O'Hara went alone into the cylinder that rested at the terminus of the
Tube within the Guild of the Sons in subterranean New York. The Son who
had attended him, standing by to bolt down the hatch, glanced covertly
toward the great screen in the center of the hall.
"You will see the Father?" he whispered.
"Yes, I will see the Father," said O'Hara. "If he wishes it."
"I have always heard his voice come from the screen. I have never seen
him. A brilliantly unbearable radiation comes upon the screen and that
is all."
"You wish to know what he is like?"
The Son drew his brutish body up to its great height, his long arms
swinging loose, his weak eyes focusing intently upon O'Hara's face.
He was in that moment at least something more than subhuman, for a
beseeching huskiness came quickly into his voice, not the piteous whine
of an animal but the humility of a man.
"I wish to know what he is like," he whispered.
"He is like yourself."
The Son's jaw muscles flexed. His nostrils flared.
"He is not as large as you, or as strong as you, or as content as you,"
O'Hara said, "but he is more cunning, and more consciously merciless--"
"Stop that! He listens."
"--and he would destroy the one man who would lead you back into the
glory of your kind, the lost glory of the fact of being man and not a
soulless animal. One man alone would help you, Anstruther--"
"Stop it! Don't speak again!"
"Then you have heard of him? The word is traveling. And once the
word again is on the lips of those who would be men, no power as yet
conceived--"
"Liar and renegade! Beast of the upper earth--"
The Father's voice came wearily, "Enough, O'Hara--do not preach to him.
Our problem has been solved. Descend."
The hatch clanged shut. O'Hara felt the shock of the cylinder's sudden
acceleration and sprawled helplessly upon its foamlike cushioning, and
as before, when he regained his feet, the quick deceleration flung him
down again. And the hatch was opening.
"The Father awaits," a Son above him said.
But this time there was to be no long ascent by corridors and stairs
and shafts to reach the awe-inspiring architecture of the Dome. When he
left the cylinder, a panel opened in the wall beyond the terminus of
the Tube, and after O'Hara had passed through, the Son stepped quickly
back, the panel slid down instantly, and in the rushing dark O'Hara
heard the Father's silken voice, now faint, now roaring through his
brain, now very faint and weak again:
"I am returning you at once to Anstruther. When you have regained your
senses, awaken him. You have only to tell him that you have at last
remembered the way to reach me. He and his Sons will follow willingly
enough.
"But this time I shall not guide you by my voice. A panel will open in
the corridor beyond the point at which Anstruther blasted through. Lead
them through that panel. Ascend the stairs you will then find. At the
top of them, push up the metal covering. And you will find yourselves
before this dais."