tries to explore the objects with his hands but in frustration, calls out that he wishes he could see, and there is a flicker of pinkish light from a spacesuit. With the light available to him, he looks at the other objects in the room: a set of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a space-ax, an old-fashioned child’s rocking chair, a chemistry set….The objects are somewhat familiar, many of which he had owned himself. Three walls are solid, but the fourth seems to be a grating, perhaps a ventilator. McCray recalls that spacesuits have radios, so he tries to contact his ship but receives no answer. He thinks about the speed of radio transmissions and realizes he must be far away from his ship not to receive an immediate reply. 
	Unknown to McCray, he has been selected for observation and an experiment by a probe team. They are testing his intelligence and need to communicate with McCray to find an ally; otherwise, their species is in great danger. McCray decides to put the spacesuit on just as the room begins warming up and a gas starts coming into the room. Then he hears a transmission from his ship, but he realizes they can’t hear him when he responds to it. It dawns on him that the distance between him and his ship is so great that it takes two or three hours to transmit messages. After sending another message, he uses the space-ax to break through the door of the room because the gas is hurting his lungs. He finds himself in another room or hallway with what appear to be workbenches mounted at various heights. On one he sees the parts of a bullet-gun.
	Next, McCray hears a woman calling for help. He tries to determine the direction of her voice, and when he turns around, there is an open door where there wasn’t one earlier. McCray goes down a hall, finds another open door, and the woman is in there. She is unconscious, and McCray thinks it’s because she is breathing the air in the room.

6
a73da7f8b2f74dbc93bd5bc6b52dab29
Herrel McCray is the navigator on the Jodrell Bank, heading to Betelgeuse Nine from Earth. McCray is an avid sportsman, enjoying games like poker, 3-D chess, and baseball. Herrel McCray suddenly wakes up in an unfamiliar, dark room. He does not remember how he got there, in fact, his last memories were of being aboard the Jodrell Bank. After stumbling around in the dark, a faint pink glow partially illuminates his surroundings. He sees a bunch of random items, like books, a bathing suit, and a rocking chair. There’s also a spacesuit, which he uses to attempt to communicate with his ship by accessing the microphone. No one responds to his cries though, and he notices that he is unable to see his hands in the reflection of the spacesuit. He screams and darkness falls again. Later, remembering another aspect of the handy-dandy spacesuit, Herrel flicks on the light inside of it and is now able to see the entire room. He is also able to see his own body again, which calms him down. He feels the temperature increase, smells a weird, halogenic-like scent, and hears a buzzing, but he ignores it as his spacesuit starts speaking. Someone aboard the Jodrell Bank is calling for him, so he responds, but there’s no answer. He realizes that he must be hundreds of light-years away for communication to be taking this long. Realizing there’s poison in the air, he steps inside the spacesuit to avoid suffocation. The suit cooled him and provided fresh air. He picks up an ax off the floor and uses it to chop down the door. He escapes his cell and explores the next room. Jodrell Bank calls in again, but this time a woman answers it, also calling for help. He tracked her voice and went through a previously-unopened door to find her. She’s unconscious, and he worries that she has breathed in the poisonous air. 