“Then it was planned in advance.”
“Of course it was planned in advance,” Peter said irritably.
“You people went around that ship after the showdown with Fox acting as though you thought if you didn’t look at it, maybe it would just go away. Salter and his pals were planning a break with the ship from the minute the mutiny fell through. They didn’t cut me in on it until we were actually organizing the landing party, and then they only told me to be on my toes when the time came. They had no intention of running into any aliens on Wolf IV. They thought that the landing parties would leave the ship under a light guard, and that they could break away and seize it, and then head out. Which was what they did, up to a point.”
“And when they got back to Earth?”
“No problem. Who’d be there to argue any story they told? The Colonial Service would have to believe them.”
“So they planned to murder or maroon anyone that didn’t go along with them,” said Lars bitterly.
“Now you’re getting the picture,” said Peter. “I got just an inkling of it. Salter was still sore that I didn’t vote with him before, and I hoped I could spot the trouble and tip off the rest of you when the time came. Trouble was, it came too soon. Salter moved as soon as the rest of you were asleep, and I had the choice of going along quietly or taking a bullet in the head. I chose the former. I thought even at that I—might be able to break away and warn the men on the ship.”
“So that was how it was,” Lars said slowly. Suddenly, he felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He had not realized how much Peter’s desertion had hurt, not because of treachery to the ship and its crew, but very personally. He couldn’t believe that Peter had done what he had done willfully. “I’m glad it was that way,” he said. “I’m really glad.”
“You thought something else, maybe?”
“I—didn’t know what to think.”
“I suppose it must have looked pretty mean. Oh, I know
I’ve acted like a fool about some things on this trip, but I wasn’t ready to join this scheme, believe me. I felt pretty dirty helping Salter and Leeds get those boats across the river, and then cutting them loose. And of course, when we got back to where the Ganymede had landed, it was gone, and I didn’t have a chance to sound an alarm after all.”
“Gone!” said Lars. “You mean you didn’t move it at all?”
“It wasn’t there to be moved. You should have seen Jeff Salter’s face! It would have made you feel lots better about that trip over the mountain. He’d figured it was all smooth as oiled silk from then on out, and then whammo, no ship. We were in as bad shape as the ones we’d run out on. Only Salter wasn’t exactly the leader type. It scared him silly when we came down and found that ship gone. He was all over the place, sending us out to scour the area, he thought we might have missed the way, but scared to wait by himself for fear something would jump on him from the woods.”
“But what did happen?” asked Lars.
“We went over to the place where the ship had been, and began looking around for it, and then, just like that, we weren’t there, any more, but here. In the city. In a room with a dozen aliens, stripped of our weapons. I still haven’t found out what they did with our machine pistols. And every single one of the men dead asleep except me.”
“Except you,” Lars repeated.
“That’s right.”
“First you, then me. What’s so special about usF*
“You find me the answer for that, and we’d be on our way out of here,” Peter said grimly. “I don’t know why, and the City-people here either can’t or won’t tell me why.”
“Coincidence?” said Lars.
Peter snorted. “Do you think so?”
“But what else? What have they been doing with you?”
“Giving me lessons.”
“Look, lessons mean teaching something,” Lars protested.
“What are they trying to teach you?”
“I’ve been trying to find that out every since they started. I haven’t an inkling. But I know one thing. From the minute I turned up in this city, the City-people have been trying to teach me something, with every technique and resource at their disposal.” Peter gave him a grin. “So chew on that for a while.”
“Can you show me around this place, or are we locked in?”
“We’re free as the wind except at lesson-time,” said Peter wryly.
“Then show me around a bit.”
They left the quarters and started out on a tour of the remarkable city, Peter with a firm step, Lars walking in fear and trembling lest the airy structure of the place should suddenly tumble down upon them like a house of cards. They walked across a high bridge from their building (which Lars could have sworn was not there when they had first come) and around a long circular staircase down toward the ground. The end of the staircase was twenty feet up, so that it appeared that they must turn around and come back, but as they neared the end, the building, staircase and all, obligingly drifted down to firm ground for them.
Lars shook his head uneasily. “This is what I can’t understand,” he said, pointing to the staircase, which was rising up again. “This business of now-it’s-one-place-now-another. I see it happening, but I can’t quite get myself to believe it. Things don’t just up and vanish.”
“It’s the way they live,” Peter said. “Your bed last night, was it comfortable?”
“Perfectly.”
“Good and steady? It didn’t lurch around when you crawled in?”
“No, it was steady enough.”
“Well, have you figured out what held it up, yet?”
“No.”
“I don’t think you’re going to, either, because nothing was holding it up. These City-people have almost complete telepathic control of everything around them. Just the way the telep on 3-V back home can control the ball in the box.”
“Then these things are a result of extra-sensory perception?” Lars asked incredulously. “That’s impossible! Nobody has ever learned how to control extra-sensory powers like this, not even the most skillful telep on Earth.”
“The City-people do,” said Peter. “It’s what we think of as extra-sensory power, but with them it’s refined beyond anything we’ve ever seen on Earth. With these people it’s completely unconscious: telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, anything you want to call it. They control it. Their whole culture and civilization is based on it.”
Lars shook his head in confusion. “Our scientists on Earth have been working with ESP for centuries and they’ve never learned how to control it,” he said. “Some of them even claim it never can be controlled or useful for anything.”
“Well, these people can certainly use it,” Peter said. “You notice what a hodge-podge this city is?”
Lars nodded. “It looks as though the city planners were out to lunch when the plans were drawn up.”
“There weren’t any city planners. These people arrange things strictly to suit themselves. They can move a single molecule or the side of a mountain, individually or collectively, just by deciding that they want it moved. Their houses float when they want them to, or sit on the ground when they want them to. If they get bored with one kind of house they rearrange it into another kind. Since they travel around almost entirely by teleportation, the doors and windows are ninety per cent decoration. That’s why you see doorways like that.” Peter pointed to an oval-shaped building they were passing. It had pale orange doorways shaped like tall slender triangles.