It had been the wheels, he told himself. No other creature in the known galaxy came equipped with wheels. It had been a pudgy creature, a roly-poly suspended between two wheels, the hubs of which projected from its body somewhere near its middle. The wheels were encased in fur and the rims of them, he saw, were horny calluses. The downward bulge of the roly-poly body sagged beneath the axle of the wheels like a bulging sack. But the worst of it, he saw when he came nearer, was that this sagging portion of the body was transparent and filled with a mass of writhing things which made one think of a pail of gaily colored worms.
And those writhing objects in that obscene and obese belly, Maxwell knew, were, if not worms, at least some kind of insect, or a form of life which could equate with that form of life on Earth which men knew as insects. For the Wheelers were a hive mechanism, a culture made up of many such hive mechanisms, a population of colonies of insects, or at least the equivalent of insects.
And with a population of that sort, the tales of terror which came from the far and rough frontier about the Wheelers were not hard to understand. And if these horror tales were true, then man here faced, for the first time since his drive out into space, that hypothetical enemy which it always had been presumed would be met somewhere in space.
Throughout the galaxy man had met many other strange and, at times, fearsome creatures, but none, thought Maxwell, could match fearsomeness with a creature that was a wheel-driven hive of insects. There was something about the whole idea that made one want to gag.
Today outlandish creatures flocked to the Earth in thousands, to attend the many colleges, to staff the faculties that made up that great galactic university which had taken over Earth. And in time, perhaps, thought Maxwell, the Wheelers might be added to this galactic population which swarmed the colleges of Earth-if only there could be some kind of understanding contact. But so far there hadn’t been.
Why was it, Maxwell wondered, that the very idea of the Wheelers went against the grain, when man and all the other creatures in the galaxy contacted by the humans had learned to live with one another?
Here, in this waiting room, one could see a cross section of them-the hoppers, the creepers, the crawlers, the wrigglers, and rollers that came from the many planets, from so many stars. Earth was the galactic melting pot, he thought, a place where beings from the thousand stars met and mingled to share their thoughts and cultures.
“Number Five-six-nine-two,” shrilled the loudspeaker.
“Passenger Number Five-six-nine-two, your departure time is only five minutes from now. Cubical Thirty-seven. Passenger Five-six-nine-two, please report immediately to Cubical Thirty-seven.”
And where, Maxwell wondered, might No. 5692 be bound? To the jungles of Headache No. 2, to the grim, windswept glacial cities of Misery IV, to the desert planets of the Slaughter Suns, or to any of the other of the thousands of planets, all less than a heartbeat away from this very spot where he stood, now linked by the transmitter system, but representing in the past long years of exploratory effort as discovery ships beat through the dark of everlasting space. As they were beating out there even now, slowly and painfully expanding the perimeter of man’s known universe.
The sound of the waiting room boomed and muttered, with the frantic paging of late or missing passengers, with the hollow buzz of a hundred different tongues spoken in a thousand different throats, with the shuffling or the clicking or the clop of feet across the floor.
He reached down, picked up his luggage, and turned toward the entrance.
After no more than three steps, he was halted to make way for a truck carrying a tank filled with a murky liquid. Through the cloudiness of the liquid, be caught a suggestion of the outrageous shape that lurked within the tank-some creature from one of the liquid planets, perhaps, and one where the liquid was not water. Here, more than likely, as a visiting professor, perhaps to one of the colleges of philosophy, or maybe one of the science institutes.
The truck and its tank out of the way, he went on and reached the entrance, stepped through the opening onto the beautifully paved and terraced esplanade, along the bottom of which ran the roadway belts. He was gratified to notice that there were no waiting lines, as often was the case.
He drew a deep breath of air into his lungs-clean, pure air with the sharp tang of frosty autumn in it. It was a welcome thing after the weeks of dead and musty air up on the crystal planet.
He turned to go down the steps and as he did he saw the signboard just beyond the gate to the roadway belts. The sign was large and the lettering was in Old English, screaming with solid dignity:
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, ESQ.
“Maxwell,” someone shouted and he swung around. A man was running from the entrance, toward him.
Maxwell put down his luggage, half-raised his hand in greeting and acknowledgment, then slowly dropped it, for he realized that he did not recognize the man.
The man slowed to a trot, then a rapid walk.
“Professor Maxwell, isn’t it?” he asked as he came up. “I’m sure I’m not mistaken.”
Maxwell nodded stiffly, just a bit embarrassed.
“Monty Churchill,” said the man, thrusting out his hand. “We met, a year or so ago. At one of Nancy Clayton’s bashes.”
“How are you, Churchill?” Maxwell asked, a little frostily.
For now he did recognize the man, the name at least if not the face. A lawyer, he supposed, but he wasn’t sure. Doing business, if he recalled correctly, as a public relations man, a fixer. One of that tribe that handled things for clients, for anyone who could put up a fee.
“Why, I’m fine,” said Churchill happily. “Just back from a trip. A short one. But it’s good to be back again. There’s nothing quite like home. That’s why I yelled out at you. First familiar face I’ve seen for several weeks.”
“I’m glad you did,” said Maxwell. “You going back to the campus?”
“Yes. I was heading for the roadway.”
“No need of that,” said Churchill. “I have my flier here. Parked on the strip out back. There’s room for both of us. Get there a good deal faster.”
Maxwell hesitated. He didn’t like the man, but what Churchill said was true; they would get there faster. And he was anxious to get back as quickly as he could, for there were things that needed checking out.
“That’s very kind of you,” he said. “If you’re sure you have the room.”
The motor sputtered and went dead. The jets hummed for a second and then fell silent. The air sighed shrilly against the metal hide.
Maxwell glanced swiftly at the man beside him. Churchill sat stiff-perhaps in fear, perhaps only in astonishment. For even Maxwell realized that a thing like this should not have happened-was, in fact, unthinkable. Fliers such as the one in which they rode were regarded as foolproof.
Below them lay the jagged rocks of the craggy cliffs, the spearlike, upthrusting branches of the forest covering the hills, clinging to the rocks. To the left the river ran, a silver ribbon through the wooded bottom lands.
Time seemed to drag, to lengthen out, as if by some strange magic each second had become a minute. And with the lengthening of time came a quiet awareness of what was about to happen, as if it might be happening to someone else, Maxwell told himself, and not to him, a factual and dispassionate assessment of the situation by an observer who was not involved. And even as he knew this, he also knew, in a dim, far corner of his mind, panic would come later and when that came time would take up its usual pace again as the flier rushed down to meet the forest and the rock.