The long arm stretched out and barred the way.
“Where do you want to go?”
It was clear that he was not aware I knew everything. All right! Perhaps it was necessary that it should be so. From above him, in a deliberately significant tone I said:
“I am the Builder of the Integral and I am directing the test flight. Do you understand?”
The arm drew away.
The saloon. Heads covered with bristles, gray iron bristles, and yellow heads, and bald, ripe heads were bent over the instruments and maps. Swiftly, with a glance, I gathered them in with my eyes, off I ran, back along the long passage, then through the hatch into the engine-room. There it was hot from the red tubes, overheated by the explosions; a constant roar—the levers were dancing their desperate drunken dance, quivering ceaselessly with a barely noticeable quiver; the arrows on the dials. … There! At last! Near the tachometer, a notebook in his hand, was that man with the low forehead.
“Listen,” I shouted straight into his ear (because of the roar), “Is she here? Where is she?”
“She? There at the radio.”
I dashed over there. There were three of them, all with receiving helmets on. And she seemed a head taller than usual, wingy, sparkling, flying like an ancient walkyrie, and those bluish sparks from the radio seemed to emanate from her—from her also that ethereal, lightning-like odor of ozone.
“Someone—well, you for instance,” I said to her, panting from having run, “I must send a message down to earth, to the docks. Come, I shall dictate it to you.”
Close to the apparatus there was a small boxlike cabin. We sat at the table side by side. I found her hand and pressed it hard.
“Well, what is going to happen?”
“I don’t know. Do you realize how wonderful it is? To fly without knowing where … no matter where? It will soon be twelve o’clock and nobody knows what. … And when night. … Where shall you and I be tonight? Perhaps somewhere on the grass, on dry leaves. …”
Blue sparks emanated from her and the odor of lightning, and the vibration became more and more frequent within me.
“Write down,” I said loudly, panting (from having run), “Time: eleven-twenty; speed 5800. …”
“Last night she came to me with your note. I know … I know everything; don’t talk. … But the child is yours. I sent her over; she is already beyond the Wall. She will live. …”
I was back on the commander’s bridge, back in the delirious night with its black, starry sky and its dazzling sun. The hands of the clock on the table were slowly moving from minute to minute. Everything was permeated by a thin, hardly perceptible quivering (only I noticed it). For some reason a thought passed through my head: it would be better if all this took place not here but somewhere below, nearer to earth.
“Stop!” I commanded.
We kept moving by inertia, but more and more slowly. Now the Integral was caught for a second by an imperceptible little hair—for a second it hung motionless, then the little hair broke and the Integral like a stone dashed downward with increasing speed. That way in silence, minutes, tens of minutes passed. My pulse was audible; the hand of the clock before my eyes came closer and closer to twelve. It was clear to me I was a stone; I-330 the earth; and the stone was under irresistible compulsion to fall downward, to strike the earth and break into small particles. What if … ? Already the hard blue smoke of the clouds appeared below. … What if … ? But the phonograph within me with a hinge-like motion and precision took the telephone and commanded: “Low speed!” The stone ceased falling. Only the four lower tubes were growling, two ahead and two aft, only enough to hold the Integral motionless, and the Integral, only slightly trembling, stopped in the air as if anchored, about one kilometer from the earth.
Everybody came out on deck, (it was shortly before twelve, before the sounding of the dinner-gong) and leaned over the glass railing; hastily, in huge gulps, they swallowed the unknown world which lay below, beyond the Green Wall. Amber, blue, green, the autumnal woods, prairies, a lake. At the edge of a little blue saucer, some lone yellow debris, a threatening, dried-out yellow finger—it must have been the tower of an ancient “church” saved by a miracle. …
“Look, there! Look! There to the right!”
There (over the green desert) a brown blot was rapidly moving. I held a telescope in my hands and automatically I brought it to my eyes: the grass reaching their chests, a herd of brown horses was galloping, and on their back—they, black, white, and dark. …
Behind me:
“I assure you, I saw a face!”
“Go away! Tell it to someone else!”
“Well, look for yourself! Here is the telescope.”
They had already disappeared. Endless green desert, and in that desert, dominating it completely and dominating me, and everybody—the piercing vibrations of the gong; dinner time, one minute to twelve.
For a second the little world around me became incoherent, dispersed. Someone’s brass badge fell to the floor. It mattered little. Soon it was under my heel. A voice: “And I tell you, it was a face!” A black square, the open door of the main saloon. White teeth pressed together, smiling. … And at that moment, when the clock began slowly, holding its breath between beats, to strike, and when the front rows began to move towards the dining saloon, the rectangle of the door was suddenly crossed by the two familiar, unnaturally long arms:
“Stop!”
Someone’s fingers sank piercing into my palm. It was I-330. She was beside me.
“Who is it, do you know him?”
“Is he not … is he not? …”
He was already lifted upon somebody’s shoulders. Above a hundred other faces, his face like hundreds, like thousands of other faces yet unique among the rest. …
“In the name of the
