At the highway, I looked to my right at the point in the far distance where the highway, forest, and clouds came together on the horizon. "If I go in that direction, I'll be walking for a long time before I find anything. There has to be an answer back at the giant warehouse to where I am. And I have a strong urge to go back there to see if there are anymore brown oval dents in the wall of darkness at the back of the warehouse."

Turning to my left, I walked under the high arched opening and started through the wide tunnel. In a few minutes, I saw the end of the tunnel ahead. I could also see that the sun, which was still below the high roof of the huge structure, was punching red streaks through the white clouds, which were, now, high above the black structure.

I knew, then, that I was heading toward the East.

The roof of the huge structure and the flat tops of the mile high walls of darkness were the same height. But the white ceiling was only about half the height of the walls of darkness above the blue plain, and the front edge of the thick roof curved up and away from me. I knew that the plain was about four miles wide from the dark wall where the brown dent was to the wall of darkness that had the arched opening in it, so the distance from the arched opening to the dark wall on the south side of the blue plain, and to the dark wall on the north side, was the same.

If my figures were correct, the floor of the enclosed plain, including the plain under the high ceiling, was about four miles wide and eight miles long. The mile high walls of darkness were on the north, south and west side of the plain. The shorter walls of darkness, and the thick roof above them, were on the east side of the blue plain.

From where I stood, just outside the arched tunnel that went through the huge black wall, the black structure looked more like a huge aircraft hangar than it did a warehouse, and the blue plain could be a landing field.

"I don't think that it's really a hanger because no one would need one this big or need walls around it a mile high and a half mile thick. I can't think of anything that a place this big could be used for; unless, it's some type of giant bomb shelter!"

When I reached the red dust, I had no trouble finding my tracks and following them to the spot where I had fallen to this place and rolled in the dust. From there, I went to the brown depression in the non-reflecting black wall and cleaned off a large area of the floor under it with my bare feet, so the light from the blue floor would glow through to make this dent easier to find.

Laying the shells and the nut-meat on the floor, I unwrapped the black key from the leaf pouch and placed it in the brown depression. After turning the lights off and on, and making the blue curtain appear and disappear, I knew that the key would still work. I took the key from the wall and wrapped it in the leaf pouch at my waist, then I picked up the water shells and leaves of nut-meat from the floor.

"There's got to be something in this place that will tell me where I am! I know by the sun that I'm on the other side of the world from my home, but in what country am I?"

I went back along the wall to the spot where my tracks in the dust led out to where I had rolled after I fell into this place, and I decided to keep on going along the black wall to see if there were any more brown depressions in it.

When I stopped to eat some nut-meat and drink some of the water from the nut shells, I noticed that the clouds were gone from the sky and that it was now deep blue. After walking about two hundred yards more, I saw another brown spot on the black wall up ahead.

When I got to the brown depression, I saw that it looked like the one that controlled the lights and shimmering curtain. So, I cleaned the dust off the floor under the depression and laid the vine slings down. Then I unwrapped the black key and placed it over the brown depression.

The oval key snapped into the wall and changed to a glowing white oval, as it had done in the other depression, so I reached out and touched the right side of the oval. The right side of the oval changed to blue, and I jumped back in surprise as a very large section of the wall vanished, to the right of the oval, to be replaced with a large room. The only light in the room came from the glowing white ceiling of the warehouse.

The large room had two round domes setting on its floor at my end of it, and the room must have been 30 feet high, or more, and at least 200 feet long by 50 feet deep.

My heart was racing again, so I waited until it calmed down before I stepped onto the dark floor and walked over to the huge dome that was nearest to me. As I walked around the dome, I found that it was oval. I figured that it was about 40 feet long by 25 feet wide, and the highest part of the dome was about 15 feet above the floor, but the highest part of the oval dome was closer to the end that was next to where the red dust spilled onto the smooth floor of the dark room. The other dome, which was about thirty feet away, looked like a giant egg with half of the egg buried below the floor.

"Maybe that is what they are?" so I got down on my knees and checked the floor at the base of the dome, but I couldn't find any crack between them. Standing up, I walked on around the dome, sliding my hand along its smooth surface, and went out to the oval key. I touched the left side of the key, and it changed to blue. At the same time that it changed to blue the floor and the ceiling of the room changed to a glowing blue and white. I had turned the lights on.

I touched the key in the center, and it fell out of the wall into my hand. As I started to bend over to pick up the vine slings, I saw that now there were openings in the sides of the two blue domes, so I stepped onto the glowing blue floor and walked cautiously over to the blue dome, that now looked like a blue robin's egg, and looked through the nine or ten foot square opening.

There was a short ramp that went up, and through the two feet thick shell of the dome, to a flat deck that was about two feet above the outside floor. At first, I thought the deck was empty, then I saw four black objects to my right. Stepping up into the dark dome, I walked over to see that the objects were four large sofa chairs. Two of them were setting a little ahead of the other two, which set far apart, and the two forward chairs had a flat topped console between them. The two sofa chairs at the rear had arm rests on both sides of them, but the two in front had only one arm rest since the console between them served as the other.

I sat down in one of the front chairs, and it was very comfortable. As I lay my arm and hand on the console, I felt two dents in its flat top. One of dents was round and the other was oval, and the oval dent had some small bumps in it just like the ones in the wall had. The inside of the dome was too dark to tell if this one was brown, but I placed my key in the dent, and it fit, but the key didn't change its color.

Getting up from the soft chair, I picked up the oval key and walked out of the dark dome. I was going to go over to the other dome to see if it was the same as this one; however, when I walked around the end of the blue dome, I saw a doorway in the center of the back wall of this large room.

The doorway was about nine or ten feet square, the same size as the openings in the domes. I walked over to the doorway and saw that there was a shelf like cubicle to the left of it. The cubicle was about four feet long, one foot high, one foot deep, and it was about four feet above the floor. The cubicle contained two black spheres, which were about the size of grapefruits, and two black ovals, which were the same size as my oval key, set in front of spheres. To the right of the spheres and ovals were four brown dents in the bottom of the cubicle. Two of the dents were round, and the other two were oval.

Through the larger opening, or doorway, I saw two oval platforms that looked like four-seated dune-buggies without wheels. The two platforms were setting in a smaller room about thirty feet square, and the smaller room had another large doorway in the wall across from me.

The seats on the platforms were like the ones inside the dome; large, stuffed, sofa chairs. The two seats in front had a flat topped console between them with a blue sphere on its top. The platforms were about eight feet wide, twelve feet long, and the top of the rear shell, that curved up from the six inch thick base to the back of the rear seats, was about eight feet high. The curved shell, and the side of the platform base, was pale blue, but the top of the deck that the black seats set on was deep black.

I stepped up on the deck of one of the platforms, and sat down in the left front seat. The seat was just as comfortable as the one in the dome. Laying the oval key on the console, I put my hand on the blue sphere, and the wall jumped toward me. I jerked my hand off the sphere, and the wall stopped moving, or I should say, I stopped moving toward it.

"What the hell...?" I said.

I slowly placed my hand on the sphere again, rolled it forward, and the platform moved forward without a sound. I twisted the sphere to the right, and the platform turned to the right. The platform turned to the left when I twisted the sphere back to the left.

"This must be the steering wheel, the accelerator, and the brake all in one combined device. There must be wheels under it!" I stepped off the platform and looked for the wheels, but I couldn't even see a crack where the platform touched the floor.

I walked over to the other doorway and peeked through one side of it. I saw a very wide and very high hallway that went to the right and left for as far as I could see, but I didn't see any other doorways in its walls.

"Damn but this is a big place! Whoever built it must have wanted a lot of room, and they must be a lot smarter than the people I've heard of to build that movable platform. I'll call it a scooter since it scoots across the floor without wheels."

Walking back to the scooter, I sat down in the left front seat, placed my hand on the blue sphere, and drove it through the wide doorway into the large room where the two oval domes were. I stopped the scooter beside the cubicle in the wall and stepped off.

"I'll bet those spheres are for these two domes, and maybe they are what steer them. If they're mobile, that is?" I tried to pick up the blue sphere from the scooter, but it wouldn't come loose from the console. So I picked up one of the black spheres from the cubicle in the black wall. The sphere was very light, so I took the sphere with me as I walked over to the opening into one of the domes and went inside to see if it would fit the round dent in the console.

Sitting down, I placed the black sphere in the round dent in the top of the flat console. The sphere changed to a glowing white, and the dome over the top of me vanished. I was startled to see that I was now on a large oval platform two feet above the blue floor.

"Damn," I said, "What is going to happen next?" I got up and stepped forward to look down at the floor, but I ran into the invisible dome. It didn't hurt me. In fact, the dome felt soft against my head. I reached out with my hand and touched the invisible dome, and it gave a little when I pushed on it. I turned around, walked across the deck, and stepped down the ramp. I looked at, and felt of, the dome, but the dome hadn't changed its looks from the outside. It was still a pale blue dome with a hard surface.

"The inside of the dome must be like a two way mirror!" I said, as I walked back up the ramp and over to the left front seat to sit down. Placing my hand carefully on the white sphere, I rolled it forward, but nothing happened. Looking at the white sphere, I saw the oval depression in front of it, and I thought, "Maybe it takes both of them to make this thing move. What did I do with my oval key?" Standing up, I checked the leaf pouch, then I remembered where it was. I went back out to the scooter, got the key from the console, and went back into the dome.

After I sat down in the seat, I put the black oval key in the brown oval depression, and the black key changed to all blue. I looked around the platform to see if everything was the same, and I saw that the ramp was gone. I got up to feel if the opening was still there, but it wasn't. This time, after I sat down, I placed my hand on the white sphere, rolled it forward, and the platform shot out of the room. I jerked my hand off the sphere, and the platform stopped a few feet from the high black wall and next to the wide arched tunnel that went through it.

I had just traveled four miles in less than a second. "Damn but that's fast!" I looked back at the giant structure, "I hope no one catches me playing with their machines! But if they do, they can tell me where I am and how I got here. What is strange, though, I never felt the craft move, or stop, and it never made a sound? This craft must have an anti-gravity shield around it, or something like that.

"I wonder how you get the ramp back? Maybe it's the key? When I put the key in the depression the ramp disappeared, so if I take the key out, the ramp might reappear!"

I picked up the oval key and it changed back to black. Looking around, I saw that the ramp was there again, "Okay, now I know how to get it open," I placed the key back in the depression, and the key turned blue, and the ramp vanished.

Placing my right hand on the white sphere, I twisted it and turned the oval craft around to head back to the large room. I gently rolled the sphere forward, and the oval craft moved slowly forward over the smooth surface of the blue plain toward the giant structure.

When the oval craft reached the red dust, I looked for the track that it should have made, but I couldn't find any. I couldn't even see a track behind the craft as I drove it through, or over, the dust this time.

I stopped the oval craft in the center of the red dusty plain, picked up the oval key, got up out of the soft seat, walked across the black deck, and down the short ramp. The craft was setting on the dust, or the craft was hovering a few inches above the plain because I could wipe away the red dust from the smooth surface of the blue plain that was under the flat bottom of the domed craft.

"Now I'm convinced that whoever built this machine never told the world about it," I thought, as I went back into the craft. After I sat down, I put the oval key in the top of the flat console and drove the oval craft to the brown depression that would close off the large room where the other domed craft set. I didn't want to leave it open while I went exploring down the long highway.

Turning off the lights and closing the wall to the room, I picked up my nut-meat and water shells and went back into the craft. Then, I drove it across the wide plain toward the arched tunnel that went through the black wall. As I drove slowly along the center of the wide highway, I watched the thick forest on both sides for anything, or anyone, that may have helped me to determine where in the world I was.

It seemed as if I had driven the craft for thirty, or forty, miles when I saw that the highway ahead dropped out of sight. As I approached the downward flowing highway, I saw that it dropped slowly into a large valley filled with more of the large forest, then it curved slowly to the south, or to my left. On the far horizon, I could see a tall blue domed black building that was a few miles beyond where the wide highway curved and vanished among the green trees of the forest. The blue domed building set on the crest of a high ridge at the other side of the large valley.

I rolled the white sphere forward, and the oval craft sped down the blue highway into the large valley.

The highway leveled out at the floor the of the valley for a few miles before it turned to the south in a long curve, then the blue highway came to an end at the base of another high black wall. I drove the craft up to the wall, took my hand off the sphere, and the craft stopped. Picking up the oval key, I walked over to the short ramp and stepped down to the blue highway.

The high black wall disappeared, to the right and left of the wide highway, into the thick trees and underbrush that crowded against it. The ends of the wall were hidden from my view.

As I stood beside the black wall, that was about two hundred feet high, I stared in awe at the blue dome that was really a mobile craft.

"Now what are you going to do, Caleb? There's no one here at the end of the highway, and you still don't know where you're at," I walked over and put my hand on the smooth surface of the blue dome. "I've been driving one of the most advanced machines in the world that belongs to someone, yet no one has come to stop me. I would think that by now they would know that someone has broken into their building, and would have come to investigate."

My stomach began to growl at me, so I went around to the opening and went up into the craft to get some of the nut-meat. When I opened one of the shriveled leaves, I found that the white nut-meat had turned into a brownish-green mess. "I sure can't eat this. I'll have to go back and get some more nuts, but I won't put the nut-meat in anymore of these leaves."

Sitting down in the seat, I placed the key on the console, touched the sphere with my hand, twisted the sphere to the left, and turned the craft around to head back up the highway. However, when I had gone only a few hundred feet, I saw an opening between the trees on my left, so I turned the craft in that direction to see what had caused it.

There was a wide grass covered strip, between the tall trees, that went north-west up a long slope to a black building off in the distance.

"That must be the building I saw earlier. I wonder if this craft will raise up over the grass?" I rolled the sphere forward and the craft moved to the edge of the grass; then, the craft was above the grass. I didn't feel the craft rise above the grass, but I was heading up the long slope toward the black building, and the oval craft was gliding over the green grass as it had over the red dust.

I drove slowly along the one hundred foot wide strip of grass, so I could watch for one of those trees like the one I had gotten the nuts from because I was still hungry. When I spotted the tree, I stopped the craft, opened the ramp, and went out of the craft to get some of the nuts from off the ground.

After I had broken open two of the shells and eaten the nut-meat, I felt a lot better. This time, I took a few of the nuts, and a rock, with me into the craft without opening the nuts. I didn't want the nut-meat to spoil as it had before.

When I arrived at the top of the grassy slope, I saw that the huge black building was round, and it reminded me of a large grain silo. The building was about two-hundred feet in diameter, three or four-hundred feet tall, and set on top of a grass covered hill a few hundred yards beyond the edge of the tall trees.

I drove the craft up to the top of the high hill and stopped it on a wide and level grassy area that ran around the tall building. From there, I could see the mile high walls of darkness, which surrounded the huge structure in the east. Down to my right, as I faced east, I saw the roof of a huge black building that rose above the green leaves of the tall trees. I also could see a large body of water to the south of the black building, with high red bluffs on the southern edge of the blue-green water.

When I glanced toward the sun, I saw only a small black spot where it should have been. I closed my eyes and shook my head, but when I opened my eyes there was still a black spot that covered the sun. I moved my head around, but the black spot stayed in front of the sun. Picking up the oval key and walking over to the open ramp, I looked out at the sun, which was still low in the morning sky, and it almost blinded me.

"The invisible dome must have the power to protect my eyes from the bright light of the sun, but I can still see out through it. I can also hear the birds sing, and the trees rustle when the wind blows through them as if there was no dome around me at all." I walked back to the left front seat, sat down, placed the key in the dent in the console, and turned the craft to the right and then left around the curve of the wall.

Watching the black wall for a brown depression, I was surprised when I saw a huge ocean spread out in front of me as I came around the curve of the huge tower. I drove the craft to the edge of a grass covered slope that dropped slowly, for a mile or more, to a wide reddish-brown beach. The wide beach ran around a large horse-shoe shaped cove and stopped at both ends of the horse-shoe at the base of high red bluffs that protruded out into the blue water of the large ocean.

I rolled the white sphere forward and drove the oval craft down the grassy slope toward the brown beach as I thought: "Well, at least I know that I'm on the west coast of somewhere, but I know that its not North America because the sun wouldn't be that low in the morning sky, it would be low in the west by now. It was after 11 when I last saw the time, so it has to be at least... Hell, I don't know how long I've been here. Maybe eight...no, it's been longer than that. It's been at least twelve hours or more. Now, where in the world is it still dark when it's 11 o'clock in the morning in the center of the United States?

"I've talked to Amateur's in Australia and Japan, and their time is over twelve hours different than mine. However, this place doesn't look like it's in either of those countries, but this place could be in any country west of the Pacific ocean."

When I reached the brown beach, I turned the oval craft to the left and stopped it above the reddish sand. I picked up the oval key and started to rise from the black seat, "I may as well leave this key here. I don't want to lose it in the sand." So I laid the oval key on the black console beside the oval depression and went out onto the warm sandy beach.

I strolled north over the hard packed sand at the top edge of the wide beach, which was fairly flat next to the short grass, and watched the sea gulls as they hovered in the light breeze and then darted away to the west. Listening to the slap of the low waves as they hit on the wet sand at the bottom of the sloping beach on my left, I began to get sleepy. I turned back toward the blue domed craft and saw that it set on the sloped beach at an angle.

When I got back to the craft, I stepped up the ramp and walked around the deck. Even though I could see that the craft set at an angle on the beach, my sense of balance told me that the craft was level. However, when I went down the ramp, I could feel the shift of gravity as I stepped out onto the sand.

"This craft is something else!" I said, as I lay down on the warm sand a few feet from the blue craft and watched a few puffy clouds drift across the blue sky.

The smell of the ocean breeze and the feel of the warm sand relaxed my tired body, so I closed my eyes and soon dozed off to sleep.