Set into one wall facing the bottom steps of the stone stair, was an immense circular portal of the same gleaming, jewel-toned metal. The shape of this door, if door is what it was, was odd. It was perfectly circular, with the bottom curve of the circle touching, as it were, the stone floor.
There were no hinges, no handles, and no keyhole. The huge metal disk seemed imbedded in the sandstone of the wall, fixed and immobile. But it must be a door of some kind, for what else could it be?
Doc cried out, pointing.
Carved in the sandstone above the door in a half circle, was an inscription!
Dmu Dran had been puzzling over it, but seemed unable to make out its meaning, for all his knowledge of the antique lore. Zarouk turned to Herzog, impatiently.
“Can you read that writing, old man?” he demanded. Doc peered at it thoughtfully, his eyes bright, head held a little to one side.
Then, slowly—reverently—he nodded.
“It is in the oldest known form of the Hieratic script,” he whispered. “Even older than that, maybe. I can make it out well enough, I guess. But no one in the world speaks this dialect, or has, for millions and millions of years.”
“Read it, then! Xinga—hold the torches steady.”
The old scientist peered at the inscription, moving his lips silently. Then he spoke aloud.
“Dja-ih az Mhu-a Zhiam-aZar. “
“Which means?” demanded Zarouk hoarsely.
” ‘This is the Door to … Outside-the-World,’ ” said the old man.
” ‘Outside-the-World,’ ” breathed Dmu Dran faintly, a strange expression on his gaunt skull face, one that mingled unholy loathing with unholy rapture.
“What does it mean, Outside-the-World?” asked the desert prince.
“I don’t know,” admitted Doc. “I honestly don’t know.”
Zarouk turned to stare at the strange portal. He rapped it gingerly with the end of the handle of his torch. It made a muffled, thudding sound.
“It doesn’t sound hollow, lord,” whispered Houm, hesitantly. “How does it open, then?”
“I don’t know, fool,” snapped Zarouk, eyes glittering with wild fires in the glare of the torches. “But this is the thing we came to find, nonetheless. This is the Door to Zhiam—and we have the key to it!”
The fat merchant opened his mouth to ask another question, but remained silent when he saw the look on Zarouk’s face. He was taut and quivering, and in this mood it was not wise to incur his wrath.
“So that’s what ‘Zhiam’ means, eh?” muttered Ryker to Doc. “All this time, I been thinkin’ it was a name, not a word—”
“Yes,” the old man murmured. “The dialect is so ancient the words don’t sound like the language as spoken today. I knew it meant ‘Outside,’ sure. But I thought that was, well, you know … a reference to the fact that the land the Lost Nation got to was outside the areas of Mars the Nine Clans ruled. But now … now, I’m beginning to wonder. …”
“How’s that?”
“I mean, look, my boy, what I said about no caverns being possible in this sort of soil still goes. Why, we couldn’t even be standing down here in this big room, if it wasn’t for all those metal girders bracing the walls and roof.”
“But, hell, Doc!” grunted Ryker bewilderedly. “Where else could the door lead, otherwise?”
“I … don’t know. I hardly dare try to guess! But remember one thing, my boy—the Old Race were masters of a strange science beyond even our present level of knowledge. You’ve seen the so-called ‘thought-records’ they left, we got ‘em in museums today. Recorded thought-waves, imperishably stamped in pure metal! No idea how they did it. And other things as well—fragments of machinery with no moving parts, just geometrically-shaped pieces of crystal somehow impregnated with electromagnetic energy—‘course they don’t work anymore, the machines. But we couldn’t duplicate ‘em if we tried.”
“So—‘Outside-the World’?”
“Don’t even try to guess,” whispered Doc. ” ‘Cause we’re about the find out—”
He pointed. Ryker turned to look.
The priest had taken out the replica of the Keystone which Ryker had carved under the drug-induced trance.
Now, as Zarouk and the warriors shrank back, mumbling half-forgotten boyhood prayers, Dmu Dran stepped forward.
He pressed the Keystone against the very center of the huge disk of blue-green alloy.
He pressed the rounded side against the metal first.
Nothing at all happened.
Then he reversed the Keystone with trembling hands, and set the flat side against it, the side with the odd, geometrical symbolic inscription cut into the slick stone.
He tried the stone first horizontal, then with the larger, more rounded end pointing directly up.
A shiver of awe ran through the thronged warriors.
Then they cried out!
The panel melted away into a spangled, glittering mist.
Motes of quivering indigo and emerald dust swirled queerly, revealing a round, circular opening cut into the dry stone.
The motes swam in a weaving, spiral motion, like the Brownian motion of dust suspended in a liquid.
Through the opening in the wall fell a weird golden light.
A wind blew upon their faces, heady, perfumed, and— strangest of all on this desert world—moist!
The Door to Outside was open.
IV
Outside the World
16. Strange Eden
Beyond the door the desert warriors found a weird new world, a world such as they had never envisioned, even in their most phantasmagoric dreams.
It was the air that seemed uncanniest to them, at first.
It was moist and warm, and redolent of growing things, rich with a curious perfumed sweetness, like delectable spices, whose nature they could not identify.
But Ryker could. He leaned against the rock wall and drank the warm, intoxicating fragrance deeply into his lungs. He remembered his boyhood, and his eyes misted … a small, two-story white frame house on the outskirts of Reno, Nevada, with a picket fence and a tall tree in the front yard … a smiling woman in a checkered apron, calling his name in a voice that was scarcely a memory to him any more, and himself answering in a childish treble-… bare legs with scabs on the knees from falling down, and well-worn sneakers … and a small, scruffy, black-and-white dog yapping at his heels as he ran to the house, a dog long forgotten, save in dreams … and, by the door, the small, sturdy figure that had once been himself, pausing before a bush of green, glossy leaves where white blossoms grew, inhaling the sweet, spicy fragrance …
He blinked back sudden tears.
The scent that puzzled the Martians was familiar to him.
It was the scent of flowers.
For a time they stood about, or wandered idly, like men in a daze of dreams.
Everything they saw about them was new and strange and wonderful, and full of beauty.
From the round mouth of the door stretched a thick, dewy sward of strange, soft, cushiony moss, deep metallic indigo starred with minute white flowers. Beyond grew thick, rustling bushes, swaying in the scented breezes. And then a stand of—trees?—something very like them, at any rate. To Ryker’s dazed vision they resembled towering stalks of raw celery , somehow grown to Brob-dingnagian proportions, and fronded with feathery plumes of azure.