“Who?”
“She— …”
“Who—?”
“She … who was here …”
“Nobody was here, Freder …”
The boy’s eyes glazed.
“What did you say—?” he stammered.
“There has not been a soul here, Freder, but you and I.”
Freder twisted his head around stiffly. He tugged the shirt from his throat. He looked into his father’s eyes as though looking into well-shafts.
“You say there was not a soul here … I did not see you … when you were holding Maria in your arms … I have been dreaming … I am mad, aren’t I? …”
“I give you my word,” said Joh Fredersen, “when you came to me there was neither a woman nor any other living soul here …”
Freder remained silent. His bewildered eyes were still searching along the walls.
“You are ill, Freder,” said his father’s voice.
Freder smiled. Then he began to laugh. He threw himself into a chair and laughed and laughed. He bent down, resting both elbows upon his knees, burrowing his head between his hands and arms. He rocked himself to and fro, shrieking with laughter.
Joh Fredersen’s eyes were upon him.
IX
The aeroplane which had carried Josaphat away from Metropolis swam in the golden air of the setting sun, rushing towards it at a tearing speed, as though fastened to the westward sinking ball by metal cords.
Josaphat sat behind the pilot. From the moment when the aerodrome had sunk below them and the stone mosaic of the great Metropolis had paled away into the inscrutable depths, he had not given the least token that he was a human being with the faculty for breathing and moving. The pilot seemed to be taking a pale grey stone, which had the form of a man, with him as freight and, when he once turned around, he looked full into the wide open eyes of this petrified being without meeting a glance or the least sign of consciousness.
Nevertheless Josaphat had intercepted the movement of the pilot’s head with his brain. Not immediately. Not soon. Yet the vision of this cautious, yet certain and vigilant movement remained in his memory until he at last comprehended it.
Then the petrified image seemed to become a human being again, whose breast rose in a long neglected breath, who raised his eyes upwards, looking into the empty greenish blue sky and down again to the earth which formed a flat, round carpet, deep down in infinity—and at the sun which was rolling westwards like a glowing ball.
Last of all, however, at the head of the pilot who sat before him, at the airman’s cap which turned, neckless, into shoulders filled with a bull-like strength and a forceful calm.
The powerful engine of the aeroplane worked in perfect silence. But the air through which the aeroplane tore was filled with a mysterious thunder, as though the dome of heaven were catching up the roaring in the globe and throwing it angrily back again.
The aeroplane hovered homelessly above a strange earth, like a bird not able to find its nest.
Suddenly, amid the thunder of the air, the pilot heard a voice at his left ear saying, almost softly:
“Turn back …”
The head in the airman’s cap was about to bend backwards. But at the first attempt to do so it came in contact with an object of resistance, which rested exactly on the top of his skull. This object of resistance was small, apparently angular and extraordinarily hard.
“Don’t move!” said the voice at his left ear, which was so soft, yet making itself understood through the thunder of the air. “Don’t look round, either! I have no revolver with me. Had I had one handy I should probably not be here. What I have in my hand is an implement the name and purpose of which are unknown to me. But it is made of solid steel and quite sufficient to smash in your skull with should you not obey me immediately … Turn back!”
The bull-like shoulders under the airman’s cap raised themselves in a short, impatient shrug. The glowing ball of the sun touched the horizon with an inexpressibly light hovering movement. For a few seconds it seemed to dance along it in soft, blazing rhythm. The nose of the aeroplane was turned towards it and did not alter its course by a hand’s breadth.
“You do not seem to have understood me,” said the voice behind the pilot. “Turn back! I wish to return to Metropolis, do you hear? I must be there before nightfall … well?”
“Shut your mouth,” said the pilot.
“For the last time, will you obey or will you not—?”
“Sit down and keep quiet, back there … damn it all, what do you mean by it—?”
“You won’t obey—?”
“What the hell …”
A young girl, turning the hay in a wide, undulating field, by the last light of the setting sun, had sighted the rushing bird above her, in the evening sky and was watching it with eyes heated by work and tired by the summer.
How strangely the aeroplane was rising and falling! It was making jumps like a horse that wants to shake off its rider. Now it was racing towards the sun, now it was turning its back upon it. The young girl had never seen so wild and unruly a creature in the air before. Now it had swung westwards and was dashing in long, spurting bounds along the sky. Something freed itself from it; a broad, silver-grey cloth, which swelled itself out.
Drifted hither and thither by the wind, the silver-grey cloth fluttered down to earth—In the webs of which a gigantic, black spider seemed to be hanging.
Screaming, the young girl began to run. The great, black spider spun itself lower and lower on the thin cords. Now it was already like a human being. A white, death-like face bent earthwards. The earth curved itself gently towards the sinking creature. The man left go of the cord and leaped. And fell. Picked himself up again. And fell once more.
Like a snow-cloud, gentle and shimmering, the silver-grey cloth sank over him, quite covering him.
The young girl came running up.
She was still screaming, wordlessly,
