The night was full now.  The darkness overcame everything.  Kee explained to Pinball that two suns shone on the planet and for 32 hours in the orbit of the planet, both were over the distant horizon.  The world was vast, some 300 times bigger than Earth with a circumference of 10 million kilometers.  With no visible orbiting moons the complete lack of light brought everything into total blackness for that time, and the people had developed a cat-like sight in darkness.  Pinball was almost blind, Woo leading him by the hand down the steps of the house at the other side and towards the ground car.  Kee climbed in, using the infrared sight fitted into his androidal eye.  He switched on huge blaring floodlights at the front and sides and rear of the vehicle and Pinball put one hand across his face to shield his eyes against the sudden brightness.

When he had become accustomed to the change he looked around at the forecourt of the house.  The ground was covered in a kind of grass, but much thicker, like beach grass on Earth, with long strands of yellow-green leaves.  The car hovered above the ground once the lights had been turned on, but there was no sound of any engine or power unit.  He could see only some thirty or forty meters around him, the darkness was so intense, but he noticed that beams on the front of the car gave distance vision with infrared beams that turned the color of everything into a luminous red.  The effect was eerie and only added to Pinball's feeling of desolation and doubt.  A huge tree stood to his right, its trunk swooping low along the ground for several meters before rising up in a curve and into branches and leaves.  It looked as though it must have been trained to grow that way.  As they passed along the ground away from the house he saw more of these trees.  There were no roads for the vehicles had no wheels, travelling on an aerofoil principle, and the result was a wide landscape without scars, though Pinball could see
nothing of it now.

No one spoke during the journey which lasted maybe half an hour by Pinball’s watch. It occurred to him, as he glanced down at his wrist that within a few hours the watch would become more of a confusion than an aid, for its twelve hours gave no indication of whether night was coming or day.  As they drew close to the city, Woo picked up his thought.