“Perhaps. We need a closer look. Where there is more light.”
There were lines and strange markings and beside some of the markings strings of connected symbols that could be place names.
“The Brigadier said to sing out if we found anything.”
“This can wait,” said Lansing. “Let’s finish with the rest of the rooms.”
“But it could be important.”
“It’ll be just as important an hour from now as it is now.”
They continued the search and found nothing. All the dusty rooms were empty.
Halfway down the corridor on their way back to the stairway, they heard the distant, booming shouting.
“Someone has found something,” said Jurgens.
“Yes, I suppose so. But where?”
The shouting, hollow in the empty expanse of the basement, bounced and reverberated. It seemed to come from everywhere.
Hurrying down the corridor, they came to the foot of the stairs. There still was no possibility of determining from which direction the shouting might be coming. There were times when it sounded as if it were coming from the corridor they had just quitted.
Far down the right-hand corridor, a bouncing light glimmered.
“That’s the Brigadier and Sandra,” said Jurgens. “So it must be the Parson and Mary who found something.”
Before they could take more than a few steps, the Brigadier was upon them.
“You’re here,” he panted. “It must be the Parson who is bellowing. We couldn’t tell where it came from.”
Together the four of them charged down the central corridor. At its far end they burst into a room far larger than any Jurgens and Lansing had found.
“You can stop the caterwauling now,” called the Brigadier. “We’re here. What is all the noise about?”
“We found doors,” the Parson yelled.
“Well, hell, so did we,” bawled the Brigadier. “All of us found doors.”
“If you’ll quiet down for a minute,” the Parson said, “we’ll show you what we have. Different kinds of doors.”
Lansing, drawing up near Mary, saw along the extent of the rear wall of the room a row of circular lights — not the blinding light of a flashlight nor the dancing red light of a fire, but the softer hue of sunlight. The lights all stood about head-high from the floor.
Mary gripped his right arm with both her hands.
“Edward,” she said, her voice shaking, “we’ve found other worlds.”
“Other worlds?” he repeated, stupidly.
“There are doors,” she said, “and peepholes through the doors. Look through the peepholes and you see the world.”
She urged him forward and, not quite comprehending, he went along with her until they stood in front of one of the circles of light. “Look,” she said, enthralled. “Look and see. That’s my favorite world. I like it best of all.”
Lansing moved closer and looked through the peephole.
“I call it the apple-blossom world,” she said. “The bluebird world.”
And he saw.
The world stretched out before him, a quiet and gentle place with a broad expanse of grass that practically glistened in its greenness. A sparkling brook ran through the meadow in the middle distance, and now he saw that the grass was dotted with the pale blue and soft yellow of many blooming flowers. The yellow flowers looked like daffodils nodding in a breeze. The blue flowers, not so tall, half hidden in the grass, stared out at him like so many frightened eyes. On a distant hilltop stood a grove of small pink trees, covered and obscured by the astonishing pinkness of their blossoms.
“Crabapple trees,” said Mary. “Crabapples bear pink blossoms.”
The world had a sense of freshness, as if it might be only minutes old — washed clean by a careful springtime rain, dried and scrubbed by a solicitous breeze, burnished to its brightness by the rays of a gentle sun. There was no more to it than the green meadow spangled by its million flowers, the brook that sparkled through the meadow and the pink of the apple trees standing on the hill. It was an uncomplicated place, a very simple place. But what it had was quite enough, Lansing told himself; it had all it needed.
He turned from the peephole to look at Mary.
“It is lovely,” he said.
“I think so, too,” said the Parson. For the first time since he had met the man, Lansing saw that the corners of his mouth were not turned down. His eternally anxious, puzzled face was serene.
“Some of the others,” he said, shuddering. “Some of the others, but this one…”
Lansing turned his attention to the door in which the peephole was located and saw that it was somewhat larger than the average door and made of what appeared to be heavy metal. Its hinges were designed to be opened outward, into the other world, and secured against inadvertent opening by heavy metal lugs that dogged it solidly in place. The lugs were held by substantial bolts set into the wall.
“This is only one of the worlds,” he said. “What are the others like?”
“Not like this one,” Mary said. “Go and look at them.”
Lansing looked through the next peephole. It opened on an arctic scene — a vast snowfleld, the veil of a raging blizzard. Through momentary breaks in the blizzard could be seen the cruel shimmer of a towering glacier. Although no cold reached him, Lansing shivered. There was no sign of any kind of life; nothing moved except the blowing snow.
The third peephole showed a barren, rocky surface partially obscured by a knee-high drift of blowing sand. The small bits of gravel on the surface seemed to have a life of their own. They rolled and scurried, urged on by the force of the wind that drove the sand. There was nothing to be seen but foreground; no middle distance or horizon. The blowing sand blotted out any depth of perception in a yellow haze.
“Yes, see,” said Mary, who had moved along with him.
The next peephole was a ravening place of vicious life, a watery jungle world in which swam and crept and waddled a tangle of seething killers. For a moment Lansing was unable to separate the components of the life, getting only the impression of frantic motion. Then, bit by bit, he began to differentiate what he saw — the eaters and the eaten, the contention and the striving, the hunger and the hiding. The life forms were like nothing he had even seen before — contorted bodies, enormous maws, lashing appendages, flashing fangs, striking claws, glittering eyes.
He turned away, sick at heart, stomach heaving. He wiped his face, as if to wipe away the hatred and abhorrence.
“I couldn’t look,” said Mary. “I only caught a glimpse.”
Lansing felt himself shrinking in upon himself, trying to get small enough to hide, goosepimples rising on him.
“Forget it,” Mary said. “Wipe it out. It’s my fault. I should have warned you.”
“How about the rest of them? Anything as bad as this?”
“No, this is the worst,” said Mary.
“Will you look at this,” said the Brigadier. “I never saw the like.”
He stepped aside so that Lansing could look through the peephole. The terrain was jagged, not a single level surface, and it took a few seconds before Lansing could make out the reason. Then he saw that the entire surface of the place, if it actually had a surface, was covered by waist-high pyramids, their bases neatly fit together. There was no way of telling whether the recurring pyramids were the actual surface or whether some busybody, for whatever reason, had set the pyramids in place. Each pyramid rose to a sharp point. Any intruder, attempting to make its way through the maze, would run an excellent chance of becoming impaled.
“I must say,” said the Brigadier, “that’s the neatest abatis I have ever seen. Even heavy armor would have some difficulty getting through it.”
“Do you think that’s what it is?” asked Mary. “A fortification?”
“It could be,” said the Brigadier, “but I see no logic for it. There is no strongpoint I see that it might be
