They followed him through the wall. This time they found themselves in an unusually large sphere. It was in fact a two-story sphere, divided into upper and lower hemispheres by a great yellow disk floating unsupported. Treads and handholds allowed one to climb from the lower to the upper hemisphere through the yard-wide space between the edge of the disk and the wall of the sphere.
They climbed to the upper story, where they were met by another Alan. Vlik said: "This is Ngat, the studier. He will study you."
Butland frowned."You mean this is a laboratory?"
"Of course! How stupid of me not to remember the name. This is the first time I have ever forgotten a word of a foreign language, once I had heard it." Vlik stepped through the wall and disappeared.
Butland asked: "Do you speak English?"
"Yes," said Ngat."I learned it yesterday."
"Could you tell us how we get from one of these rooms to another?"
"I should be glad to, but there are no words in your language to express the concepts involved."
"I don't mean the theory; I'd just like to know how to do it, "
"It is done by a special kind of thought," said the Alan."These objects worn over our ears amplify this thought. That is the best explanation I can give—it is like trying to explain to your pet cat how to work the locks and latches in one of your houses on earth." The creature said this without hostility."And now may I ask you some questions?"
SOME hours later Butland remarked that both interrogatees were getting hungry. Ngat exclaimed: "Of course! It is that deplorable absentmindedness of mine." Then Alan led them back to their room.
Butland asked: "Don't you take notes?"
"For such a short little interview? No; I remember."
When their interrogator had gone, Kitty Blake said: "He seems like a friendly enough sort."
Butland replied darkly: "Never trust a heathen."
"Maybe he regards you as one."
"Then he's ignorant."
"Yeah? Whose world is this, anyway?"
"Unh." Butland fell silent while he hunted down a small doubt roving about in his mind. When he had squashed the doubt, at least for the time being, he said: "Don't you see, Miss—Kitty, I mean, I can't admit any such possibility. It would mean that my whole life's work had been wasted."
"Suppose it has been?"
Butland squirmed."You're not deliberately torturing me, are you? No, I won't doubt my mission. It's my duty to make this deluded denizen of another world see the truth."
Kitty Blake said: "When I was a little girl, I used to argue with my brother. As I remember, the arguments usually ended up with one of us yelling 'it is, it is, it is, ' and the other hollering 'tain't, 'tain't, 'tain't. It was good lung exercise, but it never settled anything. And most religious arguments seem to me to make just about as much sense. Goodnight." She curled up on one of the couches. Butland had an instant of scandalized feeling. Then he adapted himself to the necessities of his situation, and went to sleep on another couch.
Chapter IV. Specimens
THE scientist, Ngat, called for them the next day and continued questioning. All went well until he inquired about earthly religions. Butland jumped up and gave him a hell-fire-and-damnation sermon. When he could get a word in edgewise, Ngat insisted that this would never do; Butland would have to go somewhere else so that the questioning of Kitty Blake could proceed. Butland demurred. Ngat got up and, regretfully, gave him a violent push toward the wall. Butland fell off the edge of the yellow disk that constituted the floor of the upper story of the inquisition-sphere. He threw up an arm to break the shock of hitting the wall of the sphere. But he hurtled right through. Wham!
He was lying on the floor of the biggest sphere he had seen yet. It was divided into several stories. Each one was full of exhibits. It was evidently a museum.
An Alan helped Butland up. It said: "Did you trip? I was expecting you, but I did not think you would arrive so precipitously."
Butland gave up trying to figure out the rationale of this world, where nothing seemed to follow the ordinary sequence of cause and effect. He let the Alan—an assistant of some sort of Ngat—show him the exhibits in the cases.
One series of cases held a row of things that were Alans at one end and lizardlike things at the other.
"Evolution," said the Alan."These are reconstructions of our remote ancestors. Do you understand?"
"Unh." Here too, the godless delusion of evolution was held! Butland did not have the energy to argue the matter though. Suppose he asserted the world had been created in six days, as he had really believed; what would he say when his guide brought up the fact that this was another world?
"This," said the guide as they climbed to another floor, "is an exhibit of forms of life from other terms of the universal series—of which your universe is one." There were a lot of cases, each containing a thing, sometimes with two legs and some times with many; sometimes with wings, sometimes with fins, and sometimes with tentacles. Some of them were mounted beside their skeletons, the skeleton and the mounted skin in the same attitude.
THE guide pointed to a thing rather like a devil with bat-wings."This one is from the x to the nth powerth term of the series. The planet in that term corresponding to Ala is very large, though of low density. Hence the atmospheric pressure is enormous—several hundred times that of Ala and your world, which have similar surface conditions. Since the surface gravity is not much greater than that here, while the atmosphere is much denser, a flying organism of that size is quite practical. These are an intelligent people—much more so than you of earth; they even compare in some ways with the Alans."
Butland asked: "Is that a real specimen or an imitation made of wax?"
"Oh, a real one of course."
"How did he die?"
"He was killed specially," said the Alan.
"Oh. You mean you killed an intelligent being just to mount in your museum?"
"But naturally! It was done painlessly; our society for the prevention of cruelty to non-Alans saw to that. Ah, I see they have moved the cases to make room for the next two specimens." So they had. There was an obvious gap.
Butland shuddered."Let's look at something else," he said.
The guide showed him cases full of mechanical objects. These, he explained, were old-fashioned weapons. The planet had not had a real war in a long time, and had practically eliminated crime. Butland thought uncomfortably that if this were true, the Alans were superior. The guide said: "This one projects a ball of steel at high speed, so that it penetrates deeply into the body of any organism that it hits and kills it. There is a package of the propellant and some of the balls."
Butland asked: "If a ball of steel from it penetrated into you, would it kill you?"
"Undoubtedly," said the guide. Just then a siren wailed somewhere. The guide flung himself down on the floor and did pushups. When he had done ten, he looked up reproachfully at Willard Butland."What no, obeisance to the great lord Ng?"
"No. I serve the true God, and don't bow down to false ones."
The Alan scrambled up."Oh, you are very much mistaken! You will go to the place of never-ending pleasure when you die."
"What?"
"The place of never-ending pleasure, where bad people go."
Butland said: "We believe in something called Hell for sinners, but nobody ever described it as a place of pleasure. It's hot. You sizzle. Where's the punishment in never-ending pleasure?"
"You just experience pleasure without cease for a few thousand years and you'll see. We can imagine nothing more wearying. But look, even if you are of an inferior people that is barely able to reason, will you not put your faith in Ng?"