He stood up again. Who am I? he thought; and unexpectedly, his body began to tremble. Images floated up into awareness: he could see the corridors of the City, and the colorful, floating throngs of Lenlu Din—all clear but distant, like figures in a peepshow. He knew who the Shefthi were, and could even conjure up some of their faces… but there was no image of himself. Who and what was he?… that was what he had to find out.
He stared down at the shadow-egg. The two aliens were still talking together, but in a moment they glanced up. Naismith gestured. Churan raised his hand; then the shadow-egg began to drift nearer, growing larger as it swept up the side of the mound. There was something incongruous about the egg’s absolute internal stillness as it moved—as if the egg itself were really fixed, in some transcendent dimension, while the world swam under it.
The thought ended as the shadow-egg came to rest, near enough to touch. The orifice opened. “Get in!” said Lall.
… Then he was inside, in the suffocating closeness of the shadow-egg, while the landscape receded beneath. They were rising, moving more and more swiftly northeastward; and Naismith saw that time outside was at a standstilclass="underline" there was no movement of wind in the tall grasses below, and the clouds overhead were as solid and motionless as if painted on the sky.
“Where to now?” he asked.
The aliens glanced up but did not speak. Even the child Yegga, was staring at him silently.
The Earth became a blurred green ball, spinning massively below. The sense of motion was so powerful that Naismith had an impulse to brace himself against it. But when he closed his eyes, there was no feeling of movement at all.
When the Earth’s giddy motion slowed, Naismith saw a glint of silver ahead, and realized that they must be approaching one of the Great Lakes, probably Lake Michigan. Now they were dropping closer to the ground, skirting the rim of the lake… slowly, now, almost at a walking pace… The egg came to rest.
Churan’s fingers touched the controls. Outside, day was abruptly replaced by night: then day again, like a sudden white blow. Night, day, night, blending now into a shivering gray-ness. Once more Naismith saw the sun arching over them like a fireball, and the ground below seemed to heave and then subside, while a mist of foliage came and went, came and went.
Abruptly, there were roads. They sprang into being as if die-stamped—real highways, crisscrossing the land. At the foot of the lake there was a blurred city, growing and changing too fast for Naismith to catch its outlines. There was an impression of mud-brown hovels, replaced instantly by taller, paler buildings; then skyscrapers were sprouting upward, glittering, like a sudden growth of crystals.
Now the growth stopped, fell back. In another moment the city was gone; the roads were gone: nothing was left but the bare earth and a scattering of tiny, cone-roofed structures no bigger than barrels.
“What’s happened?” Naismith demanded.
“They went underground,” Lall said tonelessly. “The city is still there.” A breath of darkness crossed the sky; there were glints of fiery light in it, gone almost too quickly to see. “There was a war,” she added.
“Here?” Churan asked.
“A little farther,” the woman muttered.
Day again: night; day. And the shadow-egg was hovering, under a late-afternoon sky. It moved, drifting down toward the nearest of the cone-roofed objects. Naismith saw now that the thing was a ventilator.
The shadow-egg went on dropping. The ground came up around them like a tide of darkness, and Naismith held his breath instinctively as it mounted over their heads. There was an instant of stifling blackness, and then they were dropping down through a blue-green cavern… a vast place, acres of gigantic machines under a rock ceiling, illuminated by the eye-hurting glare of mercury vapor lights. The place was gigantic, throbbing with power… and empty.
Naismith looked around as the shadow-egg touched. “Where are all the people?”
“Dead,” said Lall tensely. “There was a war. They are all dead.” She moistened her lips. “Now let me give you your instructions. You realize that once we have dropped you here, you are on your own. When you were thrown back in time, this is where you will say you landed. You will find here an unfinished time vehicle, the first crude prototype. You will complete it, following the plans you find beside it. Then you will go forward to the City. After you get through the Barrier, the rest is up to you.” The shadow-egg was drifting down a wide corridor between gigantic machines.
“There it is,” she said.
Naismith saw a clear space, some low workbenches, and leaning against the wall, a thing that might have been the skeleton of a rocket-sled. It was a tapered bar of metal, six feet long, with two crosspieces. Controls were set into the upper crosspiece, and Naismith could imagine the rider lying on the shaft, feet on the lower crosspiece, hands gripping the upper one like handlebars….
“That is the time machine?” he asked, half incredulously.
“No, not yet. It can be adapted as such. The inventors were trying to make a device for exploring the interior of the Earth.
They hoped in this way to escape the devastation which over-took them. But all they succeeded in doing was to neutralize matter. If you boarded the machine as it now is, you would simply fall through the Earth, and go on falling. The pro-pulsive unit is not installed.”
Naismith glanced around. Tools lay on the workbenches, among scattered papers, as if someone had laid them aside only an hour ago.… He felt a touch of uneasiness. “What happened to them?” he asked.
“Killed in the first attack,” Lall said emotionlessly. “That black cloud you saw, just before we stopped—that was the bombs.”
“How—?” began Naismith. But already Lall was drawing the child back beside her; Churan’s fingers were busy on the controls. Naismith felt himself lifted as the shadow-egg bulged again. Then he was dropped unceremoniously on the stone floor. The shadow-egg hovered a few feet away.
“One thing she forgot to tell you,” said Churan, with an unpleasant smile. “The second attack is going to take place in just thirty seconds. That is the one that pulverizes this City to a depth of fifty meters.”
It was like a pailful of icy water in the face. Naismith found himself thinking with cold clarity, Then the workers must have gone down to shelter. That’s why there are no bodies.
“But why?” he said, taking a step closer. His mind was ferociously concentrated on the shadow-egg: he must succeed in getting back in, somehow…
“You should not have told us about the gun, Mr. Naismith,”
said Lall, watching him through narrowed eyes.
Realization struck him. The aliens had not sent the apparition of the gun. They had not sent the dreams, either. Then there were others, who—
“Ten seconds,” said Churan, glancing up from his controls.
“The lie detector—” said Naismith desperately.
“They know about you,” replied Lall. “Therefore you are useless to us.” Her face went hard and ugly. “The whole effort is wasted.”
“Five seconds,” added Churan. “Four. Three….”
Naismith whirled. In one leap he reached the skeletal machine; feet and hands were on the crosspieces. He found a lever under his fingers, pulled it over hard.
The world went grayish and unreal around him. As it toppled, the machine began to sink into the floor—falling, as if the stone floor and the earth beneath it were so much mist.
Once more, before the darkness closed over his head, the last things he saw were the triumphant smiles of the aliens.