From the Ocean from teh Stars (74 page)

where beneath unknown, far-off Lys, that second machine was waiting
in another such chamber as this.

Khedron began to talk, a little too swiftly.

"What a peculiar transport system! It could only handle a hundred
people at a time, so they could not have expected much traffic. And why
did they go to all this trouble to bury themselves in the Earth if the skies
were still open? Perhaps the Invaders would not even permit them to fly,
though I find that hard to believe. Or was this built during the transition
period, while men still traveled but did not wish to be reminded of space?
They could go from city to city, and never see the sky and the stars."
He gave a nervous laugh. "I feel sure of one thing, Alvin. When Lys
existed, it was much like Diaspar. All cities must be essentially the same.
No wonder that they were all abandoned in the end, and merged into
Diaspar. What was the point of having more than one?"

Alvin scarcely heard him. He was busy examining the long projectile, trying to find the entrance. If the machine was controlled by some mental
or verbal code order, he might never be able to make it obey him, and
it would remain a maddening enigma for the rest of his life.

The silently opening door took him completely unawares. There was
no sound, no warning when a section of the wall simply faded from sight and the beautifully designed interior lay open before his eyes.

This was the moment of choice. Until this instant, he had always
been able to turn back if he wished. But if he stepped inside that welcoming door, he knew what would happen, though not where it would
lead. He would no longer be in control of his own destiny, but would
have placed himself in the keeping of unknown forces.

He scarcely hesitated. He was afraid to hold back, being fearful that
if he waited too long this moment might never come again—or that if it
did, his courage might not match his desire for knowledge. Khedron opened his mouth in anxious protest, but before he could speak, Alvin
had stepped through the entrance. He turned to face Khedron, who was
standing framed in the barely visible rectangle of the doorway, and for a
moment there was a strained silence while each waited for the other to
speak.

The decision was made for them. There was a faint flicker of trans-
lucence, and the wall of the machine had closed again. Even as Alvin
raised his hand in farewell, the long cylinder started to ease itself for
ward. Before it had entered the tunnel, it was already moving faster than
a man could run.

There had been a time when, every day, millions of men made such
journeys, in machines basically the same as this, as they shuttled between

their homes and their humdrum jobs. Since that far-off day, Man had
explored the Universe and returned again to Earth—had won an empire, and had it wrestled from his grasp. Now such a journey was being made
again, in a machine wherein legions of forgotten and unadventurous men
would have felt completely at home.

And it was to be the most momentous journey any human being had
undertaken for a billion years.

Alystra had searched the Tomb a dozen times, though once was quite
sufficient, for there was nowhere anyone could hide. After the first shock
of surprise, she had wondered if what she had followed across the park
had not been Alvin and Khedron at all, but only their projections. But
that made no sense; projections were materialized at any spot one wished
to visit, without the trouble of going there in person. No sane person
would "walk" his projected image a couple of miles, taking half an hour to reach his destination, when he could be there instantly. No; it was the
real Alvin and the real Khedron that she had followed into the Tomb.

Somewhere, then, there must be a secret entrance. She might as well
look for it while she was waiting for them to come back.

As luck would have it, she missed Khedron's reappearance, for she
was examining a column behind the statue when he emerged on the other
side of it. She heard his footsteps, turned toward him, and saw at once
that he was alone.

"Where is Alvin?" she cried.

It was some time before the Jester answered. He looked distraught
and irresolute, and Alystra had to repeat her question before he took
any notice of her. He did not seem in the least surprised to find her there.

"I do not know where he is," he answered at last. "I can only tell
you that he is on his way to Lys. Now you know as much as I do."

It was never wise to take Khedron's words at their face value. But Alystra needed no further assurance that the Jester was not playing his
role today. He was telling her the truth—whatever it might mean.

☆
CHAPTER TEN

When the door closed behind him, Alvin slumped into the nearest seat. All strength seemed suddenly to have been
drained from his legs: at last he knew, as he had never known before,
that fear of the unknown that haunted all his fellow men. He felt himself

trembling in every limb, and his sight became misty and uncertain. Could
he have escaped from this speeding machine he would willingly have
done so, even at the price of abandoning all his dreams.

It was not fear alone that overwhelmed him, but a sense of unutter
able loneliness. All that he knew and loved was in Diaspar; even if he
was going into no danger, he might never see his world again. He knew,
as no man had known for ages, what it meant to leave one's home
forever. In this moment of desolation, it seemed to him of no importance
whether the path he was following led to peril or to safety; all that mat
tered to him now was that it led away from home.

The mood slowly passed; the dark shadows lifted from his mind.
He began to pay attention to his surroundings, and to see what he could
learn from the unbelievably ancient vehicle in which he was traveling.
It did not strike Alvin as particularly strange or marvelous that this buried
transport system should still function perfectly after such aeons of time.
It was not preserved in the eternity circuits of the city's own monitors,
but there must be similar circuits elsewhere guarding it from change or
decay.

For the first time he noticed the indicator board that formed part of the forward wall. It carried a brief but reassuring message:

LYS
35 MINUTES

Even as he watched, the number changed to "34." That at least was use
ful information, though since he had no idea of the machine's speed it
told him nothing about the length of the journey. The walls of the tunnel
were one continual blur of gray, and the only sensation of movement
was a very slight vibration he would never have noticed had he not looked for it.

Diaspar must be many miles away by now, and above him would be
the desert with its shifting sand dunes. Perhaps at this very moment he
was racing below the broken hills he had watched so often from the
Tower of Loranne.

His imagination sped onward to Lys, as if impatient to arrive ahead
of his body. What sort of a city would it be? No matter how hard he
tried, he could only picture another and smaller version of Diaspar. He
wondered if it still existed, then assured himself that not otherwise would this machine be carrying him swiftly through the Earth.

Suddenly there was a distinct change in the vibration underfoot.

The vehicle was slowing down—there was no question of that. The
time must have passed more swiftly than he had thought; somewhat
surprised, Alvin glanced at the indicator.

LYS
23 MINUTES

Feeling puzzled, and a little worried, he pressed his face against the side of the machine. His speed was still blurring the walls of the tunnel
into a featureless gray, yet now from time to time he could catch a
glimpse of markings that disappeared almost as quickly as they came. And at each disappearance, they seemed to remain in his field of vision
for a little longer.

Then, without any warning, the walls of the tunnel were snatched
away on either side. The machine was passing, still at a very great speed,
through an enormous empty space, far larger even than the chamber of
the moving ways.

Peering in wonder through the transparent walls, Alvin could glimpse
beneath him an intricate network of guiding rods, rods that crossed and crisscrossed to disappear into a maze of tunnels on either side. A flood of
bluish light poured down from the arched dome of the ceiling, and
silhouetted against the glare he could just make out the frameworks of
great machines. The light was so brilliant that it pained the eyes, and Alvin knew that this place had not been intended for man. A moment
later, his vehicle flashed past row after row of cylinders, lying motionless
above their guide rails. They were much larger than the one in which he
was traveling, and Alvin guessed that they must have been used for
transporting freight. Around them were grouped incomprehensible, many-
jointed mechanisms, all silent and stilled.

Almost as quickly as it had appeared, the vast and lonely chamber
vanished behind him. Its passing left a feeling of awe in Alvin's mind; for the first time he really understood the meaning of that great, darkened map below Diaspar. The world was more full of wonder than he
had ever dreamed.

Alvin glanced again at the indicator. It had not changed; he had
taken less than a minute to flash through the great cavern. The machine was accelerating again; though there was little sense of motion, the tunnel walls were flowing past on either side at a speed he could not even
guess.

It seemed an age before that indefinable change of vibration occurred
again. Now the indicator was reading:

LYS 1 MINUTE

That minute was the longest that Alvin had ever known. More and more slowly moved the machine; this was no mere slackening of its speed. It was coming at last to rest.

Smoothly and silently the long cylinder slid out of the tunnel into a cavern that might have been the twin of the one below Diaspar. For a moment Alvin was too excited to see anything clearly; the door had been open for a considerable time before he realized that he could leave the vehicle. As he hurried out of the machine, he caught a last glimpse of the indicator. Its wording had now changed and its message was infinitely reassuring:

DIASPAR
35 MINUTES

As he began to search for a way out of the chamber, Alvin found the first hint that he might be in a civilization different from his own. The way to the surface clearly lay through a low, wide tunnel at one end of the cavern—and leading up through the tunnel was a flight of steps. Such a thing was extremely rare in Diaspar; the architects of the city had built ramps or sloping corridors whenever there was a change of level. This was a survival from the days when most robots had moved on wheels, and so found steps an impassable barrier.

The stairway was very short, and ended against doors that opened automatically at Alvin's approach. He walked into a small room like that which had carried him down the shaft under the Tomb of Yarlan Zey, and was not surprised when a few minutes later the doors opened again to reveal a vaulted corridor rising slowly to an archway that framed a semicircle of sky. There had been no sensation of movement, but Alvin knew that he must have risen many hundreds of feet. He hurried forward up the slope to the sunlit opening, all fear forgotten in his eagerness to see what lay before him.

He was standing at the brow of a low hill, and for an instant it seemed as if he were once again in the central park of Diaspar. Yet if this were indeed a park, it was too enormous for his mind to grasp. The city he had expected to see was nowhere visible. As far as the eye could reach there was nothing but forest and grass-covered plains.

Then Alvin lifted his eyes to the horizon, and there above the trees, sweeping from right to left in a great arc that encircled the world, was a