"Izzred alph! Meggi erd-halaza riggbord els kamma gredyik. Lukhhal!"
Hairy turned back to Herman. Blinking his eyes rapidly, for they
closed like the shutter of a camera, he made a placating gesture with
both huge furry hands. "Kelagg ikri odrum faz," he said, and, reaching
out to the bookstall, he plucked out a handful of volumes, fanned them
like playing cards and displayed them to Four-Eyes. A heated
discussion ensued, at the end of which Hairy kept _For Whom the Bell
Tolls_, Four-Eyes took _The Blonde in the Bathtub_, and Hairy threw
the rest away.
Then, while Herman gaped and made retching sounds, the two disgusting
little men tore pages out of the books and stuffed them in their
mouths. When they finished the pages, they ate the bindings. Then
there was a rather sick pause while they seemed to digest the contents
of the books they had literally devoured. Herman had the wild thought
that they were blurb writers whose jobs had gone to their heads.
The one with the four eyes rolled three of them horribly. "That's more
like it," he said in nasal but recognizable English. "Let's start
over. Are you Herman Raye, the skull doc?"
Herman produced a series of incoherent sounds.
"My brother expresses himself crudely," said Hairy in a rich, fruity
baritone. "Please forgive him. He is a man of much heart."
"Uh?" said Herman.
"Truly," said Hairy. "And of much ears," he added with a glance at his
companion. "But again, as to this affair--tell me true, are you Herman
Raye, the analyst of minds?"
"Suppose I am?" Herman asked cautiously.
Hairy turned to Four-eyes. "Arghraz iktri 'Suppose I am,' Gurh? Olaph
iktri erz ogromat, lekh--"
"Talk English, can't you?" Four-eyes broke in. "You know he don't
understand that caveman jabber. Anyhow, yeah, yeah, it's him. He just
don't want to say so." He reached out and took Herman by the collar.
"Come on, boy, the boss is waitin'."
There were two circular hair-lines of glowing crimson where Hairy and
Four-eyes had originally appeared. They reached the spot in one jump,
Hairy bringing up the rear.
"But tell me truly," he said anxiously. "You _are_ that same Herman
Raye?"
Herman paid no attention. Below, under the two glowing circles, was
the terrifying gulf that had replaced the Earth; and this time, Herman
was somehow convinced, it was not going to hold him up.
"Let go!" he shouted, struggling. "Ouch!" He had struck Four-eyes
squarely on the flat nose, and it felt as if he had slugged an anvil.
Paying no attention, Four-eyes turned Herman over, pinned his arms to
his sides, and dropped him neatly through the larger of the two
circles.
Herman shut his eyes tightly and despairingly repeated the
multiplication table up to 14 x 14. When he opened them again, he was
apparently hanging in mid-space, with Hairy to his left and Four-eyes
to his right. The visible globe around them was so curiously tinted
and mottled that it took Herman a long time to puzzle it out. Ahead of
them was the darkest area--the void he had seen before. This was oval
in shape, and in places the stars shone through it clearly. In others,
they were blocked off entirely or dimmed by a sort of haze.
Surrounding this, and forming the rest of the sphere, was an area that
shaded from gold shot with violet at the borders, to an unbearable
blaze of glory at the center, back the way they had come and a little
to the right. Within this lighted section were other amorphous areas
which were much darker, almost opaque; and still others where the
light shone through diluted to a ruddy ghost of itself, like
candlelight through parchment.
Gradually Herman realized that the shapes and colors he saw were the
lighted and dark hemispheres of Earth. The dark areas were the oceans,
deep enough in most places to shut out the light altogether, and those
parts of the continents, North and South America behind him, Europe
and Asia ahead, Africa down to the right, which were heavily forested.
Herman's earlier conviction returned. Things like this just did not
happen. _Physician, heal thyself!_
"You're not real," he said bitterly to Four-eyes.
"Not very," Four-eyes agreed. "I'm twice as real as that jerk,
though," he insisted, pointing to Hairy.
Ahead of them, or "below," a point of orange light was slowly
swelling. Herman watched it without much interest.
Hairy broke out into a torrent of cursing. "I this and that in the
milk of your this!" he said. "I this, that and the other in the this
of your that. Your sister! Your cousin! Your grandmother's uncle!"
Four-eyes listened with awed approval. "Them was good books, hah?" he
asked happily.
"Better than those scratchings in the caves," Hairy said.
"Something to think about till they haul us out again. Well," said
Four-eyes philosophically, "here we are."
* * * * *
The orange spot had enlarged into the semblance of a lighted room,
rather like a stage setting. Inside were two enormous Persons, one
sitting, one standing. Otherwise, and except for three upholstered
chairs, the room was bare. No--as they swooped down toward it, Herman
blinked and looked again. A leather couch had appeared against the far
wall.
At the last moment, there was a flicker of motion off to Herman's
left. Something that looked like a short, pudgy human being
accompanied by two little men the size of Hairy and Four-eyes whooshed
off into the distance, back toward the surface of the planet.
Herman landed. Hairy and Four-eyes, after bowing low to the standing
Person, turned and leaped out of the room. When Herman, feeling
abandoned, turned to see where they had gone, he discovered that the
room now had four walls and no windows or doors.