I don’t know how long we slept. There was no way of knowing when it was morning, as the amount of light was according to how Anselmo set it rather than the rising of the sun. Our watches had been left in our waist-coat pockets which we left in the port house. After waking up once and going back to sleep and waking up the second time, I decided to get up to see what Anselmo was up to.
   In a round room, it’s hard to tell which direction is which. After opening a few storage closets by mistake, I found the door to the stairs leading to the bridge deck. Anselmo was seated at the helm in the bubble.
   ‘Good morning,’ I said.
   ‘Morning? I suppose that it would be morning where you came from. Where we are now, the sun neither rises nor sets.’
   ‘Good day then.’
   ‘Where you came from, I’m sure it’s a fine day but here it’s neither day nor night,’ he said.
   ‘What do you say then?’
   ‘If you were one of us, you’d say, "God bless you." Otherwise, you could say, "Peace to you", or the equivalent in some of the other languages, such as "Shalom". But I’ll wish you God’s blessing as well as His peace just the same.’
   ‘So where are we now?’ I asked.
   ‘I’m not sure that my telling you would shed any light on the matter, but if you want to sit here for a while, you could perhaps inform yourself while I get an hour or two of sleep.’
   He reached to the far right side of the brass bar on which all the instruments were mounted, and pulled a switch. Then he got down and motioned for me to get up into the seat.
   ‘I’ve set it so that you can’t alter the course of this craft by accidentally moving the instruments. You can turn yourself around by pushing against the circular bar at your feet so as to get a different view of the heavens, and you can recline by leaning back, so as to see the direction we are going. Now, if you hear any strange noises or see the hand on this gauge move beyond this red mark,’ he pointed to what looked like a small clock with only one hand, ‘wake me up. I’ll be sleeping in one of the seats.’
   I got up into the seat. He turned me around so that I could see what looked like a bright star.
   ‘That’s the sun,’ he said. ‘Shemesh, we call it. In the next hour, you should get a much clearer view of Jupiter.’
   Here, he turned me around again, and pointed to a small orange and red ball.
   ‘Where’s the Earth?’ I said.
   He turned me around again and pointed to a barely visible point of light not far from the sun.
   ‘Soon it won’t be visible at all.’
   At that, he settled down in one of the seats just below me. The seat reclined to almost lying down position. Then, he shut his eyes, and my attention went to the scene before me.
   I had never seen the sky so full of stars. Also, I was amazed at being able to see all of the constellations at once. Orion, the Big Bear, Polaris, the Southern Cross, Cassiopeia and the full length of the Milky Way were all visible at once. All I had to do was to turn myself around. Besides that, there was a new star in the sky — the Sun. One planet I’d certainly never seen in the sky before was Earth.
   I watched as Jupiter got slowly bigger and bigger as it moved ever so slowly downward. I could readily notice that on the bubble screen, just as Anselmo said, the direction in which we were moving was straight upward. I found it easy to recline the seat so as to gaze in that direction without straining my neck.
   In front of me, before the screen, was a long curved bar made of some sort of metal. On it were mounted all sorts of switches, levers, knobs, and what looked to me like clocks, some with only one hand, some with several hands; some of the hands moving back and forth vigorously, some very slowly, some spinning very fast but steadily, and others not at all. I glanced at the gauge Anselmo had instructed me to mind every so often. The needle hadn’t moved far from its original position.
   On either side of me, also mounted to the metal bar by two arms, were the two large silver balls I had noticed the day before. When I touched these, they rotated in whichever direction I pushed them. Nothing happened to the craft, as Anselmo had pulled the switch that deactivated the instruments. The bar itself was so placed and so curved so that when the seat reclined, the ark of the bar also moved upward so that all the instruments were always within easy reach.
   Jupiter came gradually closer and closer towards the point level with my eyes, which presumably meant we were passing it. As it came closer, it became increasingly larger. It was indeed an awesome sight. By now, I could also see a couple of the moons quite clearly.
   I looked at the gauge that Anselmo had asked me to keep an eye on. This time, the needle was moving close to the red mark. After that I looked back and forth between the gauge and at Jupiter.
   Soon, Jupiter was at a point that I judged was at perpendicular axis to our direction of travel. The needle was moving ever so slowly towards the red mark.
   The image of Jupiter was so vivid I almost felt as though I could reach out and touch the planet. One of the moons was also close enough for a good view. I became so fascinated that soon, I had forgotten to recheck the gauge. After all, this was a sight I knew no one in any academic institution had ever seen.
   Suddenly, I was startled by what sounded like an alarm clock. It was coming from the gauge which now showed the needle right on the red mark.
   I jumped from the seat and went to wake Anselmo but he had awakened from the sound of the alarm bell.
   ‘Ahh, so we’re being drawn by Jupiter, are we?’ he said.
   He climbed casually up into the helm, and pushed the switch that turned the instruments back on. He gradually pulled another lever that seemed to produce a humming noise. Then, he began moving the two silver spheres.
   ‘The gravity of Jupiter would put us off our course if these instruments didn’t warn us,’ he said.
   Just then, we were joined by Patrick.
   ‘What time is it?’ he said.
   ‘Don’t ask him,’ I said. ‘Here there’s no day or night or any other kind of time.’
   ‘No,’ said Anselmo. ‘We have time. It’s even measured in twenty four hour time units but they aren’t regarded here as they are on Earth.’
   ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Just don’t say, "Good morning."’
   Patrick then went and had a good look at Jupiter.
   After Anselmo had eased the lever downward, causing the humming to die down, he suggested that we go down for a bite to eat.
   Again, we were seated around the table. The food was similar to what we had before our rest. The conversation mostly revolved around our lives on Earth.
   For a period that would have equalled one week on Earth, we went on like this. Patrick and I tended to take long rests that roughly corresponded with our Earth nights, although, with no light patterns to judge by, they tended to stretch longer and later. Anselmo just took one and two hour cat-naps every so often.
   Patrick and I both enjoyed our turns at the helm during Anselmo’s naps, as otherwise, it began to become rather dreary, being confined to the three rooms, and otherwise no windows to look out. Even then, all there was, was black space and stars. The time pieces that had become so much a part of us — the sun and the moon, the crowing cocks and barking dogs, etc.— were conspicuous in their absence. We began to sorely miss them in a way we never thought we ever would.
   Patrick, especially, was suffering the effects of ‘space shock’, as we later came to know it. He would pace back and forth making comments like, ‘When will we be let out of this dungeon?’ This is probably what provoked him to ask what I thought was an insensitive question during one of our meals with Anselmo.
   ‘You Benedictines stay pretty well cooped up in your little monasteries for long periods of time. What good does it do you anyway?’
   ‘We study, we pray, we teach what we know to others so...’ began Anselmo.
   ‘Can’t you do that at home?’
   ‘The monastery is our home.’
   ‘Yes, but not an ordinary home where regular people live. You’re cut off from the real world!’ said Patrick.
   ‘When I began learning at the feet of Father Benedict, my home had been destroyed,’ answered Anselmo. ‘Your "real world," as you call it almost killed me. It killed my father and mother. It killed many people in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire.’
   ‘Well, okay, maybe you were a special case. But didn’t many people go to the monastery just to run away from their problems?’
   ‘With the problems of the magnitude that existed then, there was a lot to run away from. You’ve never lived through times like that. In fact, everyone was running away. Many simply didn’t have anywhere to run to. We offered them that refuge.’
   ‘Yeah,’ said Patrick, ‘but our job as Christians is to have an influence on society. You don’t change society by running away from it. You have to mingle with the people, and be their friends where they are, in the market place and in their homes, and where they meet each other. Your monastic orders rather tend to escape from society. That’s why Roman Catholicism has been so ineffective!’
   ‘My friend, I agree with much of what you are telling me.’ Now, he was looking directly into Patrick’s eyes as he spoke. ‘During many periods, that may indeed have been the cause of our not affecting society as other movements have done. But when Father Benedict began his work, there was no market place to meet people in. First the Goths and then the Huns burned it down. People who prided themselves in their ability to move about in high social circles, suddenly found themselves running for their lives. Their wealth disappeared. Suddenly their money, and everything that could be bought with their money all disappeared. The circus and the theatres were destroyed. Even schools were no more — or else they became meaningless games in which nothing was learned.’
   Anselmo was now speaking with such force and emphasis that Patrick was almost helpless, as though he were being scolded by a father.
   ‘If it were not for men like Father Benedict and Father Gregory,’ Anselmo went on, ‘all of the knowledge gained from the past, the Greek sophists such as Plato and Aristotle; the Church fathers such as Augustine of Hippo, Origen, Clement, Ireneous; even the Holy Scriptures would have been lost to much of the world. The schools stopped teaching these things, and the books were often torn up to wrap fish at what few markets yet had fish to sell. My brothers, the Benedictines and other orders that came after, preserved the knowledge of the past; and they breathed life into it by their teaching, so that they brought hope to many in a world that had lost hope. Christianity survived in the West because of them. Indeed, it spread to the heathen tribes through them. Your Martin Luther had a leg to stand on only because his Bible was provided for him by the monks in the monasteries, and because the Roman Catholic system had been thus preserved.’
   ‘And now,’ I piped in, ‘you’ve given us the power of flight.’
   ‘Oh goodness no!’ he said in a suddenly different tone. ‘These ships have been around for thousands of years! I only came into this very much by accident, just as you did.’
   ‘When were they first used?’
   ‘Before the creation of man. This craft we are on is older than the human race, though it's been overhauled several times. It was part of a fleet that was entrusted to Enoch after he began to travel the heavens. How long before that it was actually built, I don’t know.
   ‘These craft enabled some from the world that was destroyed before man was created to survive into this world. These are the nephilim. Beware of these. I have never met, nor have I heard of a good nephil living in recent times, although they did exist at one time. These ships also enabled some from the world before the great flood to survive into this world. These include the anakim, and other humans of large size and unusual qualities that they inherited from their fathers, the nephilim. Beware also of these. Some creatures of mythology are indeed real beings of this sort. In reality, they are only half human.
   ‘Some that survived the flood, are normal men and women like us. Some are righteous, such as Enoch. You may meet him some day if you travel the heavens for very long. Others are evil, like the nephilim and the anakim. No one who lived before the flood is permitted to visit Earth, whether good or evil. Some, having left the Earth since, are also forbidden to return.
   ‘It is hard to tell who is evil and who is righteous among the humans,’ he continued. ‘There are some who have the gift of knowing the heart. Otherwise, one has to look for the signs of a righteous man. But know this. Because these people have lived for thousands of years, their hearts have become set in their paths. The evil ones have been hardened by many years of following their evil ways and keeping evil company, and the righteous ones have likewise had their hearts tempered and tested by years of practising virtue and following their pure desires.’
   ‘Are there many from after the flood?’ Patrick asked. His edge had been softened by Anselmo’s fatherly wisdom.
   ‘Yes,’ answered Anselmo. ‘Of note among these is Eliyahu. He is a great leader of the righteous. You are sure to meet him if you sojourn in the heavens for more than a short time.’
   ‘Are there many Benedictine friars like yourself?’ I asked.
   ‘Some. A few came with me when I first began to travel the heavens. Two of these struck up acquaintances with the wrong sort of people, and soon took on their evil ways. I must warn you that the evil ones are extremely subtle. They can easily pass themselves off as righteous ones. If one doesn’t know the signs, it is easy to be deceived. The best way for those like you is to be introduced to the communities of the righteous, and remain among them.’
   ‘Is Lactid such a community?’
   ‘No. That is more of a cross roads where you could meet righteous ones, but also some of a more evil disposition. However, the nephilim and the anakim aren’t allowed into that place. They are forbidden by the local authority of that planetoid.’
   ‘Why have we never seen these "nephilim" and "anakim" on the earth?’ asked Patrick.
   ‘They are forbidden to enter, but by a higher authority. Eliyahu, whom I spoke of, represents that authority, and he with the malachim — the messengers — enforce that authority.’
   ‘Who are they?’ I asked.
   ‘You will know soon,’ Anselmo said as he began to pick up the eating utensils. ‘Digest what you have heard already. There is plenty of time to learn the rest. You have suffered enough "space shock" for now.’