"This is Uru," he said. "It is my world."
Then I noticed that he wasn't dressed the same. Instead of the black
suit and the blue shirt and white tie, he was wearing knee-length
shorts, blue, topped by a wide belt of metallic-looking leather. He
wore a thin circlet of the same material around his head. It held in
the center of his forehead a heraldic device, as if it were a mark of
rank. Except for sandals he wore nothing else. His body was a light tan.
I noticed then that I was dressed similarly, except that there was no
circlet around my head.
We went by a field under cultivation. A few people were among the rows,
working easily, chatting and laughing. They waved as we passed. There
was a mental exchange of greetings between them and Jones which I also
heard.
We walked effortlessly, even uphill. The gravity seemed less than on
Earth. The air was clean and invigorating. It was warm but not humid.
A blue-white sun was in the sky. I could look at it without hurting my
eyes. It was larger, apparently closer, than Earth's sun, and I thought
I could make out markings on it. Were they the same as those on the
oval Jones wore on his forehead? I could not be sure.
We were coming to a city, or a big town.
"Urula," Jones told me. "Our capital."
He had been out of communication with me since we passed the people in
the field, though I felt that my thoughts were being transmitted to
him. It was as if he knew all my thoughts but permitted me to know his
only when he wished. Or it might have been that I was so engrossed in
my new experience that he had let me enjoy it without interfering, by
keeping his thoughts neutral.
"Where is Uru?" I asked then.
He showed me a mind-picture so vast I could not fully comprehend it.
He showed me the sky of Earth, with the moon low on the horizon. Then
up beyond the moon, so that the Earth was in eclipse behind it. Then
farther still, and the mighty sun faded into insignificance among other
stars.
I was whirled around in the opposite direction and rushed through
space as the stars ran together and melted into a shivering puddle of
luminescence which instantly flew apart into stars again, leaving one
of them closer than the others. It grew in size, became blue-white, and
five planets came into view, circling it in precision, equal distances
away.
One of the planets began to swell and again I saw the continents and
oceans of Uru and was whisked to its surface, and again I was walking
along the lane toward the city.
"It is far, you see," Jones told me.