"Let's go," I said, "You will have no trouble with me."
With Molo leading us, and the giant insect-like guard following close
behind, we made our slow, awkward way across the esplanade portals of
the huge globular building.
And within, we traversed a cylinder-like, padded corridor and came
presently upon the strangest interior scene I had ever beheld.
10
The room was so large that it seemed almost the entire interior of the
building. It was a globular room, a hundred and fifty feet or more in
diameter. The inner surface was crowded with people. It was a huge,
hollow interior of a ball; and upon its concave surface a throng of
the brown-shelled workers were gathered. They sat on low seats at the
curved bottom of the room, where we entered, and up the sides and upon
the slopes and the top, like flies in a globe, hanging head downward.
There was no up or down here; the slight gravity made little
difference.
I gazed up amazed to where, a hundred and fifty feet above me, head
downward, the crowd of figures were calmly seated. These were
clinging, of course; the pound-weight of each of them would drop them
down if they let loose. But it required only a slight effort.
Between the tiers, there were narrow open aisles bearing glowlights at
intervals. With Molo leading us, we stared up the curving incline of
one of these aisles.
"Gregg! Good Lord, it's weird!" Snap said. "Where are we going to sit?
Don't speak to the girls yet."
"Have you spoken to them?"
"Yes. A little, on the ship. They're watching for an opportunity but
we have to be cautious. Gregg, I've got so much to tell you, but no
chance. The brains can just about hear your thoughts."
We went only a short distance up the incline. There were vacant seats
seemingly held ready for us. Our passage created a commotion among the
figures. Some leaped up and over us to get a better look. I found that
we were clinging to the mound-like convex surface of a small
half-globe. It raised us some ten feet above the floor. There were low
seats with arms against the side-pull of gravity. I found Anita close
beside me. Her hand touched me, but she did not turn her head or
speak.
Molo was on my other side. I chanced to see his feet. They were
planted firmly on the floor. He wore wide-soled shoes equipped with
suction pads, no doubt, which would enable him, like the Wandlites,
to walk and stand upon the upper inner surfaces of buildings.
As during the moments when Snap and I stood on the landing esplanade,
there was so much here that at first I could not encompass it. But now
I began to grasp other details of the strange scene.
Poised in mid-air, almost exactly in the center of the huge globular
room, was a metal globe of some thirty feet in diameter. It was held,
not by any solid girders, but by four narrow beams of light which
mounted to it from widespread points of the convex room.
Upon the entire surface of this thirty-foot globe, a group of masters
were seated, in little, cup-like seats upon resilient stems. They
swayed and nodded with movement. There seemed to be glowing wires and
grids and thread-like beams of light carrying current. Light-threads
shot from the mechanisms to the heads of the seated brains. All the
devices were evidently in operation; and upon this poised central
globe the attention of the audience was directed.