She smiled again. “From you, Mitchell. While you were sleeping. We know everything about you and your world. It has been very interesting. You have made much progress. We are grateful. All of us.”
His head was free. He sat up with her help. He looked down and saw that his head had been fastened into an odd looking chamber, like a huge bowl with a slot to admit his neck. Coils of wire rimmed the edge. She saw the direction of his glance. “With that we learned everything from you. It has all been recorded.”
“How?”
“Mitchell, you are not a man of science. We can only use the words which we found in your brain. It is useless to attempt to explain with the few scientific words you possess.”
“Have I been unconscious long?”
“Three of your days and nights. Come, we will go to Garra. He is the commander. He wishes to thank you and to explain.”
The floor was a good ten feet below the level of the bench. She saw his difficulty, put her huge hands around his upper arms and lifted him easily down. Her laugh beat against his ears like thunder. “You are like one of our children.”
A few of the giants were gathered in the room in which he had first found them. He gasped as he saw the enormous outer room. It was now brilliantly lighted. It was a full mile long, at the minimum.
One of these people looked older than the others. He saw Gowan Mitchell, lifted one of the small tools from his belt and spoke into it. In a few seconds more of the blonde giants entered. Gowan Mitchell felt lost among the vista of huge muscled legs. The woman saw his difficulty, picked him up and stood him on one of the tables where they had slept. The faces of these huge beings were still a good four feet above Mitchell, but he felt more comfortable. In a voice much lower and slower than the voice of the woman, the giant known as Garra said:
“Mitchell, we owe much to you. You must understand. We are of the race of Famu from the planet Jorla. In deep space three thousand years ago our spaceship drive failed, and we made an emergency landing here on Earth. By the time repairs were effected, we found that our planet was at its maximum distance from Earth and we could not risk a trip. One thousand of your years had to pass before we could attempt it. We could not communicate with Jorla to tell of our distress. Our average life span is two hundred years. Our solution was to construct this place and induce artificial sleep of a sort which does not detract from the life span. Ten of us were selected by lot to serve as attendants to the others for periods of one hundred years each. At the end of one thousand years, Jorla would be close enough to attempt a return with our crippled ship.
“All went well until, by bad fortune, the third attendant grew careless and was killed by falling rock while constructing a subsidiary corridor. We have found his bones. They have turned to dust. Thus at the end of a thousand years, Jorla was near, but we slept on. At the end of the second thousand years it was once again too distant. Three thousand years have passed. It is now close enough for us again to attempt a return. But for you, we would have slept on for many more thousands of years, perhaps forever. Even so, you nearly killed all of us with your handling of the controls. How did you find us?”
The famous mountain climber took a deep breath before answering.
“I... I was trapped on top of the mountain. I dug down through the ice and found metal — a small round trap door. I pried it open. It shut behind me when I fell through.”
“We already know that, of course, Mitchell. I wished to hear you say it.”
“I do not understand the source of power. Everything is in working order.”
“Here we are nearly a mile below your sea level, Mitchell. It is six of your miles to the summit of the mountain. The internal heat of the earth provides our power.”
“How could you make anything as vast as this in so short a time?”
“You do not have the science to understand. In your terms, we used atomic power to melt away the solid rock, forming walls of vitrified rock at a temperature which gives it much the same specifications as a metal.”
“But why are you buried in a mountain?”
“We did not wish to be disturbed, and the mountain, the hollow shaft up through the heart of the mountain, will aid our departure. When we first landed, we explored your world. They are a primitive people and superstitious. But you have advanced far while we slept.”
Mitchell said: “There are legends — giants in the olden times. Blonde giants who walked the earth.”
“I imagine those legends are based on our explorations. Your world is not pleasant for us. Jorla is smaller. Here we are slow, weak and awkward. We had expected to find creatures here much larger than ourselves.”
“Why does the moving corridor go to the top of the mountain?”
“That is our place of observation and astronomical computation,” Garra said. “We have been to the summit. Conditions are proper for a return. Our calculations are complete. We will leave in seven of your hours.”
Gowan Mitchell looked around at the grave faces. They watched him silently. Garra spoke again.
“While searching your mind, we considered how best we could reward you for the service you have done us. It is within our power to return you to your world with great riches. But we know what will happen should we do that.”
The gift of life! Gowan Mitchell’s pulse thudded and his mouth grew dry. He frowned at the tone of Garra’s words.
“What will happen?” he asked.
“We know your mind well, Mitchell. We know what motivates you. For the rest of your life you would look at the sky at night and curse yourself for having partaken of every splendid adventure but the last one — the ultimate one — the greatest adventure any man of your race has ever had.”
“What do you mean?”
“We mean that the greatest thing we can do for you is to take you with us to the shining cities of Jorla across the wilderness of deepest space.”
Gowan Mitchell felt the stir of his blood, a prickle of excitement along his spine.
In a hoarse voice, with a smile on his lips, he said, “Are there mountains on Jorla?”
“Mountains that rise eighty thousand feet from the level of our seas.”
After it had been carefully explained to him, he learned the purpose of the huge rails he had seen. On them, sleek and majestic in its thousand feet of shining beauty, the incredible weight of a gigantic spaceship had been rolled to a takeoff position. In anticipation of his acceptance, a special compartment had been prepared for him, equipped to counteract the enormous shock of takeoff on his body.
They had explained to him how the nose of the ship fitted into the shining tube, the tube that extended straight up through the heart of Shenadun. With the initial blast of the atomic drive, the heat would liquefy all the apparatus left behind. The enormous pressure, confined by the flanks of the mighty mountain, would project the ship up the tube like a shell out of a gun, a gun pointed toward Jorla, untold millions of miles away. The compression of air in front of the ship would blow out the plug of metal and ice at the summit.
The woman who had taken him first to Garra, carried him up the ladder to the platform and from there through the door cut into the side of the ship. She took him to his compartment, helped him fasten the straps, and closed the door after him. Six minutes to wait. Gowan Mitchell waited, his fingernails cutting into the palms of his hands, and his heart joyous...
The following morning a radio announcer was speaking into a microphone. He was saying:
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the radio audience. This is Clinton Hoffman coming to you again through the courtesy of Stickifeed, the food that keeps your baby healthy. I now bring you a summary and analysis of the day’s news.