EIGHT

David Loring only knew at first that the room in which he found himself

was enormous. He could see the high walls towering up into shadows, and

the great distance which separated wall from wall, shadow from shadow.

He saw the room in fitful flashes, between sleeping and waking.

He saw it as a prison and a sanctuary, the ward of a hospital, a

waiting room at the hub of some intricate and planet-engirdling web

of communication. He saw it even as a quite simple, peaceful place,

soothing to the eye, where a man could sleep and dream with a beautiful

woman at his side, their bodies completely at ease in the dawn light,

relaxed and languorous.

Finally, after what may have been days, or only hours, he saw the room

as it really was. He saw it as a prison on an alien world, and the

woman who shared it with him as a captive like himself who had to live

with the shattering knowledge that what she saw in his eyes he saw in

hers. "Janice," he whispered.

She was nodding at him and trying hard to smile and when he saw the

tenderness and warmth in her eyes, tears started to gather beneath his

burning eyelids and suddenly he was weeping unashamedly.

She got up quickly and came to him and settled herself at his side,

pressing her scantily clad body close to him in womanly solicitude,

reaching up and touching his face.

She was wearing the strangest of costumes; a band of golden-textured

cloth which completely encircled her hips and the lower part of her

torso, but left her breasts exposed. There were sandals on her feet,

and her red-gold hair had been cut short, and was caught up in an

entrancing way by a ribbon. She had never seemed more beautiful in his

sight or more feminine and desirable.

"I thought you'd never wake up, darling," she whispered, her lips

brushing his throat and passing upwards until their moist warmth came

to rest against his mouth and stopped his breath for an instant.

"I've been waiting for you to look at me," she said, when he could

breathe again. "To really look at me as you did just now. I was afraid

to wake you up too abruptly. You seemed so close to exhaustion, so

desperately in need of sleep. Oh, David, hold me close. At least we're

together again."

"Everything is so strange," Loring said, his hand going out to stroke

her hair. "So confused, mixed up. I remember struggling to free myself

from a very horrible kind of net--a net with strands that seemed to

move and cling to me, strands that seemed almost to have a life of

their own. Then I was imprisoned, shut away in the darkness. I saw

nothing, heard nothing, for hours. Then I saw a light moving slowly

back and forth in front of me. I tried to rise, tried to get to my

feet. But something seemed to lift me up and hurl me further back into

the darkness.

"There were times when I could hardly breathe, when I seemed to

be suffocating. I know that I slept a great deal. The passage of

time--that was the most frightening thing of all. Days must have passed

and yet I was only obscurely aware of their passing. But I knew that

we were no longer on Earth, that we were traveling through space to

another world. I had no way of knowing through observation, because I

was in total darkness and felt nothing, heard nothing. The knowledge

must have been implanted in my mind."

"It was," Janice said. "I know, because a strange cold voice spoke to

me just once, and told me that when I woke up I would see you again,

but that neither of us would remember what happened after you left me

alone in your apartment waiting for you to return. Do you remember,

David, or was the voice telling the truth? Do you remember what

happened after that? If you do--"

Loring shook his head. "No," he said. "It's all a complete blank.

I remember going out on MacDougal Street and hailing a cab. I even

remember getting into the cab and riding to your apartment. But after

that it's as if I had blacked out. I can only remember struggling to

free myself from that ghastly web and how the blackness closed in on

me, almost smothering me."

"And you remembered nothing more until you woke up here? Think hard,

David. Are you sure about that? Completely sure?"

"Just what I've told you--nothing more. The feeling that I was in

space, traveling through space. No, it was more than a feeling. It was

certain knowledge. But it was nothing that I could have found out for

myself."

"It frightens me, David. If you could remember even a part of what

happened...."

"I don't think they want us to remember," Loring said. "Whatever their

purpose was in bringing us here, they don't want us to know too much

about them. That's pretty obvious."

"We've been here a long time, David. I spoke to you once, but you

didn't answer, didn't seem to hear me. Your eyes were half closed and

your face looked strange, as if everything in the room had gone far

away from you. Then everything went far away from me too. I fell into a

deep sleep and just woke up a few minutes ago."

Loring was staring about the room, a look of mounting apprehension in

his eyes. But he heard her when she said: "I wanted to put my arms

around you, and draw you close and bring my lips down hard on yours.

But I was afraid, as I said, to wake you up too abruptly. The sudden

shock...."

"We'll make up for that right now," Loring said. He clasped her

firmly and kissed her until they were both out of breath. "I'm not as

exhausted as you might think," he said.

He realized suddenly that he was as scantily clad as she was and was

amazed that he had not realized it immediately upon awakening. A

Greek athlete in the days of Pericles might have worn less clothing

while discus-throwing, but he seriously doubted it. He was not a man

who liked to strut his maleness and he had no particular liking for

exhibitionists. It embarrassed him a little, even in the presence of a

woman who had often seen him wearing far less clothing.

"They took away our clothes," she whispered, as if aware of his

thoughts. "I don't know how they undressed me and put this ridiculous

sash around me but I'll have to make the best of it. I don't really

mind too much. Do you?"

"I think it might be a good idea if you removed the sash," he said. "It

isn't becoming to you."

"If you wish," she said, and unwound the strange garment.

She stood before him completely unclothed and for an instant his breath

caught in his throat. Then she was in his arms again, covering his face

with kisses.

After a moment she put the strange garment back on, smiling a little.

"If it was just you I wouldn't mind at all," she said. "But we don't

know who we'll be meeting."

Her face turned suddenly sober, all of the levity leaving her eyes.

"The window," she whispered. "We'd better--see what's outside. Just the

thought of looking terrifies me, but we may as well get it over with."

Loring nodded. "If we had any real sense we'd have looked out

immediately," he said. "We'd have let nothing stand in the way."

"David! What kind of talk is that? Think of what you would have missed.

A completely undraped female, distinctly on the shameless side."

The taunting levity was back in her eyes again, as if she dreaded the

thought of walking to the window even now and wished to put it off as

long as possible with a whistling-in-the-dark bravado.

"You're right," Loring said. "Forgive me, darling. I spoke without

thinking and I didn't mean it in quite that way. I'm glad we waited. It

isn't just what I saw. It's what I--"

"David, please don't make me blush now. Shut up, damn you."

"All right, Gorgeous. I won't say another word."

They walked to the window together. Janice cried out, and Loring drew

in his breath sharply. A tiny vein at his temple bulged and began to

pulsate.

The city which stretched out for miles beyond the pane transcended

in height and depth and grandeur anything Man's creative genius had

conceived on Earth, or was perhaps capable of conceiving, even in the

realm of imaginative prophecy. Human history supplied no parallels

which would have brought such a soaring architectural miracle within

the scope of pictorial art at its most prophetic.

William Blake alone might have been capable of portraying it on canvas,

if he had been born at a later period in human history and had been

familiar with space-age technology and the intricacies of the twentieth

century's non-Euclidean mathematics. But even then his vision might

have faltered and his palette, lacking the full range of colors,

dropped from his hand.

The Martian city was so large it would have completely dwarfed the

largest city on Earth. If New York, London and Paris could have been

combined in one great wonder city there might have been a few points of

superficial resemblance to the metropolis of white buildings beyond the

pane. But a few points only, for in a sober and completely realistic

sense all comparisons broke down.

It was a city of spiderweb traceries against a sunrise sky,

of buildings so enormous that their pinnacles seemed to blend

with the clouds. It was a city of floating gardens agleam with

vermillion-tongued flowers that seemed to sway and dance in response to

some gigantic and invisible baton, so that they resembled myriads of

tiny ballet dancers constantly in motion, voluptuously a-twirl, bending

first to the left and then to the right and then swooningly backwards.

It was a city of parks and lakes with tree-fringed borders and of

column-supported terraces bridged by aerial traffic lanes, where

vehicles that resembled gold beetles darted back and forth with a speed

so great that the eye could scarcely follow them.

It was a city of clean, strong lines, without elaborate ornamentation

to mar a perfection which its builders must have kept constantly before

their minds. There was no visible areas of new construction or areas

where the buildings seemed to be crumbling. No wrecking instruments

at work, or skeleton structures black against the sunrise. Not the

slightest sign anywhere of demolition or repair. It was as if the city

had been built to endure for centuries, with every stone in place, a

monument to the creative genius of a race that had somehow found a

means to create a vision of splendor which time or the elements could

not mar or efface.

It was a breathtakingly beautiful city and yet, in some strange way,

it seemed to be enveloped in an aura of cruelty and wickedness. There

was a lewdness about some of its contours--a lewdness that could

be physically sensed. It stirred the imagination in a strange way,

as a woman utterly abandoned, lost to all shame, may cease to be a

capricious wanton, given to light-hearted amours and become so coldly

lascivious that she repels the most passionate of men.

And suddenly, as Loring stared, he saw the woman-shape. He saw that the

city, its entire circumference, its central mass, was shaped like a

recumbent female with great wanton knees and flame-tipped breasts.

Janice saw it too, and retreated from the window with a gasp, her face

and throat darkened by a quickly spreading flush.

Loring stared for an instant longer and then turned and drew her to

him, holding her tightly for a moment and saying nothing at all.

There were no words that could have eased the shock of what they both

had seen, and silence was better, Loring felt. After a moment her

breathing steadied and the flush vanished from her cheeks.

"What are we going to do, David?" she asked. "Just stay here and let

the builders of that city visit us? Kill us perhaps, or insist that we

accompany them on a sight-seeing tour? I don't think we'd like what

we'd see."

"I don't think so either," Loring said. "And I don't think we're

staying if that window isn't locked and opens outward. Or inward, for

that matter. I'm going to find out right now. If necessary, we'll

conduct our own sight-seeing tour. If we can get out fast we may be

able to hide somewhere before they realize we've had the quickness of

mind to outsmart them."

"Not quickness of mind alone, David. Courage enough to act quickly and

descend those stairs."

"You saw the stairs?"

Janice nodded. "Yes, I saw them. A flight of stone steps leading

downward, starting just below the window and leading straight down. I

was going to push on the window, to see if it would move. You do it,

David. Hurry. We've no time to lose."

"All right," Loring said. He returned to the window and pressed firmly

on the pane. For a moment the pane held and then, as he increased the

pressure, it swung slowly outward.

Janice ran to him with an exultant cry.

They emerged from the room cautiously. The steps began just beneath

the window but they were not directly joined to the ledge. They had to

take a short leap to reach them. What purpose they had been designed

to serve Loring did not know and had difficulty in imagining. The

topmost step was very broad and flared slightly, and it occurred

to him that a very small flying machine--a midget helicopter or an

auto-gyro--would have encountered no difficulty in making use of it

as a landing platform. Perhaps there were hundreds of such structures

scattered throughout the city, directly adjacent to the windows of

tall buildings. He had no way of knowing and no time to puzzle over it.

The stone stairway was very steep and contained at least three hundred

steps. It led to a flaring, disk-shaped expanse of shining metal

several hundred feet in diameter. Directly below the disk the tiny

moving vehicles which Loring had observed from the window darted to and

fro, obscurely visible through its translucent glimmering.

Loring took Janice's arm and supported her firmly, and they started

down with a heightened sense of togetherness. "Remember this," he said,

with quiet reassurance. "It's some comfort, at least. There are few

situations which are _absolutely_ hopeless. They may look that way, but

they're not. Escapes take place when every door to freedom seems bolted

down tight. Not only in fiction--in real life. The deadliest diseases

often fail to kill. The patient survives and lives for many years. And

men condemned to death can always hope for a last-minute reprieve."

"But how often are they reprieved?"

"More often than the average person realizes. There are always

possibilities of escape. A failure of intelligence at any point can

reverse an advantage. And we've no reason to believe that the minds

that planned and built this city, tremendous as it is, are infallible.

The slightest flaw in their thinking could give us an advantage which

would even the score."

"But this is their world, their home, David. We are aliens here,

imprisoned in a web so dark and terrible we can't even begin to

understand it. It's like a blind maze with no familiar landmarks,

nothing to guide us--"

"It may not be quite as blind a maze as you think," Loring whispered,

tightening his hold on her arm. "In another hundred years we'll be

building cities on Earth just as tremendous. We use the same basic

patterns, and we'll eventually acquire just as much engineering skill."

"It's still a blind maze to me," Janice said. "We may be walking into a

trap. Did you think of that, David?"

"I thought of it. But staying in that room would have put us completely

at their mercy. Steady now. We'll soon be at the bottom."

"Just looking down makes me dizzy."

"Don't look down then," he cautioned. "Move slowly and stay close to

me."

The stairway was enveloped in a faint radiance which grew swiftly

brighter as they descended. They were soon caught up in the brightness,

the steps beneath them becoming a descending series of polished stone

mirrors which reflected the more diffuse and distant brightness of

the sunrise. Their shadows flickered across the brightness, sometimes

elongating and becoming immense, sometimes contracting into wavering

small replicas of themselves.

They moved arm in arm through a kaleidoscope of shimmering curves and

angles, a constantly increasing steepness keeping them constantly on

guard, making them feel at times that they were descending an upright

ladder teetering precariously in some unimaginable abyss of emptiness.

They were almost at the bottom now and could see the shining surface of

the disk which they had seen from above without being able to determine

its precise configuration. It spread out from the base of the stairs

in a translucent glimmering, a surface of smooth, almost glass-like

texture that spiraled slightly downwards for perhaps a hundred feet and

then became completely horizontal. Where it rose to a level gradient it

widened out so that its faintly luminous edges graded off into shadows.

There was a pylon-shaped structure at the far extremity of the sloping

section. It could have been either a gateway or a small building, but

Loring was almost sure that it was a building.

He did not pause when he reached the bottom. He tightened his hold

on Janice's waist and then released her, gesturing out across the

brightness.

"Walk fast, but don't run," he cautioned. "They may be watching us.

That small tower could be anything: a communication control structure,

a guardhouse, even a dwelling. We won't know until we get to it."

He nodded and left the stone stairway, moving out across the glass-like

surface of the disk without looking back. Janice kept almost abreast of

him, quickening her steps but not quite running.

Loring studied the structure appraisingly as he drew near to it. It was

smooth-surfaced and completely featureless, a massive block of metal

that rose to a height of about eighty feet.

He halted directly in front of it and waited for Janice to join him

before he reached out and ran his hand over a square foot of its smooth

metal surface. The metal was yellowish with a burnished copper sheen

to it.

"What do you suppose it is?" Janice asked breathlessly.

Loring shook his head. "I wish I knew. It could be a guardhouse or a

signal tower or something of the sort. There's no entrance on this

side, but there may be an entrance in back. It could have been erected

here as a kind of sentry barrier to guard this particular part of the

city. It could even be a remotely controlled robot structure, equipped

with detective devices and destructive weapons."

"You really think--"

"I don't know what to think. I'd like to pound on the metal to see if

it gives off a hollow sound. But I'm afraid to risk it. Even raising

our voices might be dangerous and activate some delicately balanced

instrument of destruction."

A look of decision came into Loring's eyes. "You stay here," he said.

"Don't move or touch that wall. If there's an entrance I don't want you

to be with me until I've made sure there's nothing dangerous inside."