At the closer look the alien looked in the same way. The strange inhuman body lit up with the yellow deep light and immovable black brown spots which appeared again. The alien didn’t move looked like a monolithic block or plate.
The platform on which he stood kept shining with the gold light.
The rocks, ground, grass, every thing around it were covered with the white strange substance. It’s looked like a down. From under the platform here and there in the different places was licking out the pale light. It’s seemed something invisible was under it.
They stopped still in some two or three yards away from it.
Max reacted on everything what was happening with them very indifferently. But Jennifer was filled up with the energy and vivacity.
Crumpling her evening gown with her hands she was filled with the desire to come closer to the alien’s platform and climbs up on it or on the contrary turn back and run away without looking back.
But she did nothing of it. With her wide opened eyes she just absorbed everything she could see around herself. Telling the truth deeply inside of her soul as every normal person she of course didn’t believe that it was a real alien. And it was a normal, common attitude. She guessed that some jerk got inside the lighted box and play tricks on them. What was the purpose of it? She didn’t know it exactly. And she didn’t care about it. She just thought that way.
But the fact that she treated the unknown creature as a real alien also was very easy to explain. It’s the party, the drinks; you know all these funny stuff. At last, who knows, maybe she wanted to be tricked just a little with the desire to meet something in her life strange and unusual. Just see, at least once in her lifetime something which really doesn’t exist on real.
That’s why she felt under the influence of unexpected desire to take dream for real. Everybody knows that the aliens exist only in the cartoons and movies. But at the same time she felt, something was wrong.
Melting down the ground and turning the grass beneath the platform in about of a few tens yards around it into the long silver threads, the platform started its movement again. The front edge of it propped against the big rock. As if blazing up the rock suddenly filled with the green light. Than just like a peace of butter on the hot pan melted down and spread on the ground. The platform came into the movement, slowly turned around. Now the alien was walking to his own craft ship. He calls them to follow him with his left hand. And they subdued with the obedience and without resistance.
The craft ship becomes closer. It’s growing up into their eyes. And when to it left not much space, the alien suddenly disappeared together with his platform. At the same time Max and Jennifer saw the light line which appeared in the lower part of the ship. Moved little aside the line of light turned into the stripe about six yards long. Also in the air appeared the yellow stairs.
Starting at the ground, they went on board of the burning hulks.
Jennifer was the first who guessed what it was.
‘Stairs.’ she said, without turning back her head.
Max, who was standing behind her, muttered something in reply. Thoughts in his head broken off, the feelings disappeared, and he wanted it all ends as soon as possible. He did not know what it was, because he lost the ability to analyze the situation. But, feeling some kind of oppressive burden that was sharp and painful – he wanted to get rid of it.
Jennifer slowly climbed the stairs. No, she was not afraid to board on the alien’s ship. But she was afraid to stumble and fall down. Steps were hanging in the air. And there was nothing around, for which she could grasp with her hands.
Lowering his foot on the first stair, Max turned back. Slipped to a distant city’s lights, his eyes lingered on the place where they saw for the first time their mysterious companion. The tree was black, and didn’t longer glowing with the yellow light. The trace left by the yellow shining platform, blindingly were gleaming like a mirror under the direct sunlight.
Then Max saw his car. She seemed to him strange and distant. It’s looked like it was not he who drove it just a half an hour ago. Everything has changed. Everything was different!
Jennifer was already on the threshold of the craft. She was met by the stranger who in some way got there before Max and her. He still kept silence, and still moved very slowly. Not wanting to leave her alone, Max quickly ran up the left stairs, and stopped right behind her back. Jennifer did not look back, but, finding his hand clasped in her hand.
The stairs by which they got on board the ship, suddenly curled in a glowing filament. An oval door moved away, merged with the rest of the body of the craft. The way back was cut off! The stranger on his platform slid into the some kind of the room which opened and then gone without any trace.
At the same time, Jennifer, as if she was awaking from the delusion asked:
‘Max, where are we? And where that glowing man? Gone?’ she looked just like in her sleep somebody took her away from her cozy apt, transferred into the wild jungle and put on a branch of some baobab, where she met the next morning.
‘Well....’ Max put his hands in his trouser’s pockets. The cigarettes were not there. Swearing, he looked around.
The room, in which they found themselves, was lit up with a soft yellow light. It lulled and induced to sleep. Along the yellow walls, which also shone, had been seen the purple, low niches separated all space into the sectors. Here and there on the smooth surface of the walls appeared and disappeared almost immediately the dark bumps. There were many of them. The yellow walls were making layers, sliding past each other and, changing places, finally, sticking to each other.
Max closed his eyes. From a variety of colors, shades, his eyes dazzled.
‘Max, what a hotel is it? And why are we here? As I remember we drove home.’ asked Jennifer.
Max turned his head and looked at her. Jennifer's face expressed the genuine amazement and wonder. Perhaps she didn’t clearly understand what happened to them and was happing just at that moment.
“Hotel?” thought Max. “Well, maybe some where in the constellation of Orion it is really a hotel!” but he said nothing.
‘That guy, why he left us? I’m thirsty and want some drink… Hey, waiter where are you? It’s not politely to live us alone!’ suddenly quite unexpectedly for Max loudly called out Jennifer.
Max slightly pushed her in her a back.
‘Shut up, Jenny.’
‘Get off, Max! I said. I'm thirsty!’
Max felt he got sweat. He himself, as he thought, just a little understood, what was going on around. But it looked like Jennifer got crazy at all! She imagines as if they were in the hotel!
Not knowing what to say, he looked down at his feet. At the spot where they stood, with the floor was all right, but two yards away, began some hell – the floor was dividing, became translucent and near the far wall, still yellow as all the others, there were already three of it! The first one, that on which they stood – a light brown, dense and resilient. The upper floor was at their knees height. And the lower floor at the depth of several tens of yards below the first.
Max was seeing all three simultaneously, then none at all, only the blue twilight. The depth of which seems to have been as the Mariana Trench. Max decided that his eyes were playing tricks with him. Okay, now he will not admire at all these miracles, but when he got his night's sleep ... Maybe it's really a hotel? Or they are so drunk? No way! He drove the car! He at list couldn’t be so drunk!
‘That jerk will bring me ever drink, or not?’ Jennifer screamed out losing all her patience.
In the room again appeared the stranger who left them alone before. Max frowned. He's already flattered himself with the hope that this guy still fruit of his imagination. It seems he was wrong. What a pity.
‘Oh!’ Jennifer, as if it was the policeman who appeared just at the moment when she was attacking by the robbers, ran to him.
It is difficult to say who of them in which way perceived the reality, but Jennifer for some reason stubbornly saw in the alien a human being. Perhaps even with a man’s face.
‘Do you work here, right?’ she asked hopefully. ‘Well, then, we stay at your hotel overnight. Bring me some juice, please. What juice? Well, your choice. Money...’ her forehead frowned. ‘I guess in the car. Tomorrow we’ll pay you. Right, Max?’ she turned to Max.
‘What? Ah, well, of course, no problem.’
‘See’, Jennifer looked back at the stranger. ‘And what kind of bed you’ve got here? I've never seen such before.’
Max saw that in the room appeared a scarlet line. In a moment or two it took the form of the rectangular, scarlet bed or what it was on real and hung in the air in one foot over the glowing floor.
‘How tired I am!’ Jennifer went to the bed and fell on it with her face down.
Max's jaw dropped. The stranger disappeared again. He was alone, completely alone, because Jennifer did not move. Before Max’s eyes involuntarily were swept a nightmarish picture. Jennifer, with an awful cry falls inside the bed, which suddenly got alive begging him, Max for help. Or on the contrary raises, turns, and he sees a horror mowing monster. Max felt how his shirt got wet and stuck to his back.
He felt himself utterly broken, and couldn’t think of nothing. Trying to be quiet, he crept up to Jennifer, bent over her face. Max's own face suspiciously got longer. Jennifer.... God grace! She slept! She was just sleeping. The most common sleep with. Not paying more attention to anything, Max fell down beside her and closed his eyes. Come what may!
There was a silence. The space ship had lived with its own life. The walls were floated against each other, changing color and shape. Two or three, gathered into one, forming from time to time, the endless corridors – the tunnels. And there, far, far away one could see a lot of mysterious, enigmatic and incomprehensible.
The floor started to move. The upper one moves down. The lower got a bit up. Now the distance between them does not exceed twenty foots. Somewhere, at the junction of one of the walls and ceiling appeared a stranger. The same colorful, monolithic slabs, with a drifting around his body the nodes and divorces. On the sleeping people he did not pay any attention. The alien cut through the wall, landed on the upper floor and stood still.
Then stirred and moved to the opposite – with the dark stripes, yellow wall. He was walking. Didn’t slide, and did not fly. The air on his way seemed got thickened, and he, making his way through the thick semi-transparent substance, was living on each his step the particle of itself. And before he reached the right wall in the room between the two opposite walls formed a line of five immovable aliens.
In the air around the first and foremost, there were appeared colorful, luminous bands of two foots long, up to half a yards. Predominantly yellow. The structure of these objects was mostly hollow, but sometimes cast. Once hung in the air, you didn’t disappear any more. While approached close to the yellow wall, the stranger stopped. Be a man in his place, you would think that he looks at the dark bump on its smooth surface. Maybe it was so.
The body of the stranger separated. There were appeared colorful, luminous with the nodes hands. His left hand slowly went up to the elbow into the wall. Broke out and hung in the air, some round objects. Some came out of the wall completely, but most of it was visible only with one of its part. Quite quickly the stranger began to touch it with his hands. When the number of mysterious objects has increased in several times, his hands began to sink into it, and sometimes pierced through the objects. At the same time, in the air began to appear green and white short dashes few inches long, and fifteen in diameters. It seemed that they were somehow connected with the round objects.
Inspired by unusual activity, the alien at times completely or partially immersed in the yellow wall with these objects. At such moments, any movement in the room stopped and resumed only with his appearance.
On the yellow, with a movable convex in some places wall stood out a long white line of about ten yards long. There was a picture on it. At first, elongated, but when the line turned into the strip at first about five feet, then into the screen.
Deep down under the space ship was floating the sea of multi-colored lights. Above the head one could see the scatterings of bright stars. The ship was living the Earth! Making sure that everything is in order, but perhaps admiring the night’s lights of the Earth, the alien turned to the bed on which the prisoners slept. As if sensing his gaze, even though the alien hadn’t any eyes, Jennifer anxiously turned over, moved to Max. His hand lied on her thigh. Jennifer's face brightened again became calm and serene.
Slowly, as if reflecting about something, the stranger began to sink into the floor. A minute later he was already at a depth of half a mile and like a weak yellow spark flickered in the dark blue column of unknown substances.
But Jennifer saw in her sleep that she was returning home from a party, and felt sick because of the bad beer.
 

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