Lucas Moody could only stare in disbelief at what he was seeing. Or, perhaps he was staring at what others wanted him to see. Either way, the chamber he had wandered in to was unlike anything he had encountered before.

Considering the unfathomable wonders he had already come across, he wasn’t prepared for what he was observing. It had to be unreal, yet there it was.

The closest thing his human mind could imagine that resembled the Ithis structure was an insect’s eye viewed from the inside. As long as he kept his mind on the entire vista of color and motion, he could examine the whole structure and it’s various general details. The moment he focused his attention on just one of those many details, it grew to nearly surround him.

It was very much like sorting through a schematic with a system that could “zoom in” on a particular section. Each individual hexagonal “window” looked to be a view of a physical location somewhere, presented from the point of view of a high angle observer. It was, essentially, the largest bank of surveillance cameras ever constructed. From where he was standing, Moo was fairly certain there were at least hundreds of thousands of tiny flickering windows, if not millions. The strange thing was, if his eyes lingered for even a moment, whatever he was looking at would grow large enough to recognize.

He was about to go back the way he came when something caught his attention. He wasn’t quite sure what he had seen was recognizable, but there was something in his mind that told him to go take another look. There. Near the center of the far wall of the spherical chamber was a familiar color. As he focused, a picture of two people examining a strange object emerged.

“Hey! I’m in here! I’m here!” he shouted. The images of Yili and Zony didn’t respond to the sound. Colonel Moody began running towards what, from his vantage point, was the viewscreen displaying his fellow officers. When he looked around to see if he was making any progress, he was almost overcome by a sense of vertigo. Being inside such a large structure made it very difficult for his merely human mind to gather any significant knowledge about his speed, direction or momentum. He couldn’t even say for sure what platform he was supported by. He could feel his footsteps, but he had no physical frame of reference.

But when he focused his attention back on Yili and Zony and whatever location they occupied, it became easier for him to recognize what was happening. He felt as if he were moving faster, but he could not say why. Whatever was at the other end of the viewscreen he was staring at as intently as he could seemed to get more and more real. Finally his mind caught up with what was going on, and the control room where the engineer and Signals officer were standing was suddenly approaching him at his top running speed. He started bellowing, and his voice rose higher and higher as he ran. A moment later, he burst through some kind of membrane, and felt as if his body had lost at least one of its dimensions.

In an instant of time, Colonel Moody caught a glimpse of open space, the upper edge of the Sentinel emplacement on Barker’s Asteroid and an almost painfully bright lattice of alien numbers and letters. Then, still howling, he quite literally fell out of the ceiling and slammed against the floor next to Yili and Zony. Broken and shattered pieces of metal, plastic and stone clattered against the floor with him.

Lieutenant Curtiss jumped back and drew her weapon. Zony shrieked and backed into a corner, ready to perform rare and violent martial arts.

“As you were,” Colonel Moody coughed before rolling prone on his back and staring at the ceiling.