The city, Urula, was impeccably clean. It had a feeling of openness
about it; it didn't close in and tower over you like Earth cities.
The streets were wide and landscaped with shrubs and trees. The walks
were of turf and the lush trimmed grass provided a pleasant cushion for
the feet. The buildings were low and rambling, set well back from the
walks. There was no lack of room to force them up into the air beyond a
story or two.
People passed us occasionally, never in crowds, radiating cordiality as
they nodded to Jones and me. Other people lounged idly on benches or on
the lawns in front of the buildings. I couldn't tell whether they were
homes or business offices, or a combination of both.
I looked in vain for factories, for ugly smokestacks thrusting into
the clean sky. Nor were there any automobiles, railroads or machines of
any kind to foul the air with their exhausts or rend it with their din.
I asked a mental question and Jones said they had none of these things
simply because they weren't needed. If one wanted to go somewhere he
walked. There was no exertion and there was never any hurry. As for
traveling to another city, there was no need to; one city was exactly
like another. Each was self-sufficient and there was no trade among
them. If one wished to see a friend in another city, why, the journey
was a pleasant one, and since it was a pleasure trip it didn't matter
whether the journey took a day or thirty days.
Because there were no factories or railroad yards there were no slums
where people lived a marginal existence between the animal and human
levels.
We turned off the main street and up a wide path to a building set back
under tall shade trees.
"My home," Jones said.
* * * * *
We sat on the broad porch and a servant appeared, carrying delicate
bowls on a tray. The bowls, cool to the touch, held a dark liquid that
was better than any good thing I had ever drunk, without being in any
way recognizable.
I sent a thought of thanks to the servant, an old white-haired man
with a lighter skin than Jones', but he did not reciprocate it. For
an instant, when the old man was facing me with his back to Jones, I
caught a curious expression in his eyes, a combination of warning and
beseeching. There was also the beginning of a message, I felt, but
instantly it was swept away and Jones' thoughts came.
"You are wondering why we went so far in our star journey--from Uru to
Earth."
I had wondered about that earlier, when Jones showed me the
mind-picture of the vast rushing through space.
"Yes," I said, and the old servant, his face impassive again, trudged
back into the house.
Jones showed me another picture of travels from Uru to the other four
worlds of Uru's blue-white sun. I could not make out the type of craft,
if a craft was used. The older worlds seemed the same, but death was on
them. Man could never live there, Jones showed me, because of poisonous
atmosphere, or unstable boiling land, or forbidding ice-locked
vastness, or impenetrable fog. Only Uru, of the five, had evolved in a
way harmonious to man.
Then I traveled with him farther from Uru's sun to other suns and
explored their planets. But they held only desolation and potential
death for a colonizer. Again the stars ran together in that glittering
display of luminescence that I was allowed to understand now was the
effect of crashing through the barrier of hyperspace. Only then did
Earth's sun come into view. And then her planets. And then Earth
herself.
I felt a foreboding now and tried to communicate it to my companion,
but Earth came inevitably closer.
A moment later I was again in Jones' dingy room, lying on his bed with
the jade-green cigaret holder in my fingers.