Chapter II

By the time John Kimball had finished disconnecting the leads to the multiple screen and rewiring the master converter he was nearly blind with fatigue and his fingertips jerked and danced uncontrollably on the verniers. The sleepless nights of the previous week, and the emotional strain under which he had been working throughout was taking its toll now. After the wave-splitting effect had first suggested it to him, he had spent most of the week erecting the demonstration, and quite probably the triumphant letter he had mailed to Andreson afterwards had been a little crazy.

As soon as he had posted the letter he had managed to get in about twenty hours of deathlike slumber. It was hardly enough, but there was no help for that now. Except for the first, sickening shock--for the discarded, empty envelope on the floor, the splintered fountain pen, and the one screen featureless and flickeringly gray, had told him what had happened in instant detail--he had wasted no time cursing himself for his grandiose "gallery" stunt. The Colossus in the cellar would need many hours of weary, desperate work before the cauterized scars of Andreson's cannoning fall through the tissues of Time would open enough to permit Kimball to follow.

A tumbler clicked in the pre-dawn silence, and a flood of magnetons sped through the primary coils. The ensuing process was quiet and invisible, but Kimball could feel it--the familiar, nauseating strain which had first led him to the basic principle. It meant that tiny lacunae were being born in the fabric of Time, spreading and merging as the spinning magnetic field tore at them. He slumped on his stool and waited. He was not sure that the last hour's work had been even approximately right, but his gibbering nerves would no longer permit calculation or delicate mechanical correction. The die was cast, and wherever the nascent achronic gateway led, he would have to follow.

After a moment he discovered that the climbing dial needles were hypnotizing him. Getting up from the stool, he proceeded to collect his equipment, moving like a zombie. It was futile to wish he had studied the period more closely, but at least it was clear that the age of the winged colonists had been warfare; best to be armed, though there was a good chance that his pistol would be far outclassed. A flashlight clipped to his belt, and an alcohol compass tuned to the machine's field rather than the Earth's, and he was ready.

He stepped into the heavy torus coil which terminated the series--there had been no time to set up a new frame--and turned out the cellar light.

The machine made no sound, and in the blackness no one could have seen that after a few moments it was alone.

* * * * *

The light of the red sun ran back and forth along the catwalk in quivering lines, and all around it the city glistened in faery-like beauty. Andreson regarded the bridge dubiously; it was little more than a thread of crystal.

"It will bear your weight," the girl said, mistaking his trepidation. Masking his thoughts, he set out across it.

"They have come through several times, just recently," Atel continued evenly. "In a sort of borer--I suppose they thought of it as that--whose walls were invisible, its machinery a contorted group of vacancies in a solid interior. But we destroyed the solid part, and they were crushed. It is hard to imagine how empty space could crush. But we have the law that two objects may not exist in the same space at the same time, and this seems to be its converse."

Andreson tried it out: two spaces cannot exist in the same--in the same what? Abruptly his head was whirling and in the vast distance the earth reeled and shuddered; the glassy thread under his feet seemed to swivel back and forth like a tightrope. He was going over--

Behind him, powerful vanes cracked open, and lean hands grappled his shoulders firmly. "Thanks," he gasped, flailing with his feet at the landing of the next building. Atel grinned contemptuously and leaned him against the wall like a manikin.

"Nevertheless," the winged man proceeded as imperturbably as ever, "they learn rapidly. If they ever find out the secret of reversing their condition, we can close the book on Varan history." He jerked open the door to which the platform led, and Andreson and the girl followed him through.

From the level upon which they were standing all the way up to the summit of this new tower there was a vast chamber, domed with a clear roof. Around the base of the dome proper a ledge or platform ran, upon which was more of the furniture-like stuff--evidently a sort of solarium. Extending outside the walls as well as inside, it gave the building the look of a giant in a plastic helmet. At the apex of the dome a gem, like a giant's diamond, was fixed, rotating slowly, catching the sunlight and sending a parade of rainbow hues over the seats banked far below.

"Starstone Chamber," the girl said. "Our council hall."

"It's beautiful. Not a place for stuffy-minded men, I'd say."

They walked down through the tiers of seats toward the bottom of the arena, where what appeared to be the head of a spiral staircase was visible.

"Where are we bound?"

"To Goseq, one of our senior psychologists," Atel said. "We want to see what we can dredge up about the sciences of your period. Doubtless your observation, being untrained, missed most of the essentials, but there ought to be _some_ kind of residuum in your subconscious."

"Why don't you fly me back to where I fell out of?" Andreson suggested stiffly. "I realize that you can't expect to remember the exact spot, but those 'windows' must look both ways, and should be findable. I could send you a more suitable specimen--a friend of mine who's a scientist--"

"We do know the exact spot," Atel interrupted. "We have detectors in operation at all times--naturally! But a thorough search of that area revealed nothing."

Andreson sighed. "I was afraid of that. The apparatus evidently wasn't intended to be used for an airplane; I suppose I blew it out."

The girl, who had been preceding them, stopped at the top of the stairwell and levelled a dainty finger at Atel. "Why don't you stop tormenting him because he's not a scientist?" she demanded angrily. "It isn't his fault! He's doing his best for us!"

Atel's eyebrows would have shot up, had he had any. "Certainly," he purred, with an ironical gesture. "I'm sure you understand my attitude, Mr. Andreson. As a non-scientist, you are more of a curiosity than a gift, and that is a disappointment to us. We shall try to make your stay here as comfortable--_and as short_--as possible."

Andreson, taken aback at the girl's sudden outburst, hardly knew what to say. He was spared the task of replying, however--

The sun went out!

* * * * *

The girl gave a smothered little cry, and the human clumsily tried to make his way through the blackness toward where he had last seen her. A powerful four-fingered hand grasped his elbow roughly.

"Stand still," Atel growled. "Jina! It may be another attack. Wait for the tower lights."

Andreson was uncertain as to whether "Jina!" was an expletive or the girl's name, which he had never heard before, but he stood still, resisting an impulse to shake Atel off. After a moment an eerie sound drifted to his ears: a distant, musical keening.

"Ah. It is a raid--there's the alarm."

As he spoke, a dim radiance filtered down over them, bringing the ranked seats of the council chamber into ghostly relief. It was coming down from the dome, but the great jewel no longer scattered rainbows. The light did not seem to have any single source.

"Aloft with him," Atel ordered.

Reluctantly the girl gripped the Earthman's other arm, and two pairs of wings thrummed together in the echoing chamber. He felt himself arrowing dizzily skyward, and tried to hold his body stiff.

A second later they were standing on the high ledge among the deserted couches. Below them, the city, seen here from its highest tower, was presenting a heart stopping new facet of its beauty. Every one of the crystalline shafts were gleaming with blue-white flame along its entire length; though no single one was too bright to be looked at directly, their total effect was of a sea of light almost as brilliant as high noon. Tiny motes drifted back and forth across the pillars of radiance: Varans in flight, evidently going to their posts in answer to the alarm.

* * * * *

But when Andreson looked up to see what had happened to the sun, what he saw wiped the miracle of the city from his mind.

The sky had turned to rock. The whole metropolis was trapped in a tremendous hemisphere of some strange substance, a stony bowl, smooth and polished, and veined with dark red lines like bad marble. Here and there the glow of the city struck sullen fire against the lava-like surface.

When Atel finally spoke, his voice had none of its previous arrogance. "They have us now," he husked. "Our sky is granite to them--and they've destroyed cubic miles of it, instantaneously! Our power, our air ... cut off!"

"They've worked a miracle," the girl said with unwilling respect. "The beasts are scientists--we knew that in the beginning. Don't you see, Atel? They'll use that dome to get above the city! And their borers, too--"

Indecisively Atel spread his wings half-way. "We can't carry this Earthman about the city now," he said. "Jina, go to your post. I'll take him back to my rooms."

"But--" Andreson and the girl protested simultaneously.

"Need I remind you that I command this sector during emergencies, by Council order?" the Varan snapped. "He'll be no safer with us than alone in the apartments. Take him down again."

Mutely Jina took the human's arm, and the two picked him up again--he was becoming a little tired of being catapulted through the air once every hour--and plunged back to the catwalk door.

"All right," the Varan told the girl, his voice edged with impatience. "You're needed elsewhere, Jina."

She disappeared silently into the cavern of Starstone Chamber. Atel slid the door back and cocked his head, a grotesque silhouette against the faintly hazed oval opening. After a moment, Andreson heard the sound too: a weird, intermittent buzzing noise. It set his teeth on edge, and sent little waves of sheer hatred coursing through his body. The stocky Varan drew him out onto the platform and pointed upward.

"Borers," he grunted. "You can see one from here."

It was quite high, about half-way between the summit of the tower and the surface of the rock sky, and moving very slowly. It reminded Andreson of a legless centipede--a long, joined cylinder, with the same stony, red-veined texture that the great bowl presented. In the feeble light he thought he saw small openings appearing and vanishing: the space-beasts, moving about inside their mechanism! The brief glimpse was somehow the most horrible thing he had ever seen. He could distinguish at least two other tones in the gruesome buzzing, and he knew that the borer was not alone above the city.

"They've learned that hollow things are deadly--learned from us," Atel spat out bitterly. "See the column of light inching out from the borer's nose? They are disintegrating a tunnel for their vacuum torpedoes. It's a slow-motion kind of warfare--but when one side wins constantly, it can't last forever. Feel the radiation?"

Andreson discovered that he was scratching. His skin felt as if he had a mild sunburn. "The boring mechanism?" he suggested.

"Right," Atel admitted, his tone grudging. "Matter-against-matter generates radiant heat. Space-against-space generates X-rays and worse. Deadly stuff! If our gunners can only--"

Andreson never heard the end of the sentence. Without the slightest warning he was again sprawling through the hot dark air--

Alone!