What could he say but yes? For an instant he remembered the watch Tsi had strapped to his wrist and what she had said of it. But it was for communication only—she had said—and surely she knew that a routine search would probably be made. She wouldn’t have branded him with something that would give him away to the first inspection. Or would she? What he had heard of Tsi did little to increase his confidence in her. Still …
“Search if you like,” he said.
The room went dark. Miller, blinking in the sudden blindness, felt something like the vertigo he had not suffered in flight seize him relentlessly now he was on solid flooring. The air spun around him in a shrill diminishing vortex and it seemed to him limitless gulfs were opening underfoot and sucking him down, tight, tight, into a crushing spiral of darkness. …
Out of the dark lights suddenly sprang into being, cold, blue lights that struck him like cold water—struck and penetrated. Looking down, he was aghast to see his own blood coursing red through transparent veins, to see his bones stand out cleanly white in their lacings of muscle, moving startlingly when he bent to stare.
The lights went out again. The darkness ceased to whirl. And then for one instant he felt all through his body an indescribable shifting, a terrible motion of inconceivable multiplicity. And in that flash of the instant he was changed.
The atoms went back into their normal pattern. That unstable isotope which was himself shed its changed form and he was as he had always been, solid, human, normal.
It was a hideous feeling. Until that moment he had not realized how much he had changed already, what nascent, nameless senses had begun to open up in him, pushing back horizons upon glories beyond glories. It was like deafness and blindness suddenly closing in about a normal man. It was worse—it was like having all the properties of death itself imposed upon the living. Miller held his breath, closed his eyes.
He felt the shift again as the isotope form renewed itself within him. The shifting stirred in the unthinkable myriads of the nuclei that formed him. He was whole again.
Once more the vortex whirled and roared in darkness. Then the dark lifted and he was standing beside a bank of thick yellow flowers under an arched vault of glass. The floor was tiled in brilliant colors, resilient to the foot. The flowery bank rising from it might be real earth and flowers or it might be a skillful imitation. For it was also a divan.
Orelle lay upon it, smiling at him. He knew it was Orelle. He was aware, though he could not have explained how, of the telepathic emanation from her mind to his, individual as the pattern of the brain. She was beautiful—as everyone in this world seemed beautiful.
He saw something of Tsi’s features in hers but she was not dressed with the extravagance her sister affected. She was very slender, and her graceful body was sheathed tightly in something like clear satin that covered her to the wrists and ankles and flowed in long smooth lines over the flowers she lay on. She was pulling them idly and twirling the blossoms between her fingers.
“Well, you are welcome,” she said, almost reluctantly, eyeing Miller with a smile that had wryness in it. “We found no weapons, though we searched you down to the very structure of the protons. To tell you the truth, we have no reason to trust you.
“But Tsi must have had some reason for sending you here and I think we’re safer coping with her schemes at first hand than goading her on to try something more subtle still. Be sure you’re watched, my friend. Be careful what you do.”
Miller said wryly, “I’m not likely to do anything. From what I’ve seen of this place, I feel helpless. Do you all have the same powers as Tsi? How many of you are there? And what—”
Orelle shrugged. “We’re not used to hurry. Of course we have all the time we need. Your race doesn’t—even here. I can see your curiosity. And I’ll satisfy it, too. Yes, everyone here has the same powers, though naturally some are stronger than others. There is the telepathic factor, and—other things.”
“Bred into your race? But what about me? I’m not your kind.”
She said slowly, “A million years ago your ancestors were, though. Since then your people have gone down. It took eons to reach the peak when Atlantis and Mu were great cultures, and it will take eons more for your race to regain what they have lost. Only here, on this secret mountain, have we retained the strength of the old civilizations.”
Miller said. “But what happened?”
“Oh, the usual thing. Men took weapons they weren’t ready to use. In that time—try to understand this—the atomic structure of the world itself was different. You know that? That the atom can change—”
“I do indeed,” Miller told her grimly. “If electrons change, or if the nucleus changes, the structure changes too.”
She said, “Well, that was what happened. All earth is dull and dead now. Only here does the old special type of matter still exist. It throws off a certain radiation that makes it possible for us to be born and live as we are. In Atlantis there was experiment with nuclear structures, and transmutation.”
“We have atomic power now,” Miller said.
“The beginnings of it. You’re merely beginning. It will be a long, long time before you stand where Atlantis once stood. First you must change the very structure of your world! Only then will you change, will the radiation-caused mutation alter you and give you the powers and senses you lost when a world went to war a millennium ago.
“The fires of matter itself moved across the planet, and where it passed, structure altered and what was bright and shining and glorious became a dull, empty thing. Men lost
