Brand reappeared. After a moment, the shining black woman called Lavelle took up a position a few feet behind him and to his left.
‘I want to show you something,’ the man said to Carl. ‘You can see just by looking at us that it would do you no good to jump us – to attack us. Do you dig – do you understand that?’
‘Sure,’ Carl said, rather more eagerly than he had intended. As a first word, it wasn’t a very good one.
‘All right.’ Brand put both his hands on his hips, just below his waist, and seemed to brace himself slightly. ‘But there’s a lot more to it than you see at the moment. Watch closely.’
Instantly the silver man and Lavelle changed places. It happened so suddenly and without any transition that for a second Carl failed to register what he was supposed to have noticed. Neither of the two metal people had moved in the slightest. They were just each one standing where the other one had been standing before.
‘Now -‘ the man said.
At once, he was back where he had been, but the gleaming black woman – man, that outfit was sexy! – was standing far back, by the oval door. Again, there’d been not a whisper or hint of any motion in the room.
‘And once more -‘
This time the result was much more confusing. The metal aliens seemed to have moved, but after a while Carl realized that they hadn’t; he had. The switch was so drastic that for an instant he had thought they – all three of them – were in another room; even the hands of the dial-face looked changed. But actually, all that had happened was that he was now in the other bunk.