Clay shook his head indulgently. "Magnetic fields, antipathetic to the metal in the road. Is it not a commonplace on Earth?"
"No," said Welstead. "The theory, of course, is well-known but there is too much opposition, too many roads to dig up. We still use wheels."
Clay said reflectively, "The force of tradition. The continuity which generates the culture of races. The stream we have been so long lost from...."
Welstead shot him a sidelong glance. Clay was entirely serious.
The car had been sliding down the road at rather high speed through vistas of wonderful quiet and beauty. Every direction showed a new and separate enchantment - a glade surrounded by great trees, a small home of natural wood, a cluster of public buildings around a plaza, a terrace checkered with trees and lined with many-colored shops.
Occasionally there were touches of drama, such as the pylon at the end of a wide avenue. It rose two hundred feet into the air, a structure of concrete, bronze and black metal, and it bore the heroic figure of a man grasping vainly for a star.
Welstead craned his neck like a tourist. "Magnificent!"
Clay assented without enthusiasm. "I suppose it's not discreditable. Of course, to you, fresh from the worlds of civilization..." He left the sentence unfinished. "Excuse me, while I call my home." He bent his head to a telephone.
Betty said in Welstead's ear, "This is a city every planner on Earth would sell his soul to build."
Welstead grunted. "Remember Halleck?" he muttered. "He was a city planner. He wanted to tear down a square mile of slums in Lanchester, eighteen stories high on the average, nothing but airless three-room apartments.
"First the real estate lobby tore into him, called him a Chaoticist. A rumor circulated among his friends that he was morally degenerate. The poor devils that lived there tried to lynch him because they'd be evicted. The Old Faithfuls read him out of the party because they pulled the votes of the district. The slums are still there and Halleck's selling farm implements on Arcturus Five."
Betty looked off through the trees. "Maybe Haven will turn out to be an object lesson for the rest of the cluster."
Welstead shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Peace and seclusion are not something you can show to a million people- because it isn't peace and seclusion anymore."
Betty sat up straighter in her seat. "The only way to convince the unbelievers is by showing them, setting them an example. Do you think that if the Lanchester slum-dwellers saw this city they'd go back to their three room apartments without wanting to do something about it?"
"If they saw this city," said Welstead, "they'd never leave Haven. By hook or crook, stowaway or workaway, they'd emigrate."
"Include me in the first wave!" said Betty indignantly.
The car turned into a leafy tunnel, crossed a carpet of bright green turf, stopped by a house built of dark massive wood. Four high gables in a row overlooked a terrace, where a stream followed its natural bed. The house looked spacious, comfortable-rather like the best country villas of Earth and the garden planets without the sense of contrived effect, the strain, the staging.
"My home," said Clay. He slid back a door of waxed blond wood, ushered them into an entry carpeted with golden rattan, walled with a fabric the color of the forest outside. A bench of glowing dark wood crossed a wall under a framed painting. From no apparent source light flooded the room, like water in a tank.
"One moment," said Clay with a trace of embarrassment "My home is poor and makeshift enough without exposing it to your eyes at its worst." He was clearly sincere; this was no conventional deprecation.
He started away, paused and said to his half-comprehending guests, "I must apologize for our backwardness but we have no facilities for housing notable guests, no great inns or embassies or state-houses such as must add to the dignity of life on Earth. I can only offer you the hospitality of my home."
Welstead and Betty both protested. "We don't deserve as much. After all we're only a pair of fly-by-night prospectors."
Clay smiled and they could see that he had been put more at his ease. "You're the link between Haven and civilization-the most important visitors we've ever had. Excuse me." He departed.
Betty went to the picture on the wall, a simple landscape-the slope of a hill, a few trees, a distant range of mountains. Welstead, with small artistic sensibility, looked around for the source of the light-without success. He joined Betty beside the picture. She said half-breathlessly, "This is a-I'm afraid to say it-a masterpiece."
Welstead squinted, trying to understand the basis of his wife's awe and wonderment. Indeed the picture focused his eyes, drew them in and around the frame, infused him with a pleasant exhilaration, a warmth and serenity.
Clay, returning, noticed their interest. "What do you think of it?" he asked.
"I think it's-exceedingly well done," said Betty, at a loss for words which would convey her admiration without sounding fulsome.
Clay shook his head ruefully, turned away. "You need not praise an inconsequentiality out of courtesy, Mrs. Welstead. We know our deficiencies. Your eyes have seen the Giottos, the Rembrandts, the Cezannes. This must seem a poor thing."
Betty began to remonstrate but halted. Words evidently would not convince Clay-or perhaps a convention of his society prompted him to belittle the works of his people and it might be discourteous to argue too vehemently.
"Your quarters are being prepared," Clay told them. "I've also ordered fresh clothing for you both as I see yours are stained with travel."
Betty blushed, smoothed the legs of her blue shorts. Welstead sheepishly brushed at his faded blouse. He reached in his pocket, pulled out a bit of gravel. "From an asteroid I prospected a few weeks ago." He twisted it around in his fingers. "Nothing but granite, with garnet inclusions."
Clay took the bit of rock, inspected it with a peculiar reverence. "May I keep this?"
"Why, of course."
Clay laid the bit of stone on a silver plate. "You will not understand what this small stone symbolizes to us of Haven. Interstellar travel-our goal, our dream for two hundred and seventy-one years."
The recurrence of the period two hundred and seventy-one years! Welstead calculated. That put them back into the Era of the Great Excursives, when the over-under space-drive had first come into use, when men drove pell-mell through the galaxy, like bees through a field of flowers and human culture flared through space like a super-nova.
Clay led them through a large room, simple in effect, rich in detail. Welstead's vision was not analytical enough to catch every particular at first. He sensed overall tones of tan, brown, mellow blue, watery green, in the wood, fabric, glass, pottery-the colors combined to marvelous effect with the waxy umber gleam of natural wood. At the end of the room a case held ten large books bound in black leather and these, by some indefinable emphasis, seemed to bear the significance of an icon.
They passed through a passage open along one side into a garden filled with flowers, low trees, tame birds. Clay showed them into a long apartment streaming with sunlight.
"Your bath is through the door," said Clay. "Fresh clothes are laid out on the bed. When you are rested I shall be in the main hall. Please be at leisure - the house is yours."
They were alone. Betty sighed happily, sank down on the bed. "Isn't it wonderful, dear?"
"It's queer," said Welstead, standing in the middle of the room.
"What's queer?"
"Mainly why these people, apparently gifted and efficient, act so humble, so self-deprecating."
"They look confident."
"They are confident. Yet as soon as the word Earth "is mentioned it's like saying Alakland to an exiled Lak. There's nothing like it."